Showdown at Lizard Rock (7 page)

“I’m on the way!” a voice called. “Harold and I just went down to mark the entranceway for the soup line. Good heavens!”

Sandi and Harold ran up to the trailer. Mac Webster followed them. “What are you doing, boss?” Mac asked. He glanced from Kaylyn to Matilda to King. “Are we playing show-and-tell again?”

“If you two traitors have a moment,” King said tightly, glaring at Harold and Mac, “I’d appreciate it if you’d get this miniature mule away from this door and off my property.
Now!
”

“Over my dead body,” Kaylyn said.

He shoved Matilda back and jerked open the trailer door. “That, my darlin’ Ms. Smith, might very well be arranged.” He stepped inside and slammed the door behind him.

Two things amazed Kaylyn. Matilda allowed herself to be tethered quietly in a patch of greenery just behind the tent, and Harold reported to her for kitchen duty as soon as King left his trailer the next morning.

“Aren’t you worried about your job if you help me cook soup for the homeless?” she asked.

“Nope. King talks tough, but he’d got a soft spot under all that hard blarney. Did you know that he had a worthless daddy?”

“No. I don’t know much about King.”

“A gambler. Started drinking, lost everything, just like me. Died—bad. I don’t wanna die bad. Think that’s why King took me in?”

Kaylyn stared at the ground, thinking. King was a mystery man. He was head of his own development company, wealthy, and heart-stoppingly gorgeous—plenty of reasons for him to treat the rest of the world with nonchalant unconcern. And yet he had taken Harold home and given him a job. Matilda adored him, and Kaylyn had decided long ago that animals were good at sizing a person up.

“Where does King’s family live, Harold?” she asked.

“All over. One brother is an architect in Texas, and the other is overseeing a construction project in Arizona. He has a sister somewhere. King moves around from one place to another. Lives in that trailer, he does.”

Kaylyn frowned thoughtfully. Maybe King Vandergriff had never had a real home. Maybe he’d never settled down in one spot long enough to feel a sense of commitment to the community. He couldn’t appreciate her sentiment over Pretty Springs because he’d never felt sentiment for a place.

No, she was filling in blanks with her own observations. What she needed were facts, not suppositions. Just because every time she said his name she felt a rush of warmth inside was no reason to feel sympathy for her enemy.

By the time late afternoon rolled around, every man on King’s payroll had concocted some excuse to check out the delicious aromas wafting through the air over the construction site. Kaylyn told them when supper was and invited them to join in. King’s day-long
absence only added anticipation to the coming events.

At four Kaylyn changed from her working costume of cutoffs and an oversize T-shirt to a pink cotton sundress and flat white sandals. She sorted out the clothing Sandi had brought and arranged her soup bowls and iced-tea glasses for easy access.

By five o’clock, nine men—some of the them winos, some of them just plain down-on-their-luck drifters—had bathed in the pool and were sitting around the circle eating soup. By six o’clock, seven workers from the construction site had joined the crowd. A lively conversation sprang up between the mismatched groups, and Kaylyn quickly saw that something unexpected was happening. Following King’s lead in rescuing and bringing Harold home, the workers were sounding out the homeless to determine what could be done to help them.

After dinner the homeless men cheerfully hoisted Kaylyn’s picket signs and formed a procession at the entrance to the construction site. The picketing was uneventful, and after thirty minutes the men were given rides back into town by the departing workmen.

By seven o’clock, Kaylyn and Harold had the camp shipshape, and Matilda bedded down for the night. By eight-thirty, King returned from wherever he’d been. He went straight to his trailer without speaking to Kaylyn. She sat outside her tent, watching for glimpses of him as he walked back and forth behind the trailer’s windows.

Windows with nice bug-proof screens, she thought enviously. She was swatting mosquitoes madly, wishing for a can of repellent. By nine o’clock, clouds
covered the night sky. Rain began to fall. She hurried inside her tent.

The tent had been more or less waterproofed the last time she’d used it. But three years of creases had put several glitches in the fabric, and in no time she was shivering and wet. She stared through the tent flaps at King’s snug trailer and kept telling herself that her suffering was worthwhile. Sandi had taken the van back to the home, so Kaylyn couldn’t leave even if she wanted to. It was too far to walk, and the only phone close by belonged to King Vandergriff.

