Lover in the Rough (9 page)

R
eba sat at her desk in the Objet d’Art, staring at the Tiger God when she should have been staring at invoices and appraisals. Light rippled hypnotically over the sculpture, creating subtle bands of gold and shimmering brown, smooth and infinitely sensuous. The sculpture captured the essence of male power and grace. And beneath it all, beneath the satin polish and sophisticated modeling, there was a wildness that called to her in a language as old as need and love.

She closed her eyes but still felt the Tiger God’s radiant presence. In her mind the sculpture changed, eyes silver-green now, midnight hair and moustache, resilient muscles sliding beneath her touch, gentle hands making her ache with a need that was so new to her she had no way to control it. With her eyes closed she could feel Chance’s body covering hers again, the world shrinking until there was nothing in it but him and her and the distant cry of gulls.

She hadn’t known what it was to want a man. Not like that, tenderness and fierce heat, needing to please and consume him in the same instant, emotions tearing through her until she could only tremble beneath him, unable even to think. She had forgotten where she was, who she was, forgotten everything but the taste and feel of him.

When he had ended the kiss by rolling aside until he no longer touched her, she had been bewildered, lost. Then she had remembered where she was and didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She and Chance had been necking on a public beach like a pair of teenagers. As though he were reading her thoughts, his hand had closed around hers gently. The faint tremor that went through him when his skin touched hers told Reba that his restraint didn’t come easily. The realization had comforted her. She wasn’t alone in the dizzying new world he had opened to her.

She hadn’t wanted to go back to the Objet d’Art. He hadn’t wanted to take her. Nor had she seen him that night. She had had clients coming in to view a portion of Jeremy’s collection. As the clients had flown in from Egypt just for the appointment, she could hardly refuse to see them. But she had wanted to. They had stayed until two
A.M.
, too late for her to call Chance at his hotel. But she had wanted to. Since she had opened the shop at nine there had been wall-to-wall collectors, guards, and nervous insurance agents. There hadn’t been any time or privacy to call Chance.

By four o’clock it had become obvious to Reba that the Objet d’Art was too small to contain the interest Jeremy’s collection had aroused. She had neither the time nor the energy to oversee an endless stream of collectors, or to answer their endless questions, endlessly repeated.

She had cleared out the last client at four and spent the next hour making arrangements to show Jeremy’s collection in a few weeks at San Diego’s Hotel del Coronado. There would be a day of viewing the collection, then dinner, an evening auction and a midnight ball. Jeremy would have approved. He had loved combining champagne sophistication with the primal competitiveness of collectors bent on owning the same rare objet.

Smiling softly, Reba ran her fingertips over the Tiger God. Even with her eyes closed she could visualize the powerful lines of the sculpture. It wasn’t an idealized or incredible figure of a man, a Hercules chiseled out of stone. It was simply very male, with solid shoulders and narrow hips, well-muscled arms and powerful legs, masculine ease and assurance in every line. The face was strong rather than handsome, compelling rather than perfect.

If the Tiger God could talk, she wondered, would he have a deep voice with a suggestion of a drawl?

“May I?” drawled a deep voice.

Reba’s eyes flew open and she made a startled sound. Chance Walker was standing in front of her, his hand held out to the statue. Wordlessly, she gave him the Tiger God. He turned the statue over slowly, admiring the fine specimen of tiger’s-eye and the artistry of the figure itself. His brown fingers moved over the stone’s satin surface, delicately following the lines of stone and sculpture.

“Extraordinary,” he said quietly, giving the statue back to Reba. “I’ve never seen a finer specimen. Not a fracture, not a displacement, not a single flaw. A mineral worthy of the artist who worked it.”

“It was part of Jeremy’s collection,” Reba said as she set the statue in its niche behind her desk. She gave the tiger’s-eye a final stroke before she turned back to Chance.

“I’m glad he’s only stone,” Chance said.

“What do you mean?”

