If There Be Dragons (6 page)

Something clenched inside of her suddenly as Brooke remembered what she’d very nearly forgotten: that this man claimed to be in love with her. She found herself staring blankly at a box she’d taken from a cabinet and wondering rather desperately why she kept forgetting it. Was it a part of Cody’s plan, or was her own mind playing tricks on her?

“Why’re you staring at a box of breakfast cereal as if it were whispering the secrets of a universe?” Cody asked politely.

She blinked at him. “Oh…just thinking.”

Cody’s eyes narrowed suddenly, and then one corner of his mouth lifted in a funny little grin. “Hey, I think I’m beginning to get the hang of it. You were thinking about me, weren’t you?”

“That’s called vanity,” Brooke managed firmly.

He looked hurt. “You weren’t thinking of me?”

Brooke shoved the box of cereal back into the cabinet, more rattled than she looked—she hoped. Ignoring his question, she asked, “Is beef stew all right with you? We can give the leftovers to Phantom tomorrow.”

“Fine.”

He was watching her, Brooke knew. And with a disquieting smile, dammit. He hadn’t read her mind. No way. He’d just guessed again. She’d have enough trouble coping with a dragonslaying prince without adding telepathy to all his other virtues.

Virtues?

Damn the man.

After lunch Brooke removed the cold compress from Cody’s ankle to find that the swelling had begun to go down again. She bound it up in an elastic bandage, then found a pair of crutches left over from Josh’s broken leg, and told Cody that if he put any weight on the ankle before she said he could, she’d throw him out into the snow to fend for himself. Somewhat meekly Cody promised to obey the command.

The promised storm was fully blown by three o’clock, the wind howling outside, and a mixture of snow and sleet pelting the windowpanes. Brooke had turned on the kitchen radio, and the weather forecast from Butte was not in the least encouraging—unless one were a polar bear. Up to two feet of snow was forecast, and the announcer cheerfully mentioned power failures and impassable roads. He also told listeners to have a nice day.

Tacitly agreeing not to leave their canine houseguest alone in the kitchen, Cody and Brooke settled down at the kitchen table with a Scrabble game. Phantom, further warmed and filled by a second helping of chicken broth, blinked sleepily and then seemed to doze off, his pointed ears twitching occasionally at the sounds of their voices.

“That’s not a word.”

“It is too. Asphodel. It’s a Mediterranean plant.”

Cody looked suspicious. “Are you a botanist?”

“No. It was a hobby of Josh’s.”

“Great.”

“I guess I should tell you that Josh tutored me for years. And he was a brilliant man.”

“Uh-huh.” Cody sighed.

“Buck up. If you can just make a word with that Z, you’ll beat me. More points, you know.”

Cody frowned in thought for a moment, and then triumphantly produced ZENITH.

Brooke wrestled silently with an X for a while before coming up with XENON. She smiled at Cody across the table. “We’ve conquered two of the roughest letters; it should be downhill from now on.”

“Oh, yeah? What can I spell with this Q?”

“I can think of six words right off the top of my head.”

Cody stared at her, then defiantly spelled out QUACK on the board.

“Your mind’s telling on you,” Brooke observed.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Quack. As in charlatan. You’re doubting me.”

“For your information I was thinking of the sound a duck makes.”

She bit back a laugh. “My mistake.”

“That’s quite all right.”

“You’re very gracious,” she said approvingly.

“I’m a hell of a guy.”

“And modest.”

That first day spent together told Cody quite a lot. Though beginning to piece together the events of her past through the little Brooke had told him so far, he discovered that he was actually learning more about her just by being with her in the present. With the wolf comfortably inside with them now, she was no longer haunted by a mental cry she didn’t understand and was far more relaxed than Cody had yet seen her.

And throughout the afternoon his seemingly casual but intent observation of her behavior gave him clues as to how to go about slaying the dragons standing between them.