Matilda began to announce her displeasure with the rain.

“Sorry, old girl,” Kaylyn yelled to her. “This tent isn’t big enough for you and me, and I don’t think you’d like it that much if it was.”

Poor, pregnant Matilda had no shelter, she thought, and considered the possibilities. There wasn’t any shelter on the construction site, except for the pan of one of the big bulldozers. Maybe she could anchor Matilda beneath the huge shovel.

Gritting her teeth, she lifted the flap on her tent and stepped out into the downpour. She untied Matilda and began leading her around the back side of the rocks to where the heavy equipment was parked. But Matilda had a mind of her own. Before Kaylyn could stop her, she jerked away and darted toward King’s trailer. She halted beneath the porch-sized awning attached to one side of the trailer.

“Oh, no!” Kaylyn cried. She ran to the donkey and tugged at her lead rope. “Matilda,
please
come with me. Things are bad enough without you making
everything worse. I don’t care if you
are
an expectant mother, you’re about to get me killed.”

Matilda brayed. Matilda stayed.

King slung his door open. “What the hell?” He stared in disbelief at the sight of a soaking wet Kaylyn trying diligently to pull the stubborn donkey from under his awning.

Kaylyn stared back at him. The robe he was wearing tonight was black. It was satin, and it was dry.

“I’m sorry, King, but Matilda doesn’t like summer rainstorms. I can’t seem to budge her.”

“Try offering her a nice hot bowl of soup. Maybe that will entice her over to your campsite,” he said sarcastically. “It enticed everybody else.”

“Not you.”

“I didn’t think you’d have enough for one more guest, what with all those other men. Besides, I wasn’t invited.”

She started to reply, then recalled her earlier conversation with Harold. King had known she was feeding the homeless men, yet he hadn’t interfered. He had known that his own workers had joined in, yet he hadn’t threatened to fire any of them. He hadn’t called the police to break up her picket lines.

“I have some some soup left,” she said. “I’ll trade you a bowl for a dry spot to wait out the shower.”

“Just you and the donkey?” His suspicion was obvious.

“Who else do you see standing out here?”

“Who knows how many others might be hiding behind the rocks, ready to jump out and invade my trailer?”

“Everybody else is back on their own respective turf, minding their own business. Where’s Harold?”

“Harold may work here, but he doesn’t sleep here. He prefers his regular cell down at the jail.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope. You may get Harold out of the jail, but you’ll never get the jail out of Harold.” King sighed with defeat. “Leave the damned donkey and come inside.”

“Just a minute.” She dropped Matilda’s rope and dashed back to the canvas lean- to she’d fashioned to cover her supplies. She found her flashlight and pointed it toward the pool until she located a rope hanging from a tree. The rope was tied around a quart jar of soup that she’d submerged in the cold spring water. She pulled the jar up and splashed back to the trailer.

“You can come in, Kaylyn,” King said, “but I don’t want you dripping all over my carpet. Leave the dress outside.” He held up another of his apparently large collection of robes, this one of red-and-black velour. It looked invitingly warm.

“Close you eyes,” she instructed, placing the jar just inside the door.

“After you showed off in that skimpy outfit on the rock and in the pool, you’re turning modest on me?” He chuckled. She obviously hadn’t realized that the wet dress was hugging her body in a way that made modesty a lost cause. “Oh, all right.”

He turned his head dramatically, exaggerating a gallant attitude. Out of the corner of one eye he watched her shimmy her dress down and off. She wore nothing but panties, and her breasts gleamed with rainwater. She slid her arms into his robe, then hugged its warmth around her.

Matilda gave a short, soft bray of good-bye as Kaylyn
stepped inside the trailer. King looked out, winked at the donkey, then closed the door.

“Sit down,” he said to Kaylyn. “And put these on your feet.” He handed her a pair of his slippers, and she stifled an urge to gape at them. They looked like large, fuzzy black-and-red teddy bears.

“What do they do, cuddle up and play footsie?” she asked drolly.

“No, they’re called Huggies,” he said defensively. “A friend of mine makes stuffed dolls and clowns. As a joke, she turned one of her doll designs into slippers for me.”

