Wild Heart (30 page)

"Tell me about your wolf friend. How did you meet him?"

It was hard to concentrate when she kept playing with his hair behind his ears, trying to make it curl by winding it around her fingers. "He was caught in a trap and I set him free."

"Ah," she murmured. "Your specialty."

"He was young, only about a year old. I knew where his den was. I took him there, gave him back to his parents. And then I just. . . stayed."

"The houseguest who never left."

"What?"

"Nothing." She kissed his ear. "And you knew him all his life?"

"Yes."

"Did he ever have a family?"

"He had a mate who was very beautiful, almost pure white."

"And . . . children?"

"Yes. Three cubs, born in the spring. In the summer, she ate poisoned meat a bounty hunter left, and she died."

"Oh, Michael. What happened to the babies?"

"His sister took them. He stayed with her pack until they were grown, and then he left. I went with him." Without realizing it, he had untied the ribbon in her hair. He used his fingers for a comb, lifting it from the back of her neck. As always, she smelled like flowers. "It wasn't like Sam and Hector—I mean, the wolf was never mine, like a boy and his dog. We were just together. Friends."

"What happened to him? Is he still alive?"

"He was very old. Last winter was a bad winter. I was stealing food for him when they caught me."

Sydney took his face between her hands and began to kiss him. He closed his eyes, letting the warmth of her lips on his cheek, his eyebrow, the side of his nose, soothe away—as he knew she intended—hard memories of the old wolf last winter. "We don't kiss enough," she murmured, and since she was smoothing her fingertips over his eyelids at that moment, he couldn't tell if she was teasing. It seemed to him they did a lot of kissing. But she was right. Not enough.

Backing up, he sat down on the side of the desk, and she stepped between his legs. She smiled, her head a little higher than his, so pleased with herself because she'd changed his mood. He had an urge to pull her close and put his mouth in that sweet place, that valley between her breasts, and kiss her there through her clothes until she sighed. "Mouth kissing," she whispered—she'd been reading his mind. "That's what we don't do enough of."

She threaded her hands through his hair and tipped his head back. Their lips touched. She had the softest lips.

She wet them with her tongue and kissed him with her eyes wide open, watching him. Then she wet his lips with her tongue. Stirred, he slid his fingers from her waist to her breast, but she pulled them away, very gently. "Just kissing," she instructed, dreamy-eyed.

"Just kissing." He sighed, pretending it was a sacrifice.

Resting her forearms on his shoulders, she clasped her hands behind his neck and leaned in close. She gave him soft kisses, starting at one side of his mouth and going to the other, making that little sound, that
kiss
sound that was never exactly the same twice. When he smiled, she gave him a stern look, as if she were warning him, saying, "This isn't funny." He stopped smiling when she slipped her tongue inside his mouth and nudged his tongue with it. He loved this game. Animals did this, something like this, but never, never would he have believed that people did it until Sydney showed him.

He felt her softening. She tilted her head, as if it were getting heavy, and her breathing slowed down. "Michael," she said against his mouth, and this time when he put his hands on her bottom and pulled her close to him, she didn't correct him. Kissing was fine, but they could never do it and nothing else for very long.

He stood up.

"Wait." She was remembering the rule. "No, now, we're just—"

"Kissing." Picking her up, he turned, set her on the desk where he had been, then leaned over her until she was lying on her back. He moved
The Palmer House Guide to Chicago
under her head for a pillow. Settling himself between her thighs, he went back
to
kissing.

Now it really was a sacrifice. Sydney's soft mouth was delicious, but he wanted more of her. Knowing he could have it any time just made the torture worse. But she had made a rule, so he held her hands and didn't touch her while he kissed her and kissed her, falling in deeper, losing himself in love with her.

Somebody knocked at the door. It happened just when Sydney was starting to break the rule, by squeezing her legs around his hips and squirming.

"Maid!"

They scrambled off the desk. Sydney smoothed her skirts and tried to tidy her hair while Michael grabbed up the pens and pencils and pieces of hotel stationery that had fallen off the desk. A key turned in the lock. By the time the door opened they were on opposite sides of the room, Sydney looking out the window, he reading the
Palmer House Guide to Chicago
upside down.

The maid came every morning, and every morning they moved from room to room to room to stay out of her way as she changed sheets, dusted and tidied, scrubbed the bathroom, put fresh flowers in vases, ran a carpet sweeper over the floors. They knew she must wonder why they didn't just leave, go out and look at the sights like any other visitors to the city did, even honeymooners,
eventually.
It was a little embarrassing, but funny, too; by the time the maid left they were usually holding back laughter while they thanked her and said they would see her tomorrow.

Of course they couldn't go out, for fear of being recognized; even Sydney limited her outings to absolute necessities—buying Michael drawing paper and watercolors, for example. How amazing, they began to marvel to each other, that day after day of enforced confinement in two smallish rooms and a bath didn't drive them batty. They weren't even restless. There was plenty to occupy them. They had books to read—Sydney borrowed almost daily from the small library of novels in the hotel's reading room—and cards, and a chess set she appropriated from the men's smoking room late one night. "Are you bored?" one would ask the other at least once a day. "No, are you?" "No." It was true. They could live together at the Palmer House Hotel for the rest of their lives, they decided, and be perfectly content.

Sometimes they daydreamed, though. Spun fantasies of eating a meal in a restaurant together, just the two of them, sitting at a window table. Or going to Field's to shop for clothes, a hat for her, new shoes for him. Seeing a play together at the Royal Theater. Taking a walk along Michigan Avenue on Sunday morning, or going to Washington Park on Derby Day. Riding the cable car.