He noticed first of all that Brooke was intensely wary of being touched; drawing away seemed almost a reflex with her. While she could touch him with apparent calm when dealing with his injured ankle, or allow him to lean on her as she had the night before, the most casual of
unnecessary
physical contact caused an inner stiffening that Cody could sense more than feel.

With the neatly logical mind that made him a wizard with computers, Cody sifted the possibilities until he arrived at one that seemed to explain Brooke’s wariness. Gradually he realized that the inner stiffening he felt was simply a shoring up of her mental wall. Physical contact, he decided, probably made her more vulnerable to mental contact.

That explanation satisfied Cody’s critical scrutiny, so he set his mind to finding a way of dealing with the problem. The answer promised a great many sleepless nights for him; to become accustomed to anything a person had to be gradually exposed to it. And while his own inner conviction and strong desires might have led him to push Brooke into a relationship she wasn’t ready for, his innate wisdom and a caution born of love joined together in the voice of reason.

So Cody held on to his willpower with every atom of control and set about getting Brooke accustomed to being touched undemandingly. He had to overcome instincts within her, instincts that had been sharpened by her need to guard her mind. He slowly and carefully had to invade the private territory that every human being claimed and marked as personal; had to convince Brooke that there was no threat to herself in allowing him so close.

Brooke tensed slightly when Cody reached over to take her hand in a gentle clasp. They were sitting on a couch before a blazing fire in the sunken den. Supper was over and the wind was howling in the darkness outside.

His hand was large and warm, its strength only a promise since there was no force in his grip. Brooke, her unusual senses reacting to the contact as iron to a magnet, instantly and expertly slammed the door opening between them. She felt the lightness that had been the rule since lunch evaporate, felt tension and uneasiness creep into her awareness. She wanted to pull her hand away, but couldn’t seem to, and she couldn’t say a word.

Luckily for both Cody’s plans and Brooke’s composure, Phantom came into the room just then to create a timely diversion. The wolf moved steadily, swinging his splinted leg with a touch of awkwardness but seemingly in no pain. He negotiated the step down into the room cautiously, then came toward the pair watching him from the couch. He sniffed at the bearskin rug before the hearth and then, concluding that it wasn’t actively hostile, sank down on the snowy whiteness with an almost human sigh.

“I guess he didn’t want to be alone,” Cody noted.

“Looks that way.” Brooke tried to forget the hands clasped on the cushion between them, but her awareness of Cody—having nothing to do with her telepathy, she realized—wouldn’t let her forget. “Uh…how’s the ankle?” she asked rather hastily.

Cody glanced at his bound ankle, which was resting on a pillow on top of the coffee table. “Fine.” He sent a faint grimace toward the crutches resting against a nearby chair. “You’ll be able to put those things back in the closet soon.”

“When the ankle’s healed and not a minute sooner,” she told him firmly.

“Yes, Doctor,” he murmured with a smile.

“Don’t mock me.”

He lifted her hand and kissed it briefly. “Wouldn’t think of it.”

Brooke stared fiercely at the fire. Lips, she reassured herself silently, were very human things. They didn’t cause electric shocks; therefore, she hadn’t felt an electric shock when Cody’s lips had touched her hand. Period. It was all her imagination. She shifted restlessly. “Cody—”

“The wind’s dying down, don’t you think?” He cut her off with ruthless intent.

“No. No, it acts like that up here sometimes. Like the eye of a hurricane, or something. It’ll probably pick back up in a few minutes.” She hesitated. “Cody—”

“D’you think this storm will turn into an actual blizzard?” he asked casually, cutting her off yet again. “I’ve never been through a blizzard before.”

Brooke gave him a frustrated look, making one weak and fruitless attempt to pull her hand from his grasp. “You don’t go
through
a blizzard unless you’re out in it; if you’re lucky enough to be indoors, you just wait it out. And, yes, it sounds like a blizzard to me.”

“Good,” Cody said with every evidence of satisfaction.

“Good? Cody—”

“I’ve always wanted to be snowbound.”

