Panther On The Prowl
Nancy Morse
“Do you believe in fate?”
Rennie asked, her voice barely a whisper.
John emitted a long, low breath he’d been holding trapped in his lungs. “The Seminole Indians believe that it is what you do with your life that determines your fate.”
She moistened her lips and tilted her face up to him. “And what do the Seminoles say about two people coming together for only one night? Would they call that fate?”
His whole body tensed. “They would say that a man and a woman coming together can change the course of the world, and must not be taken lightly.”
“I don’t want to change the whole world. Only my world.”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he whispered. “You’re vulnerable right now, and confused. You don’t know what you really want.”
Her hands came up to caress his face. “For the first time in my life, I know exactly what I want.”
Dear Reader,
Valentine’s Day is here, a time for sweet indulgences. RITA Award-winning author Merline Lovelace is happy to oblige as she revisits her popular CODE NAME: DANGER miniseries. In Hot as Ice, a frozen Cold War-era pilot is thawed out by beautiful scientist Diana Remington, who soon finds herself taking her work home with her.
ROMANCING THE CROWN continues with The Princess and the Mercenary, by RITA Award winner Marilyn Pappano. Mercenary Tyler Ramsey reluctantly agrees to guard Princess Anna Sebastiani as she searches for her missing brother, but who will protect Princess Anna’s heart from Tyler? In Linda Randall Wisdom’s Small-Town Secrets, a young widow—and detective—tries to solve a string of murders with the help of a handsome reporter. The long-awaited LONE STAR COUNTRY CLUB series gets its start with Marie Ferrarella’s Once a Father. A bomb has ripped apart the Club, and only a young boy rescued from the wreckage knows the identity of the bombers. The child’s savior, firefighter Adam Collins, and his doctor, Tracy Walker, have taken the child into protective custody—where they will fight danger from outside and attraction from within. RaeAnne Thayne begins her OUTLAW HARTES series with The Valentine Two-Step. Watch as two matchmaking little girls turn their schemes on their unsuspecting single parents. And in Nancy Morse’s Panther on the Prowl, a temporarily blinded woman seeks shelter—and finds much more—in the arms of a mysterious stranger.
Enjoy them all, and come back next month, because the excitement never ends in Silhouette Intimate Moments.
Yours,
Leslie. J. Wainger
Executive Senior Editor
Panther on the Prowl
Nancy Morse
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
NANCY MORSE
Nancy lives in New York and Florida with her husband, Talley, who works in the film industry, and their Alaskan Malamute, Max, aka Big Fur. An early love of reading and happy endings led to the publication of her first historical romance in 1980. She has an avid interest in Native American art and culture and takes pride in her collection of nineteenth-century artifacts. In addition to writing, she keep busy with reading, gardening, aerobic workouts and a full-time job in health and education.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 1
Rennie Hollander was desperate.
The practiced hands at the controls trembled and her usually steady grip was scared and unsure as she piloted the single-engine Cessna southward, hugging the Florida coastline.
All around, lightning snaked the black sky. The sudden, violent thunderstorm that ripped through the night shortly after takeoff should have forced her to turn around and head back to Palm Beach International, but the radio frequencies were flooded with diverted pilots trying to talk to tower controllers. And besides, it would have been a mistake to go back.
Fixing her coordinates, she flew on into the thick night. The steady hum of the engine was the only reassuring thing as the plane bumped its way through the turbulence.
South Florida was called the lightning capital of the world. It was a reputation well deserved, Rennie thought grimly. Two years ago the senator’s caddy was struck and killed by lightning on the tenth hole, and last summer a workman repairing the roof of the guest house was knocked into the air by a bolt of lightning.
Rennie knew from the weather report she received before take off that she was taking a chance flying in such weather, but she was an experienced pilot, and desperate to get away.
Far below, the Everglades stretched into the darkness. Rennie shuddered, recalling the only time she had ever been to the Everglades. It was the summer after her father died, when her mother’s friend, Senator Trevor Hollander, took her on an airboat ride. Of course, he wasn’t a senator back then, merely an overambitious businessman eager to impress an eight-year-old and her wealthy, widowed mother.
She found the place treacherous and frightening, with alligators sitting like partially submerged logs in the still water. Yet to her child’s eye it was also strangely beautiful. Though Rennie had been too young to understand the dichotomy, the Everglades haunted her until she grew older and came to realize the place mirrored her own life, for it, too, was filled with beautiful things and long, endless stretches of loneliness.
In the years following her mother’s marriage to the senator, the conflict within her deepened. Hers was the kind of life that most people only dreamed about, with private flying lessons, the best schools, summers in Southampton, winters in Palm Beach. But like the vast wetland somewhere down there in the darkness beyond the plane’s window, Rennie felt empty and alone. Something was missing. She referred to it as her missing link.