“So you’re a teddy-bear sort of guy.”

His voice held wry warning. “
She
chose the bears for me. She said they were the most lovable of her designs, and that I was in need of something to love.”

“And are you?”

“No comment.”

“Hmm.” Kaylyn realized that the bear slippers had a used look about them, and she nearly laughed out loud at the idea of King Vandergriff padding around his luxury trailer in them. The notion was unsettling. The kind of man who would put on silly-looking shoes like these must be very secure in his masculinity. He must also have a whimsical, gentle outlook on life.

“Your friend has odd talents,” she said distractedly. She slipped her feet into the soft, furry slippers and wiggled them, delighting in the animated way the bears moved. The slippers were huge.

“Her name is Lacey Winter. Her husband and I had some real-estate dealings. Now they’re good friends of mine. You wouldn’t believe the ridiculous-looking
pair of clown slippers she made for her husband to wear. She put hours of hand sewing into them, and they’re the neatest, goofiest things I’ve ever seen.”

“He must really love her if he doesn’t mind clown slippers.”

King nodded. “He used to be a very straight-arrow business type, but on their first date she got him to wear a T-shirt with a clown on it. Clowns have been an inside joke between them ever since. They have a crazy, wonderful relationship.”

Kaylyn heard the yearning in King’s voice, and she wondered if he envied his friends’ happiness. “These slippers would be terrific for the residents of the nursing home,” she said. “I’ll have to get Lacey’s phone number and call her.”

“You’ll like her. She’s a great gal.”

King got a thick hand towel from the kitchen, walked behind the chair Kaylyn was sitting in, and began drying her hair. His motions were slow and rhythmic, and she felt her scalp begin to tingle.

“I adore Lacey’s children,” he murmured.

“Oh? How many does she have?”

“Three. And the last time I saw her and her husband, they said they aren’t done yet.”

“They must have a very happy family. I can tell that you envy them.”

He paused for a moment. “Yes, I guess I do. My father died when I was young.”

“So did mine. Or at least I’ve been told that he did. He ran off, and my mother and I never heard from him again.”

“It was my mother who ran away.” His voice was gruff. “I was a little kid when she left.”

Kaylyn turned around and caught his hands between hers. His fingers rested lightly against her temples. “I never heard from my father again. Did your mother ever return? I’m sorry, King,” she murmured. “I didn’t mean to pry.”

“No, she died soon afterward, but I like to think that she would have come home someday. And you weren’t prying,” he said softly. “You were sympathizing.”

His hands were callused, the skin coarse. Yet they were surprisingly gentle hands for a man so big and aggressive. He probably could have broken granite rocks with those hands, she thought, but right now they roamed over her face so tenderly, she felt as if butterflies were caressing her skin.

“I care about people,” she said breathlessly. Silently she added,
I care about you.

“I believe you truly do,” he whispered, and lowered his head to touch her lips with his.

For a long, still moment he simply kissed her with the same butterfly lightness that she’d felt in his fingertips. He was waiting, questioning, and she couldn’t force herself to pull away, not this time. She was only dimly aware of her hands sliding around his neck. She was less aware of his hands slipping down her back and fastening around her waist.

There was an empty ache in her chest. She felt as if she were waiting for him to overwhelm that ache with happiness. Her response frightened her because she knew she was in grave danger of giving in to her insatiable desire for King, and that desire might destroy everything she wanted to achieve.

She drew away, twisting herself around in the chair, away from his touch. She closed her eyes,
trying to blot out the mental image of his stormy blue-gray eyes and his lips parted invitingly.

“King,” she asked sadly, “why do you keep trying to seduce me? This isn’t doing either of us any good.”

“That’s a true statement if I ever heard one.” His voice was hoarse, and she knew he’d been as swamped with emotion as she. He walked over to the window and stared into the darkness. “The robe I loaned you the other day … why didn’t you return it?”

“I—I was waiting for a good time.”

“You like wearing it,” he said huskily.

“How did you know that I’ve been …”

“I’ve seen you take your dawn swim in the pool. I’ve seen you put my robe on when you’re finished.”

She felt warmth rising up her neck. She’d forgotten that he could see her out the trailer window. “King Vandergriff, you Peeping Tom, you.”