“
Will
you let me finish a sentence?” she demanded irritably.

“Sorry.” Golden eyes that were fathoms deep and impossibly limpid gazed into hers. “You were saying?”

With a tremendous effort Brooke tore her gaze away and stared into the fire. Why did she suddenly feel that she’d been pulled into those golden pools and sucked under? “I forgot,” she murmured. Truthfully. What had she been about to say? Protest. That was it. She’d been about to protest his hand-holding business. But it didn’t seem important now.

Feeling mildly pleased by his victory in the small and silent skirmish, Cody surged ahead in an effort to hold on to his lead. “Are we completely cut off from civilization, barring the radio and the Sno-Cat?” he asked interestedly.

Absently Brooke said, “Until they repair the phone line. Since you fixed the generator, we can do without electricity from town. And we have enough provisions to last the winter; I always stock in the fall.”

“How long d’you think the storm will last?”

“Could be days.” Her own words prompted misgivings, but Brooke ignored them; worrying wouldn’t change anything. “Storm systems can be tricky up here in the mountains. It’s almost as if they turn in on themselves and grow more powerful instead of weaker.”

Cody looked at her for a long moment, suddenly realizing something. “There are no guests coming next week, are there?” he asked gently.

Brooke wasn’t surprised; she shook her head slightly. “No. Because of the weather, I rarely take guests this time of year. I just told you that hoping you’d leave.”

“And now?”

“And now what?” She refused to look at him.

“Are you glad I stayed?”

Lightly she asked, “Fishing?”

“Fishing.”

Brooke was afraid to meet his clear golden eyes, afraid that his gaze would pull the truth out of her. His very presence was tugging at her now, demanding truth. Demanding honesty. And she wanted to scream at him suddenly for demanding anything of her.

“Never mind, Brooke.” Intuitively Cody sensed her abrupt resistance, the flare of emotions. He silently cursed himself for pushing; they had a long way to go yet. He squeezed her hand lightly and then released it. “It’s been a—long and eventful day. Why don’t we turn in?”

Silent, she rose to her feet, reaching for the crutches and handing them to him. Her hand felt strangely alone without the warmth of his, cold and alone. But she didn’t want to think of that. She concentrated on the wall of the wind and on the wolf lying on the bearskin rug.

“He’ll be alone again,” she murmured.

On his feet and braced by the crutches, Cody looked down at Phantom. “He’ll be all right. He knows where his water is, and he knows we’re in the house with him. He’ll be fine, Brooke.”

She nodded, preceding Cody from the room. He left her at her door with a quiet good night, going on down the hall to his own room. Brooke closed the door and leaned back against it for a moment, then automatically began getting ready for bed.

Preparing to slide between the sheets, Brooke paused for a moment and looked toward her door. She went over and opened it, discovering Phantom standing out in the hall. He looked up at her, his tail waving once. Brooke glanced down the hall toward Cody’s bedroom, then stepped back to admit the wolf.

“Come on in,” she invited softly. “We just won’t tell Cody.”

Moments later, lulled by the steady wail of the wind outside and by the quiet presence of Phantom on the rug by her bed, Brooke slipped into a deep and dreamless sleep.

FIVE

A
WEEK PASSED
, and then another. That first blizzard lasted three days and, with Nature apparently in one of her infrequent fits of regularity, was followed by overnight storms every three days for those two weeks. Cody’s repair job on the generator held; they had plenty of power and food. Insisting that Cody remain inside and not risk the treacherous footing outdoors, Brooke made the daily trips to feed Mister and bring in wood.

Experience of Montana winters had bred self-sufficiency and strength in Brooke; she coped easily with the outside chores and accepted the violence of the weather with tolerance.