The family wealth notwithstanding, Rennie preferred to earn her own living as a professor of anthropology with the University of Miami. Her work gave her life some focus. She didn’t earn much, but at least she earned it herself. Besides, there was always the trust fund to fall back on. Not that she needed it. She already had everything she could want—except, of course the things that really mattered, like the love she lost when her father died and the attention she rarely received from a mother who had been too busy hosting lavish parties and fund-raising events for her husband.
Growing up, money had always been the only constant thing in her life. The more she had of it, the less she needed of everything else. But as she grew older, what was once difficult for a little girl to understand became frighteningly clear to the woman she had become. Where was the desire? The need? The sheer necessity for life? That old missing link churned deep inside, filling her with the need to need something…someone.
She had thought her fiancå, Craig Wolfson, was that someone. She’d met the handsome land developer at a fund-raising party for the senator. A whirlwind courtship led to a proposal of marriage. Craig would make a good husband, she had reasoned much the way her mother had reasoned that the senator would make a good husband after Rennie’s father died. Rennie hadn’t cared that she wasn’t head-over-heels in love with Craig. He was good-looking, smart, successful and utterly devoted to her. Almost too good to be true. Besides, the senator approved the match, and the senator always got what he wanted. Thank God she found out about Craig in time and broke off the engagement.
Rennie’s fingers gripped the stick tighter, knuckles whitening under the pressure as she contemplated the consequences of her actions. She didn’t want to be there when the Senator returned from Washington and learned what she had done.
Glancing up she noticed that the landing-gear-indicator light had burned out. Routine, she told herself. No reason to panic. And she didn’t, until several moments later, when the engine didn’t sound right.
Apprehension darted through her like a hard-driven nail. Like it or not, she had to turn around and return to the airport.
It was in the midst of a banked left turn to head back when the engine went to takeoff power. That’s when the world exploded.
There was a horrible noise, followed in less than a heartbeat by a jolt that pitched Rennie forward in her seat. A ferocious heat welled up behind her. She didn’t have to turn around to know that the plane was on fire and that she was going to crash.
There was a bone-shattering thud when the plane hit the ground. Cushioned by the soft, damp earth, it remained in one piece. Rennie was shaken violently from side to side as the tail section spun around and around, churning over the muck and saw grass.
When the plane finally came to a stop, Rennie found herself miraculously alive and pinned beneath the wreckage. Jet fuel from the engine poured on her. Her fingers clawed at the seat belt. In her frenzy she got it unbuckled. Disentangling herself from the wreckage, she fell out of the plane into the swamp.
Worse than the awful sound of the crash was the crushing silence that greeted her. There was no noise, no movement, no life, it seemed in the cold, raw darkness that swallowed her up. She stumbled away from the plane, mindless of injuries and fearful of the sinister creatures that lurked in the swamp. Alligators came to mind. Snakes. And panthers. God only knew what was out there. It was so dark she couldn’t see a thing. Then a startling realization came over her. The darkness all around her was not caused by the veil of night or because her eyes were shut. Her eyes were, in fact, wide open. She blinked several times just to make sure. Yes, open. Her hands went up to her eyes, and she cried out at the horribly painful touch of her fingertips. With a strangled sob she realized that she could not see.
Panic unlike anything Rennie had ever known seized her, constricting the breath in her throat and threatening to choke her with fear. It was then that she began to scream.
In her terror, Rennie did not hear the sound of the frog hunter’s airboat. In her blindness, she did not see the light on his helmet leading him through the dark swamp to the woman who had collapsed unconscious on the soft, wet ground.
Images darted out of the darkness. Distorted images of Craig, his eyes filled with the same arrogance she had heard in his voice that night she stood in the doorway listening to him speak to someone on the telephone.
She had gone to his apartment to tell him the news that she’d been awarded a grant to study the myths and legends of the Seminoles. Letting herself in with the key he’d given her, she overheard him telling someone on the telephone of his plan to build a high-rise condominium on a prime parcel of coastal real estate he was receiving as a wedding gift. All he had to do was make a sizable donation to the senator’s reelection campaign…and marry a woman he didn’t love.
Rennie was devastated. She knew the senator had promised Craig the land, but she never dreamed that it was the only reason he was marrying her. It had all been a charade—their first meeting, the courtship, everything had been carefully orchestrated by Craig to get the land.
She thought that marrying Craig was a way to test her independence and find some shelter from the influence of her family, but his betrayal only proved that she hadn’t been making the right choices for herself. Why hadn’t she seen it before? Maybe she just hadn’t wanted to see. Maybe she’d been unconsciously trying to replace the father she lost at an early age. Whatever the reason, the eye-opening experience drove home the realization of just how important it was for her to stand on her own two feet and not to depend on someone else for happiness, especially someone as controlling as Craig.
Rennie struggled to awaken, but unconsciousness maintained its tenacious hold, and all she could do was thrash this way and that in a vain attempt to block out the images.
The images faded and returned and faded again until, in the end, she sank even deeper, to a place where there were no memories or images, only a nothingness in which to take refuge.