“If the sculpture were alive, he’d be hard to take out in the desert and lose.” Chance looked at the tiger’s-eye sculpture, smiling slightly. “He’d be a mean one to tangle with. He’d be fair, though. No ambush. He wouldn’t have to. He’s strong and he knows it. He’d go hunting the devil himself with that solid gold bow.” Chance looked back at Reba. “Will this be for sale?”

She shook her head. “The will gave me two choices from Jeremy’s collection. The Tiger God is mine.”

“Tiger God,” Chance said softly. “It suits him. You named him, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

Delicately, Chance’s fingertips traced from Reba’s eyebrow to her chin. “Never thought I’d be jealous of a damned stone,” he said, his voice almost harsh.

“Don’t be,” she said softly, caught by the changing density of silver and green in his eyes. “I chose the statue and the name after Death Valley.”

She felt the change in him as he understood what she was saying. His eyes closed and his fingers tightened on the curve of her chin. When he looked at her again, she forgot to breathe. His eyes focused on her with an intensity that was almost tangible.

“Chaton,”
he said, bending to kiss her. “We have to talk. There’s something I have to—”

Tim walked into the office, talking as he came. “Boss, old man Mercer says—Oops. Sorry. Your door was open.” He turned to go.

Chance muttered a pungent word before he smiled sardonically and stepped aside. Reba silently seconded Chance’s muttering before she turned to Tim.

“It’s all right,” she said, her tone denying her polite words. Reba heard her voice and threw up her hands. “It’s all right even though it isn’t.”

Tim smiled. “Umm, yeah, I get what you mean.” He held out his hand. Nestled in his palm was a tiny, shocking pink Chinese tear bottle. “Mercer thinks our price is too high.”

Chance looked at the crystal bottle, then at Reba.

“Go ahead,” she said.

He plucked the bottle off Tim’s palm. After testing that the bottle’s tiny stopper was securely in place, Chance adjusted the high-intensity light on Reba’s desk so that the beam was behind the crystal bottle. A fine network of fractures glittered through, scattering and refracting light until the bottle glowed with a hot pink radiance that was characteristic of the mineral from which it had been carved.

“Pala tourmaline,” Chance said, turning the bottle slowly, letting the beam illuminate each curve of the objet. “Beautiful specimen. Single piece of mineral. Just enough fracturing to ensure its legitimacy, not enough to endanger the integrity of the bottle itself. The color is superb. There’s no other rubellite—pink tourmaline—in the world to equal that found in north San Diego County. Absolutely unique.”

Chance picked up a thick magnifying glass from Reba’s desk and resumed his informal appraisal of the brilliant crystal bottle in his palm.

“I don’t know enough about Chinese carving techniques to date the bottle exactly. Latter part of the nineteenth century, most likely. The Empress Dowager of China had an obsession for Pala’s tourmaline. The entire output of Pala’s mines went to her. She had a world monopoly on pink tourmaline. When she died in 1908, the market for Pala tourmaline collapsed.”

Chance bent and examined the carving on the bottle. “Nicely done,” he continued. “Original stopper, sharp edges on the carved design, symmetrical and elegant, not shopworn. Whoever owned this tear bottle took care of it. The others I’ve seen were all dulled by handling, chipped, or repaired in some way. This is the clearest pink I’ve seen, too.”

Silently, Reba held out the appraisal sheet she had finished on the pink tourmaline tear bottle the day before. He scanned the sheet quickly.

“A fair price,” said Chance. He smiled lazily as he handed the bottle back to Tim. “If your client doesn’t want it, I know a collector in Australia who’s almost as obsessed with pink as the Dowager was. Red Day will meet your price and thank you for the chance.”

Tim grinned. “You’ve made my day. Mercer is a wealthy, loud-mouthed pain in the butt.” Tim left, pointedly shutting the door behind him.

“My wonderful mine,” Reba said, her tone inviting Chance to share the joke on herself, “isn’t far from the mine that gave us this specimen. Same geography. Same geology. Not enough gem-quality pink tourmaline to fill a baby’s fist. All the Farrall women ever got out of the China Queen was hard work and danger for their men, and just enough crystals to give each succeeding generation tourmaline fever.”