They quickly discovered that Phantom was a thoughtful and considerate houseguest; after the first couple of days of needed rest, he politely requested to go outside once or twice a day, going to one or the other of his human companions and nudging gently before heading pointedly for the back door. The wolf was more adept at swinging his splinted leg now, and seemed to have no trouble coping with the uneven drifts of snow outside. While one of his companions waited at the open door, Phantom would disappear around the corner of the house. He would return within moments, then stand patiently inside the kitchen while his thick coat was brushed free of clinging snow.

He was a silent creature, never whining or yelping as a domesticated dog would have done. Only a faint rumbling growl would emerge from his throat when, after a meal, he’d settle down before the fire in the den with his humans for company.

Brooke and Cody, both instinctively companionable with animals, spoke casually to the wolf as if he were a third person. And every night, after Cody’s bedroom door had closed, Phantom would make his way silently to Brooke’s door and await admittance. Brooke always left the door slightly open, and Phantom was always back in the den or kitchen whenever Cody got up in the morning.

As for Brooke and Cody, the enforced intimacy of being virtually snowbound together with only a silent wolf and each other for company would have either drawn them closer together or else set them inexorably apart.

It drew them together.

Resolutely patient and undemanding, Cody set about teaching Brooke to trust him. They played chess, checkers and Chinese checkers, and Monopoly. They carried on ridiculous conversations in which quotations substituted for dialogue and became progressively more obscure and absurd. Both shared a passion for mysteries, and together they would construct plots and spend hours discussing possible solutions. They talked about everything two different people would find interesting.

They didn’t talk about Brooke’s dragons.

More than once during those days, Brooke would have continued her story if Cody had asked her to. He didn’t. Cody was waiting for a sign. A physical sign.

He had continued to touch Brooke casually and undemandingly. He held her hand, touched her cheek lightly, tugged playfully at the ponytail she occasionally wore. He slipped an arm around her shoulders whenever they sat side by side, hugged her with first one arm and then gradually both. And always, Cody waited for the stiffening that warned him to withdraw from Brooke’s private space.

Cody always respected her instinctive reaction. That respect and his patience began to pay off during the second week; Brooke gradually came to accept his touch without stiffening at all. She accepted as casually as he gave, becoming more and more relaxed in his company.

But still Cody waited. Knowing without being told that Brooke had known few demonstrative people in her life, he realized that when she finally reached out for someone—if even with an automatic, casual touch—it would be the first step in learning how to open up to another person. And Cody wanted to be that other person.

The breakthrough, when it came, went unnoticed by Brooke. But Cody was so jubilant that he only just stopped himself from laughing out loud.

“I washed the dishes,” Cody reported cheerfully as Brooke came into the den after making her midaftemoon trip down to the barn to feed Mister.

“You did that for me?” Brooke patted him lightly on the head as she came around the couch to kneel in front of the coffee table. “How sweet.” She frowned thoughtfully down at the Monopoly game her trip to the barn had interrupted.

Just a little thing—a pat on the head. But it was the first time Brooke had touched him casually and absentmindedly and, to Cody, it was the reward for many restless nights. “Your move,” he managed to remind her easily.

“I’ve got a feeling,” she said darkly, “that I’ll end up in jail.” Cautiously she rolled the dice.

And had to go directly to jail.

Cody lifted an eyebrow at her. “Precognition?”

Brooke sighed. “No. Just experience with sheer bad luck.”

Cody made a “tut-tut” sound. “Your luck’ll turn.
I’ve
got a feeling.”

“Precognition?” she asked dryly.

“Horse sense.”

“Ah. I thought only horses had that.”

“Sheathe your claws, you little cat.”

“Was I clawing? I beg your pardon, I’m sure.”

“You’ve been clawing from the start,” Cody pointed out, wounded. “The moment we met, you knocked me flat on my—”

“Language!”

“…ego.” Cody lifted the other brow at her. “And you’ve been sticking pins in my ego ever since.”

“I never!”

“Oh, yes. In fact, you see before you a quivering mass of insecurity. A bundle of nerves. A man bordering on severe trauma.”

Brooke blinked at him. “Goodness. Did I do all that?”