It could have been minutes, hours or days before she crawled painfully awake out of unconsciousness. There came to her the smell of the damp earth. It seemed somehow familiar, but her mind was hung with moss and cobwebs and was unable to make a connection.
Slowly she became aware of the sounds around her, the hum of insects, a bird’s cry in the distance, and a strange shhh that she could not identify, beckoning her into a state of semiawareness. Uncurling her fingers, she splayed them against the soft fabric on which she lay. Cotton, worn fine by age and cool to the touch.
She did not have to open her eyes to know that she was awake. Yet when she tried to open her eyes, she could not. Was she still dreaming? No, she was sure she was conscious. She could feel a thin ray of sunshine on her face and the dryness in her throat. Why, then, couldn’t she see? Her hands moved cautiously upward, coming to within inches of her face and pausing. She tried with a desperate force of will to tell herself that everything was all right, but when her trembling fingers felt the gauze that covered her eyes, she knew in one great gasping breath that it wasn’t.
A scream welled up within her but no sound emerged as darkness came again like a cold wind, wrapping chilly arms around her and leading her back to unconsciousness.
She had no idea how long she lay there, slipping back and forth from reality to dark dream. In the place in which she hovered, time had no meaning. It could have been day. It could have been night. She didn’t know where she was, or even if she was. For all she knew she was dead, and this was what heaven was like…or hell.
It went on like that until something called her away from the darkness and back to the conscious world. It was the touch of hands working with amazing gentleness to peel the dressing away, hands of mercy applying a soothing compress to the burned skin around her eyes, followed by fresh gauze.
Her voice, unsure and untested, scratched painfully at the back of her throat and emerged as a husky whisper. “Am I in a hospital?”
“No.”
The singular word uttered in a deep pitch that was both unfamiliar and unfriendly made her shudder.
“Wh-where am I?”
“You’re at my place.”
There was no mistaking the inhospitable edge to the voice that spoke, conflicting sharply with the tenderness of the hands that applied fresh gauze to her eyes.
There was a scent about him, of the forest and the damp soil, a scent that Rennie found both comforting for the mother-earth images it conjured up, and frightening with visages of wild things.
She could feel his presence in the very air she breathed, and she wondered how it was possible to be so aware of a man she could not even see.
She drew back, partly out of caution—she had no idea who he was—but mostly from the unanticipated warmth that began at the tips of her fingers and spread clear down to her toes. Appalled at such a reaction at a time like this, she waved his hands away, questioning, “Who are you?”
“My name is John Panther.”
Her mind clouded by the effects of unconsciousness, she echoed, “Panther? Is that some kind of joke?”
“Not that I know of.”
There was a hint of something savage in the deep-throated reply, of wildness and regret and things that Rennie didn’t understand. “I-I’ve never heard a name like that.”
“It’s not so uncommon in these parts.”
“Where are we?”
“In a place called Big Cypress Swamp.”
“Where…?”
“You’re in the Everglades,” he said flatly.
Yes, she remembered now, all that black, wet land stretching for miles in every direction. She began to grow even more afraid. “How long have I been here?”
“Three days.”
She found it hard to imagine that she had been unconscious for three whole days, when it seemed like only moments ago her world exploded.
“Why are my eyes bandaged?”
“They were badly burned. The gauze is necessary to keep the area clean to prevent infection.”
“Are you a doctor?”
“No, but I know a few things about healing with plants and herbs.”
Rennie’s mind struggled to assimilate the information it was receiving and make some sense out of it. Everglades? Plants and herbs? A name like Panther? “What are you?” she asked. “An Indian?”
He answered stoically, “Seminole, to be precise.”
That would explain the essence of something wild that she felt about him, but what was the reason for that inhospitable tone of voice? She sank down onto the mattress…his mattress…his bed. She could smell it now, the scent of the Everglades, the scent of him, lingering on the pillow as her head fell back onto it.
She was scarcely aware of his footsteps retreating to the opposite side of the room, or of the quiet stirrings of his movements as he went about doing whatever it was he was doing. Within minutes he returned. The edge of the bed sank from his weight when he sat down beside her.
“Here. Drink this.”
His hand moved to the back of her head, strong fingers entwining in her hair as he lifted her head and urged a cup to her lips.
Rennie sipped the hot liquid that tasted like tree bark and dirt, and wrinkled her nose. “What are you trying to do, poison me?”
“It’s just an infusion of valerian root to calm you and some local plants to help ease the pain.”
In no time the raw pain around her eyes began to subside and her nerves started to feel a little less frayed around the edges.
The rough, unfriendly voice asked, “Do you remember what happened?”
For all its healing qualities, however, the hot tea could not erase the memory of the accident. She began to cry, the salt of her tears stinging the burned skin beneath the gauze, her shoulders softly shaking.
“It was so horrible. I’ve never been so scared in my life.”
“Well, you’re safe now.”