Chance’s expression changed subtly. His features sharpened, emphasizing the masculine angles of his face and the blunt strength of his chin. “Did you ever get tourmaline fever?” he asked with a lightness that belied the tension of his body.

“Sure. I didn’t do anything about it, though. I haven’t been to the mine since Mother tried to open it when I was a kid. She’d saved enough money to pay for shoring up the entrance of the mine. The money ran out before she found anything more than a few crystals so badly fractured that they came apart in her hand. Junk.”

“What about you? Have you tried shoring up the China Queen?”

“I thought about it,” Reba admitted. “The dreams I had . . . mounds of tourmaline glittering, piles of never-melting ice crystals in shades of pink and green.” She laughed quietly at herself. “The reality was a bit less spectacular. As soon as I finished paying for my divorce and reclaiming my maiden name, I had someone estimate the cost of making the China Queen safe to work in. More than a hundred thousand dollars, and that was only if no blasting was ever done. To make the mine safe for blasting would cost two or three times as much.”

She shrugged. “I couldn’t find a bank that would lend a thousand dollars to me, much less a hundred times that much. Not that I blame the banks. What sane person would hand over that much money to a starry-eyed young woman with a half-interest in a mine that never produced more than a few hundred dollars worth of Pala tourmaline?”

“Then sell the Queen,” said Chance.

Reba looked up, caught by the intensity of his voice. “It would be like selling a dream. Whatever money I got wouldn’t be worth what I lost.” She smiled crookedly. “I know it’s silly but that’s how I feel about the China Queen.”

“Even though you haven’t seen the mine since you were a kid?”

“Yes.” Reba hesitated, choosing words carefully, trying to make Chance understand why a useless mine was more important to her than it should be. “It’s all I have left of my childhood. I have no family, not really. I don’t even know my father’s name. Mother and I have gone very different ways. I never saw my grandparents; they threw Mother out before I was born. My mother’s twin sister lives in Australia, somewhere in the Outback. I’ve never seen her. She and mother never write. Not even a postcard at Christmas. There’s a girl my age, my aunt’s daughter. Sylvie. That’s it so far as I know. My family.”

Reba’s smile slipped. She looked at her hands. “That and half of an abandoned mine is my heritage. I may never find a single pink crystal in the China Queen, but half of her belongs to me. One hundred acres outright, plus mineral rights to several square miles.” She looked away from her tightly laced fingers. “It’s beautiful country,” she said softly. “Broken and wild, hot in the summer and green velvet in the winter. Someday I’ll build a house there. Until then it’s enough just to know the land is there, waiting for me. Homecoming.”

Reba looked up and saw Chance’s eyes narrow as he studied her. His expression was a mixture of anger and sadness and frustration. “You’ll never sell it.”

“No.” Then, quickly, “It’s not as crazy as it sounds, Chance. The taxes on the mine are almost nothing. And . . . and I can camp there whenever I want.”

“Do you?” he demanded.

“Camp there? No,” she admitted. “I drove out to the mine turnoff once after my divorce. The mine road looked awful. I was afraid to try it alone. I suppose it would have been all right.” She thought about it for a moment. “Yes, I’m sure it would be fine. I’ll do it, soon.”

“Not alone,” he said harshly. “It’s dangerous.”

“How do you know?”

Chance hesitated. “You’d be tempted to go into the mine. Besides, any area that isolated will always be dangerous for a woman alone. But with a man who knows rough country . . .” He smiled suddenly, transforming his face. “Want to go camping?”

Reba’s eyes lit with sudden excitement. With Chance along she wouldn’t be jumping at every sound, every shadow, afraid even to sit in the sun and close her eyes. The thought of sharing the emptiness and silence of the rugged land with him was intoxicating. She smiled up at her Tiger God like a child on Christmas morning.

“Yes,” she breathed. “Take me camping.”