“Yes.”

“Sorry.”

“
Sorry,
she says. The woman totally destroys a man, and she says she’s sorry. As if that’ll help. Right, Phantom?” The wolf, lying on the bearskin rug near Brooke, thumped his tail once and watched them out of sleepy yellow eyes.

Reasonably Brooke said, “Well, I don’t know what else I could say. How, by the way, did I commit this act of destruction?”

Forced to the point, Cody neatly evaded it. “You’ve broken my spirit,” he accused mournfully.

“How?” she repeated.

“Here I am,” he said sadly, “prepared to do battle in the best dragonslaying tradition, and the fair lady won’t even allow me to defend her.”

Since this kind of playful tiptoeing-around-the-subject had been going on for nearly a week, Brooke was accustomed to it. “I’ll let you get me out of jail,” she offered helpfully.

“Poor substitute,” Cody sniffed with disdain.

“C’mon, be princely. Get me out of jail.”

“Maybe I’d better leave you there; you can’t run away from me now.”

“I couldn’t run far anyway. The weather, you know.”

“This is true.” Cody reflected for a moment. “All right, then. I’ll trade you the get-out-of-jail card.”

“Trade it for what?”

“Chapter Two,” he said lightly.

Absently toying with the dice, Brooke looked up suddenly. She saw the golden eyes resting on her in gentle inquiry, felt no demand from Cody. Only a quiet question. With exaggerated care she placed the dice on the gameboard and clasped her hands together on her thighs. “It’s time, huh?” she murmured.

“I think so. But I won’t push if you’re not ready.”

She gazed at him steadily for a moment, her green eyes naked in their uncertainty. Then she squared her shoulders. “All right.”

Cody leaned back on the couch, deliberately withdrawing from even the most tenuous contact with her. She would reach for him this time, he thought. He hoped. He needed her to reach for him. Needed her to need him. “What happened after your mother discovered you were psychic?” he asked.

Brooke took a deep breath. “My teacher told her about the research being done at some of the universities and about the parapsychological institutes. And I suppose she meant to be helpful when she told Mother that some of the institutes paid…subjects…to be studied. Mother contacted some of the places, and the next thing I knew, we were on a plane.

“That was the beginning. Most of the researchers were kind to me, and they made it all seem like a game.” Her voice dropping to the gruff, detached tone Cody remembered from their first meeting, Brooke recalled the “games.”

“I’m thinking of a toy, Brooke, what is it? There’s a man in the next room, Brooke; what picture is he drawing? I’m going to ask you a question, Brooke, in my head; I want you to answer it out loud. I’m thinking, Brooke; what am I thinking? These cards all have pictures, Brooke; I want you to tell me what the picture on each card is before I turn it over.”

Brooke closed her eyes for a moment, then went on. “I was…studied off and on for years. And when the reputable institutes and universities had learned all they could from me, Mother found some that were less reputable. That’s when the publicity began. Pictures and interviews and poor, foolish people—believing that I could look into their minds and somehow straighten out their troubled lives. People who were afraid of me and yet wanted to…touch me. Staring. Always staring at me.”

Rising suddenly to her feet, Brooke began to move restlessly around the room. Touching an object here and there, not looking at Cody. Still speaking in that gruff, detached voice.

“And then Mother met a self-styled promoter. He handled mostly carnivals and sideshows. When he looked at me, he saw a gold mine. To this day I think he believed that I was just a ten-year-old kid with a gift for tricking people. He didn’t believe in anything he couldn’t spend or put into the bank, but he knew how to attract people to a show. And he built a show around me.”

His pent-up anger needing release, Cody muttered, “How could your mother allow—”

Brooke laughed painfully. “Allow? She loved every minute of it. We went from small town to small town just like a circus. I was billed as a mentalist and stood up on stage reading minds. The promoter and Mother were making money; they were happy. The crowds that came to the show were always a mixed lot. There was always a heckler or two in the audience who called me a phony, and some called me a witch or worse. My…gift was hailed as being from God and cursed as being from the devil. Oh, I heard it all.”