But Rennie took little comfort in his taut assurance. Safe? From the plane crash, perhaps, but what about what she was running from? She would be a fool to think that Craig would let her get away so easily. He had entirely too much at stake, as he had caustically reminded her that night before she had fled in tears.
“Safe. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Panther.”
“We don’t stand on ceremony here. You can call me John.” Again, that reluctant tone. “And what do I call you?”
Her muscles tensed despite the calming effects of the tea. “My name is Rennie.”
She didn’t want to tell him that Rennie was short for Renata, or that she was the stepdaughter of Trevor Hollander and the runaway finacåe of multimillionaire land developer Craig Wolfson, so she used the name her father used to call her, one she hadn’t heard for twenty-five years. She hoped he would not press her to reveal her last name. She’d never been a very good liar, and loathed the thought of having to make one up. His motive for helping her might be different if he knew that she came from a wealthy family, so she reasoned that it was better if he didn’t know who she was and what she was running from.
“Is there anyone I can contact for you?”
“No.” She spoke a little too quickly. Forcing a calm into her voice that she did not feel, she explained, “There’s no one. My parents are deceased, and I have no brothers or sisters.”
It was true, of course. Her impervious mother died a few years ago, her beloved father when she was young enough to feel the impact for the rest of her life, and she was an only child. Nevertheless, she felt as guilty as if she had blatantly lied to him.
Skirting the evasion, she ventured to ask, “Do you know how long it will take for my eyes to heal?”
“The skin around them will heal in a few weeks. As for your sight…only time will tell.”
“Am I…blind?”
“I had a doctor come by to examine you. He’s a Seminole healer from Big Cypress who’s also a licensed physician. He says your blindness is caused by a swelling of the optic nerve. In most cases the swelling eventually subsides and sight is restored.”
Rennie sucked in her breath at his brutal honesty.
“Would you rather I lie to you?” he asked.
No, not another lie. She didn’t think she could stand it. As far as she was concerned, the truth was infinitely preferable under any circumstance because at least it left you with some dignity.
Softly she said, “No lies.”
“In the morning I’ll take you to a hospital. The nearest one’s about fifty miles from here.”
“I would prefer not to go to a hospital.”
She held her breath, praying he would not press the issue and grateful that the bandages hid the fear that must surely be written in her eyes. She’d be crazy to check into a hospital, even under a fictitious name. If Craig found out that her plane went down, he would no doubt give her description to every hospital on the eastern seaboard. She could not take a chance on him finding her, not until she was able to think clearly—when her sight was restored and she could look him in the eyes and tell him what a despicable human being he was, although never seeing him again would also suit her just fine.
“Home, then?” that deep voice asked.
That was the first place Craig would look for her. She shook her head. “I wouldn’t feel comfortable stumbling around in the dark by myself.”
Rennie wasn’t eager to return to the life she left behind, to an overbearing stepfather, a fiancå who deceived her and a world in which the only decision she ever made for herself was the one to study anthropology, much to the displeasure of the senator who had other aspirations for her. Initially her desire to study the past was a way for her to connect with her own lost past, the one that ended with the death of her father. She never expected that she would come to love her work as much as she did, nor that her struggle to reconcile her past would lead her to this place.
“You’ve got to stay somewhere,” he said.
But for Rennie it wasn’t that simple. It had been easy for her to think that Craig was the answer to her self-sufficiency. Easy to imagine herself happily married to a man she now knew would have been as controlling as the senator. Easy to see her mistakes when, because of her blindness, she was unable to see anything else. For now, however, she was grateful for the gauze that sealed her sight, for despite John Panther’s unfriendly tone, she felt safe in his care.
“Couldn’t I stay here?”
She knew by the palpable silence that filled the room that he didn’t like the idea. Inwardly she cringed. Where had she gotten the nerve to ask such a thing? But desperate problems called for desperate solutions and brought out a certain recklessness she didn’t know she had when next she said, “I could pay you.”
He answered with wry annoyance, “With what? Whatever money you had with you is buried beneath the wreckage.”
Another man might have asked how much, and then been slack-jawed when she named a ridiculously high figure. She was no longer afraid to hide her wealthy background, because she also sensed that he was the kind of man who could not be paid off or bargained with.
“It’s just that…” She searched for the words to tell him why she couldn’t go back just yet without revealing things he had no right to know. “I can’t go back. Not yet. Not like this.”
She heard him expel a sharp, impatient breath and then say, with undisguised reluctance, “All right. You can stay here.”
Rennie drew in a deep breath of relief. “Thank you, John. You have no idea what this means to me.”
“Don’t thank me just yet,” he warned. “It can get pretty lonely out here. In a few days you just might change your mind and run screaming back to civilization.”
It wasn’t civilization she needed right now. It was peace and quiet and a safe place in which to heal not only her sightless eyes but her bruised emotions as well. It wasn’t easy finding things out about yourself that you didn’t like, and Rennie was no exception. “I’m sure you’re exaggerating,” she said. “You’ll be here, won’t you?”