They would fall silent after these flights of fancy, both wondering, but never voicing the question, if any of them would ever come true. This idyll they were sharing couldn't last; knowing that only made it sweeter and more precious. They wouldn't spoil it by allowing too much of the real world into their two smallish rooms and bath.

"The staff looks at me very strangely these days," Sydney announced on Friday afternoon, stripping off her gloves and setting them, along with the newspaper, her pocketbook, and her hat, on the back of the sofa. "I know they're talking about us."

"They're jealous of me." Michael looked up at her over the watercolor he was working on at the desk, beaming at her, as if she'd been gone for days instead of twenty minutes. "If they were married to you, they'd never come out of this room, either."

She snorted, but she had to go over and kiss him. "How's the painting coming?" She leaned against him, smoothing the hair back from his forehead and gazing down at the small picture among the paints and jars and brushes on top of the desk. "You haven't gotten very far since I left," she noted. In fact, it looked as if he hadn't done anything.

Still, the half-finished painting was impressive. She didn't understand how he could get such fine detail out of something as coarse as a paintbrush.

"I need my model. I can't get the colors right when you're not here."

"Hmm," she said. He looked up innocently. "I think you just want to get me naked again."

He opened his mouth, widened his eyes—then spoiled it by laughing. Blushing, too; he ducked his head, but she saw the tips of his ears turn pink. He tried to pull her against him, but she swiveled out of reach, laughing, and went to retrieve the newspaper.

Each day they put the "lost man" story farther back. Today it was on page nine. Sydney read in silence for a few minutes, then smacked the paper down on the sofa beside her. "Oh, for God's sake."

Michael looked up from his painting. "What's wrong?"

"Oh, this is the best yet. Listen to this." She picked up the paper again. " 'Authorities continue to search for the fugitive,' blah blah, 'who has evaded capture for seven days,' so on and so on, the usual. 'Meanwhile, sightings of the lost man continue to be reported. Mrs. William Skaggs of Evanston told police yesterday that a man wearing an animal skin loincloth appeared at her back door, brandishing a club. In LaGrange, Mr. Abel Whacker claimed a naked man entered his barn sometime Wednesday night and set free a mare and her foal, two holsteins, twelve chickens, and a rooster.' " She threw the paper on the floor and glared at it. "How can people be so stupid? It's mass hysteria. I'm surprised Mr. Whacker didn't see the naked man
eating
his chickens."

Michael stuck his brushes in the water jar and came over to sit beside her. "It doesn't matter, though, does it? What do you care what they say?"

"I know. I don't. It just makes me mad."

He retrieved the paper and smoothed it over his thigh. "You called Philip, I guess?"-he said in a careless voice, not looking at her.

"Yes."

"No word yet?"

"Not yet."

He folded the newspaper in half, in half again, then again, lining it up on his knee each time until it was a bulky, four-inch square. "Sydney," he said at the same time she said "Michael." They both smiled, but his smile didn't reach his eyes. "Sydney. Listen."

"No." He had tried to have this conversation with her yesterday.

"No, just listen. This must be bad for your family, you being here with me."

"They don't know I'm here with you."

"Philip knows. Anyway, they know you're somewhere with me. What must your aunt be thinking?"

"I don't care what she's thinking."

He sighed. "What about Sam?"

"Sam's a child. He misses me, but he'll be all right." But in her private heart she ached for Sam, and every day she longed to see him.

Michael picked up her hand. "We can't stay here forever."

"Why not?" She avoided his patient eyes. She knew she sounded childish, but she hated this discussion and she wasn't going to help him out by being reasonable.

"What I did was wrong."

"What do you mean?"

"I've read the papers, the parts you don't read out loud. I know how much damage I caused."

"That's just money."

"No. They shot all but three of the bears."

She bowed her head. "But that wasn't your fault. They panicked, they didn't have to shoot them."

"The deer—so many deer died, and they're still dying. And property, people's stores and houses and yards—it was a crazy thing, and it was against the law. I shouldn't have done it. The wolves I'm not sorry for, I'd do it again, but the rest—"

"I can't believe you're saying this!"

"I just think—"

"Michael, are you sorry we came here? Do you want to leave me?" He shook his head; he started to speak, but she cut him off. "If you run away, they'll catch you. And even if they don't catch you, where would you go? You're not the 'lost man' anymore, you can't—slip back into that life like an old glove. You're Michael MacNeil. Your parents—"

He stood up abruptly. "My parents have nothing to do with this. You talk about them as if they're magicians, as if they could change everything that's happened if they would just send us back a telegram. But that's not going to happen."

"How do you know?"

"Sydney—" He lifted his hands and dropped them to his sides, finally exasperated with her. "Let's not talk about this anymore."

"Fine. I never wanted to talk about it in the first place."

So they didn't talk about anything for five whole minutes. Such a thing had never happened before. Michael went into the bedroom and closed the door while Sydney unwrapped the little square he had folded the newspaper into and pretended to read it.

Not a sound came from the other room. An awful thought struck her. What if he was packing? She dropped the paper and bolted for the bedroom.

He was lying on the bed with his hands behind his head, staring up at the ceiling. He looked miserable. He started to get up when he saw her, but she took four long strides to the bed and pressed him back down. "Oh, forgive me," she pleaded, holding his shoulders, threading her hands through his hair.

"For what?"

"I don't know. Weren't we fighting?"

"Were we?"

"Let's make love."

He was already unfastening the snaps at the back of her blouse. She got the buttons of his shirt undone, and then, in the interest of speed, they took the rest of their own clothes off. "What if the maid comes?" Sydney fretted, pushing down her stockings, shimmying out of her skirt.