“But the authorities. School,” Cody said, trying to find something acceptable, something normal in her life.

Staring into the case containing the ivory pieces her uncle had collected, Brooke shrugged. “Occasionally a concerned citizen would get suspicious and call the police. But the promoter was canny and Mother always had good instincts; we usually stayed one jump ahead of the truant officer. There was always another little town over the horizon. Another audience.”

Whirling suddenly, Brooke came to stand at the end of the couch, staring down at Cody with bitter, painful memories in her green eyes. “Can you imagine what it was like? Standing up in front of all those people in that ridiculous long black robe…voices battering at me as if I were in the middle of a wild crowd—but they were
inside my head
. I couldn’t get away from them, I couldn’t shut them out. My head hurt all the time, and sometimes I felt as if I’d explode. The people were afraid of me, and I didn’t know why. They were afraid of me, and sometimes they hated me because they didn’t understand…and I didn’t understand either.”

Her eyes burned with unshed tears and memories. “They were afraid of me, but they were also hungry—always demanding, always wanting more. And I
couldn’t shut them out
.”

So still that he might have been formed of stone, Cody looked up at her and forced himself to wait.

Barely seeing him through the hazy wash of tears, Brooke was consciously aware for the first time of a hunger of her own. A need. A need for the human contact she’d denied herself for years. Memories of those faceless, demanding eyes rose up before her, causing something deep inside her to shy away from thoughts of contact. But then, as she blinked back the tears and the memories, she saw Cody’s familiar eyes gazing steadily at her. Golden eyes full of compassion and understanding, and a muted anger for her and for what she’d gone through as a child. Without thought her hand reached out jerkily toward him, like the hand of a puppet, its strings sharply tugged.

The almost helpless gesture won an immediate response from Cody. He caught her hand in his own, drawing her down gently until she was sitting close beside him. He slipped one arm around her shoulders comfortingly, still holding her hand. And in his fierce determination to keep his own physical desires at bay, Cody found that he himself was more open, more receptive to another’s feelings that he’d ever been before. His intuition had picked up the signals Brooke had unconsciously sent, revealing her dragons to him, stripped of their mystique and of half their power.

“You’re punishing yourself, honey,” he said softly.

She looked at him, uneasy, aware on some level of her mind that Cody had somehow learned something about her that she didn’t know consciously herself. “I—I don’t know what you mean,” she murmured, grateful for the warmth of his nearness and yet fearful that it was the first step toward the demands that had driven her to hide inside herself.

Cody hesitated for a split second, knowing that what he was about to say would cut, and cut deeply. But he realized that this wound, at least, had to be reopened to allow the poison of bitterness to escape. He only wished that he wasn’t the one forced to use the knife. Not when she’d only just learned to trust him.

Carefully he said, “You talked about the audience always being hungry, always demanding, and I’m sure that’s true. But it was your mother who demanded the most, wasn’t it, Brooke? She was the one who demanded that you step out on a stage and…perform.”

Restlessly Brooke tried to draw away from him, finding that he wouldn’t let her go this time. “We had no money,” she murmured tightly. “My mother had to find some way of supporting us.”

“Stop defending her,” Cody ordered flatly. “She exploited you. She exploited you and you hate her for that.”

“It isn’t natural to hate your mother,” Brooke whispered, staring straight in front of her and sitting stiffly at Cody’s side.

“That’s why you’re punishing yourself,” he said quietly. When she turned her head almost reluctantly to look at him, Cody added, “You think it isn’t natural, that children are supposed to love their parents unreservedly. You felt her hate when you were too young to understand it, but you kept fighting it. You kept trying to win her approval. And when she demanded that you step out onto a stage and open your mind to the worst and most degrading kind of abuse, you did it. Because you didn’t want her to hate you. By doing that, you ended up hating her.”