“I have my work to do. I’ll be gone most of the day…” There was a pause, almost imperceptible except to someone whose hearing was already sharper to compensate for what her eyes could not see, and then he added “…and the night.”
“What do you do?”
“I’m a biologist with the Everglades Research Center.”
“What do you research?” She was desperately tired and struggling to stay awake, but a part of her wanted to know…needed to know…more about the man in whose care she was entrusting herself. He could have been an ax murderer, for all she knew. But there was nothing sinister in the air around him, no hint of danger or violence. And except for that unsettling scent that hovered about him, of something wild and unforgiving, she felt no menace from him.
“I study the ecosystem of the swamp and monitor the animal population.”
“At night?” she questioned.
“There are creatures that live in the swamp that come out only at night.”
“Creatures?”
“Don’t worry. They won’t bother you here.”
Rennie didn’t share his confidence. “Are we near anything? A town or a village?”
“There’s nothing for miles.”
That would account for the acute loneliness that seemed to pervade every corner of the room. The secluded place, made even more secret by her sightlessness, made Rennie feel lost.
“You live here all by yourself?”
“Yes.”
The deep, single-word reply made her shiver. What kind of man shunned the company of others, preferring to live among the creatures of the swamp? What caused that alienating tone in his voice? Why did she sense that, despite the invitation, she was not welcome?
A part of her didn’t want to know. And maybe none of that mattered. She was safe, for the time being at least, and that’s what was important to her. Later, when she could think more clearly, she would decide what to do. Later, when her sight was restored and she could see the face of the man whose very essence was in the air she breathed.
Her exhausted mind battled to stay awake as her head grew heavy. “What if—” The words, almost too unbearable to utter, emerged as a choked whisper. “What if my sight doesn’t return?”
The wooden planks beneath his feet squeaked when he stood up and walked away. “There are no guarantees in life.”
There was no harshness in his voice, only a ring of hopeless resignation, as if he knew firsthand about there being no guarantees in life, and Rennie could not help but wonder what it was that had wrung all the hope out of him.
She felt herself growing drowsy. Her own voice sounded far off, her words as if she’d had too much to drink. “What did you put in that tea?”
“Something to make you sleep.”
She smiled weakly. “An old Indian remedy?”
“Nothing you can’t buy at a health food store.”
He was annoyed, but she was neither worried nor frightened. For one thing she was feeling far too light-headed to entertain any dangerous notions about him. For another, even in her muddled state something told her that beneath the annoyance and unfriendly tone beat the heart of a kind man. Why would he bother to help her if he were not good-hearted? The undercurrent of wildness she had initially perceived about him must have been the workings of a weak and vulnerable imagination.
The protective arms of sleep wrapped around her, drawing her to its breast as it whispered words of gentle comfort into her ear. She tried hard to concentrate on what it was saying and was surprised to find that it wasn’t words at all. It was a sound, an easy shhh somewhere beyond these walls.
In a small voice that hovered midway between conscious thought and dream, she breathed, “That sound. What’s that sound?”
“That’s the saw grass,” he said. “A river of grass swaying in the breeze.” His voice was low with reflection from across the room. “Sometimes I can sit and listen to it for hours. If you wade into it and look down, you can see the water moving slowly, almost imperceptibly, past your feet. So gradually it makes you wonder whether we move through life or life moves past us.”
But Rennie wasn’t listening. She was asleep, lulled into slumber by the effect of the tea, the shhh of the saw grass, and John Panther’s hypnotic, regretful voice.
Chapter 2
With a weary gesture John Panther swept back an unruly lock of black hair that fell from his forehead as he gazed out the small-paned window into the fading light of dusk.
The air outside was filled with familiar sounds. Alligators prowling among the aquatic plants. A mad flapping of wings as a flock of great blue herons took to flight. The croakings of the frogs. The coocooings of the doves. All were as familiar to him as the sound of his own voice.
A mosquito buzzed maddeningly at his ear. He swatted it away. Beneath his breath he grumbled at the persistence of the pesky insect, yet he accepted its right to be there just as he accepted everything else about the Everglades, as natural, necessary ingredients.
He loved this place like no other. The soft, squishy land, the creatures that lived in the mangrove forests and swam in the still, shallow water, the grass, as sharp as saw blades, swaying hypnotically in the breeze, the sky, so endless and unfettered there was room for a whole month of sunsets in a single evening such as this.
If the mosquitoes had not been so thick and the land so soggy, the white men who came here would have split the mahogany hammocks for lumber and turned the mangrove forests into fertilizer and cattle feed long ago. Resort hotels would now stud the wild beaches. The land he loved would have been drained and subdivided and carved into lots, and he would not be standing here now looking out at its ferocious beauty with as much awe as if he were seeing it for the very first time.
The land itself was as flat as a Kansas wheatfield, but what to some was monotonous, John found hypnotic. It was what drew him to the window at just about this time each day, when it was neither light nor dark, when the world seemed to hover in a sort of limbo where there was no past to haunt him and no future to look forward to, when the sky was ablaze with color and all that mattered was the moment and the land. This was country that had to be understood. It was a wild, unforgiving place inhabited by dangerous, venomous creatures. And the most dangerous of all was the one that looked back at him in the clear glass.
With unerring predictability his thoughts drifted back to the past. It was crazy, he knew. After all, he wasn’t responsible for Maggie’s death. At least not in any court of law, tribal or otherwise. Nevertheless, he had tried, convicted and sentenced himself in his own heart.
He heaved a ragged sigh at the cruel irony. Whoever would have guessed how things would turn out? How, in a heartbeat, something could go so terribly wrong and change your life forever?
Sometimes, when the night was still and he lay awake on his bed of moss, he could still hear her laughter…and her screams.
Seminole women were encouraged from birth to be independent because the culture demanded survival skills, and Maggie certainly was that. Over her parents’ objections she spent two years at the Institute of American Indian Art in Santa Fe studying painting and sculpture. She returned to the Big Cypress Reservation to wait tables in order to earn enough money to enroll in an art school in San Francisco. She was working in a little luncheonette off State Road 7 when he walked in one day.
Maybe it was because she was Seminole that made the difference for him. She had no notion of him slinging her over his shoulder and carrying her off, the way the white women he had dated typically did. He was no savage. At least not in the way they thought he was, because he was Indian. If anything, being Indian only tempered his spirit and gave him a sense of his own place in the world and an acceptance of and reverence for the things around him. Being a loner at heart only added to the stereotyping and had made not dating easy. Until Maggie.
Maggie laughed at the white world’s idea of what it was to be Indian. She knew there was nothing savage about him. These days, whatever fierceness he possessed was born out of tragedy, the kind that wounds so deeply it turns a soft heart into a hard one. He wondered if Maggie would even recognize him now.
He never asked her to give up her dream of going to San Francisco. She did so willingly. And together they planned a new dream for the future. She continued to wait tables while he studied for his master’s degree. When he landed a job with the Everglades Research Center, she quit her job at the luncheonette to concentrate on painting and sculpting.
Having been born in a chickee made of cypress wood and palmetto leaves, like most of his people, John didn’t expect much from a world that was decidedly white and hostile. But a hundred years of white influence could not eradicate the one thing he was above all else. Seminole. In his Indian soul he had no wish to be any different or better than he was. He merely wished to be. Working in his own backyard among the creatures and cattails of the swamp, returning home to the reservation each night to be with his wife, was more than he could ever have hoped for. But happiness, like hope, was shortlived, and all because he killed a panther and was unable to come to terms with it.
He’d been tracking the big male cat for weeks, hoping to collar it and monitor its movements through the swamp to determine what was causing a decline in the population of the Florida panther. But the cat only came out at night, seeming to disappear into thin air during the day, the morning rains that were so common in the Everglades washing away its tracks.
One night, camped in a cypress hammock, he heard a rustling in the tall grass. In the next moment the panther was on him, claws ripping through his jeans and leaving a ridge of scars on his thigh. He managed to grab his knife and kill the panther, only to discover later that he’d killed a female.
Sick with guilt, he returned home, only to awaken later that night to Maggie’s screams. A male panther had tracked him to the reservation, and with almost human vengeance, killed his mate just as John had killed the panther’s mate.
Outsiders might have questioned the existence of a creature as smart and vindictive as a human, but in the Seminole world in which he was raised, he learned about the legend of the panther that the old ones told, and he knew how such a thing could be.
There was, they said, a long time ago, a proud and vain Seminole warrior who killed a panther while hunting in the swamp. In his arrogance, the warrior didn’t say a prayer to the Spirit Being for taking the life of one of its children. Angered, the Spirit Being condemned the warrior to wander the earth for all time by day as a man, by night as a panther.
The legend struck a particularly painful chord inside of John. Could it be that the panther he’d been hunting was the one the old ones spoke of? That would explain the clever way the beast eluded him. Some would say he was crazy to even think it, but deep in his Seminole heart, John wasn’t so sure. His curiosity was almost as great as his thirst for vengeance. But if myths and legends were supposed to teach us about ourselves, what was it teaching him about himself? Could it be that he was doomed by fate to follow the same crazy path as the legend, wandering around by day emotionally cut off from the rest of the world, at night adrift in his grief and alone? If there was any lesson to be learned from it all, it had to do with the part he played in a cycle of vengeance begun by some ancient warrior and which lived on inside of him.
Why couldn’t he have left the panther alone instead of tracking it relentlessly? Was it the panther that caused Maggie’s death, or was it really he himself for tampering with a greater plan and not leaving well enough alone? A year and a half later the questions remained unanswered. All that was left was the guilt, and an overriding vengeance for the panther. Yet as much as he hated the panther, that was as much as he blamed himself. For him, the only way to get past the sickening guilt was to kill the panther. It didn’t matter if it made any sense. It was just the way it was.
In the distance through a break in the trees the sun was slowly sinking into the gulf. Fiery patches of orange and purple burst across the sky as if shot from cannons. It was the most beautiful and terrible time of the day, for soon it would be dark and the memories would come flooding back as they did every night. Sometimes just the sheer anticipation of it was more than he could bear.
Tonight, however, in addition to the dark glimpses into the past, there was something else John was remembering, something he wished he could forget. He turned his head away from the spectacle of the setting sun and his own image in the windows that filled him with disgust, and looked at the woman sleeping in his bed.
For three days she lay unconscious, like a beautiful star that literally fell from the sky, while he stared at her and remembered, to his intense dismay, what it was like to want a woman.
Why did the frog hunter have to bring her here to him? Why did he have to feel things just from looking at her that he thought were dead inside of him?
Even with bandages wrapped around her eyes, she was beautiful. Her tawny hair sparkled in the buttery light that penetrated the thick cypress branches. Her skin, paled by her ordeal, glowed iridescently. Her sightless blue eyes had beamed out blinding quantities of light when he had applied fresh bandages, taking his breath away unexpectedly.
Her clothes were torn and scorched, but obviously expensive. Her hands were smooth-skinned and soft, bearing none of the calluses that scarred the palms of hardworking Seminole women. Her voice, weakened by the trauma and lulled by the infusion he’d given her, sounded different from any voice he’d ever heard. In it he could hear the culture and refinement that told him she was from a world very different from his.
She was running away from something, of that he was certain. But he wouldn’t press her to reveal what it was. Who knew better than he did what it was like to run from something? He could not help but wonder as he watched her sleep how safe she would feel in his care if she knew that he had not been able to keep Maggie safe and the awful shame he carried over it.
Growing up in the company of alligators and os-preys did little to prepare John for the unexpected and unwelcome company of a pampered socialite, which seemed to be what she was. Hell, he didn’t know anyone who flew their own plane. Again he reproached himself for the weakness in him that had him agreeing to let her stay. He hadn’t known he possessed such weakness, having worked so hard to harden his heart, until she’d asked, and he’d looked at her beautiful, pale face and heard her quivering voice and found himself acquiescing.
Maggie’s death had driven him behind a defensive wall that showed dangerous signs of cracking with Rennie’s intrusion in his life. His all-too-human heart longed for a woman’s love, but a deeper, more primal part of him knew how dangerous it would be for him to love any woman. Look at what had happened to the last woman he loved.
Well, he’d made the offer, now he would have to live with it. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all. He would be gone most of the day. He’d ask Willie Cypress to look in on her. Willie didn’t hunt frogs until night, and it was the least the old man could do to make up for dumping this trouble in his lap. At night he’d be gone, too, roaming beneath the stars as he did every night, following a primal instinct for revenge deep into the swamp and into the depths of his own soul.
He wondered if someone like Rennie could ever understand the obsession he had to wander the swamp at night in search of some peace for his battered soul. Being a woman, would she see it as some irrational male thing?
He told himself that his attraction to her was hormonal. Beauty and vulnerability. What man could resist such a lethal combination? It brought out a crazy notion to protect her, although the only thing to protect her from out here was himself. And the best way to protect her from himself was to not get involved, which was really a laugh considering that he was in it up to his eyeballs.
John left his place by the window and crossed the room, his feet brushing the cypress planks with a noiselessness that came from years of tracking animals through the swamp. For many long moments he stared down at her. The brew he had given her would make her sleep through the night. Beyond the window some voiceless thing beckoned to him. Come. Hurry. The moon rises and it’s time to go hunting. If he left now, he would be back by sunrise and she would never know the difference.
But he didn’t move, not while there was still a sliver of daylight left and it fell so bewitchingly upon her face. Not while he was caught up in remembering what it was like to hold a woman’s soft body in his arms and feel her breath against his neck.
For just that moment the memory did not hurt. Instead, it gave him a feeling of undisciplined delight just to feel it again and to realize that he was human after all.
Chapter 3
“Don’t worry, she doesn’t suspect a thing. The wedding is in two months. If she finds out after that, I’ll handle it, but for now there’s too much riding on this marriage for anything to go wrong. That piece of prime coastal real estate is worth marrying a woman I don’t love.”
The words haunted Rennie even now as she tossed and turned in a sleep from which there was no waking.
She would never forget the look on Craig’s face as he talked on the telephone. She’d seen that look before—cold, inscrutable, wickedly determined—the night they met at a fund-raiser for the senator, when he asked her out and she declined, explaining that she had a faculty meeting to attend. His eyes had gone all cold and distant, and it was impossible to tell what he’d been thinking. In the next moment the chilling expression was gone, replaced by a smile friendly enough to charm a cobra. He’d asked her out for another night, making it clear that he would not take no for an answer.
She should have gotten an idea then of the lengths he would go to, to get what he wanted. A successful land developer like Craig Wolfson didn’t get where he was by letting opportunities slip by. At the time she was flattered to think that what he wanted was her.
He liked to boast that one of the advantages of being rich was possessing things that most people could not, like the expensive and illegal Cuban cigar he extracted from a silver-inlaid case and placed between his lips as he spoke. Even now, as she lay upon John Panther’s bed in the middle of the Everglades, her nose wrinkled at the awful smell of the cigar, and she shivered at the words that had been delivered like a slap across her face.
But as she had stood in the doorway, her shock turned slowly to outrage, and then to anger, raw and hot. She stormed into the room, her face white with fury, and broke off the engagement. She had no memory of taking the private elevator downstairs to the lobby, or of the doorman who held the door for her and wished her a good evening. All she could think about was the cold certainty with which he had assured her that the wedding would take place as she fled in tears.
Why hadn’t she noticed his condescending attitude before? Or that little smirk that she mistook for a smile? She had such little experience with love, how was she to know that she had been fooled by a clever manipulator?
The senator would be furious, of course, when he learned of the broken engagement. He’d been eager for the opportunity to combine his interests with those of Wolfson Industries. Hopefully, he would see things differently when he found out what a scoundrel Craig really was. She had to get word to him that she was all right without arousing his suspicions. She shuddered to think that Craig probably already had manpower at work to find her. Oh, God, what a mess.
She lay there, not daring to move, as if the slightest movement would signal her presence to the outside world. She could tell by the warm breeze that wafted through the air that it was light outside. Daylight had always brought a sense of reassurance. When she’d been a little girl afraid of the dark, her father’s soothing voice had calmed her fears. Then one day it was gone, the voice, the stroke of his finger across her cheek, the tender kiss on her forehead. After that, the only thing that made her feel safe was daybreak, telling her that she had made it through another dark and lonely night.
It was easier to face things in the light of day, but for Rennie there was no light beyond the swath of bandages. Locked in her blindness, the awful memories seemed only that much more real.
The powerful effect of the infusion that John gave her last night had worn off sometime before daybreak. But now, no longer lulled into a state of painlessness, she was acutely aware of every ache in every muscle. Even the mere act of breathing hurt.
“Can I get you more tea?”
She didn’t know he was there until he spoke in that deep, regretful voice. The air in the room was suddenly filled with him. How long had he been there, waiting in silence for her to surface? Could he read her thoughts as easily as he read her pain?
She turned her head toward him. In a ragged, untested voice, she said, “Maybe later. What time is it?”
“A little past three. Are you hungry?”
“I’d forgotten there was any such thing as food.”
“You should eat something if you want more tea later. That infusion can be rough on an empty stomach. Yesterday you were too out of it to notice.”
Rennie struggled to recall yesterday. God only knew how utterly pitiful she must have seemed to him. Too embarrassed to ask what she might have done or said, she stammered, “Was I— Did I—”
“You didn’t reveal anything I shouldn’t know. So…do you want some soup? I have chicken noodle, tomato and minestrone.”
“I thought you said we were out in the middle of nowhere.”
“We are. Why?”
“I guess I’m just surprised that you can cook.”
“Because I’m a man or because I’m an Indian?”
“Neither. I just didn’t think there was any electricity.”
The edge in his voice softened. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to jump down your throat like that. You learn pretty fast about preconceived notions when you’re Indian.”
Rennie sat up in bed, wincing from the pain. “It must be like growing up wealthy. You never know who loves you for yourself or for your money.” She realized she had spoken her thoughts out loud and glanced away, muttering, “Or so I’ve heard.”
The examples were different but the underlying emotions were the same, and it made John uncomfortable to think that there existed something like that in common between them.
“There’s a generator out back,” he said.
“In that case, I’ll have the chicken noodle. It’s my favorite.”
He frowned as he walked to the kitchen. It was another thing they had in common, not that there weren’t a million other people with the same taste in canned soup. Still, it made not liking her that much harder.
From the other room Rennie ventured, “You asked if there was anyone I want to contact.”
He forced the cylinder of soup from the can into a saucepan. “Is there?”
“Yes. But I’m afraid my cell phone is buried beneath the wreckage. Do you have a telephone I can use?”
The spoon clicked against the sides of the pot as John stirred the soup. “What sort of work do you do?”
“I’m a professor of anthropology.”
“Sometimes,” he said, “the farther we get from civilization, the more civilized we feel. Out here you’ll find no e-mail, no voice messaging. Just an endless stream of rushing water to answer to. But I do have a cell phone for emergencies. I’ll get it.” He turned the soup to a slow simmer and went to get the phone. “Here you go.” He touched the phone to her hand and stepped away.
The tonal beeps came slowly as Rennie felt her way across the keypad as she dialed the senator’s private number.
“Hi, it’s me. I know I should have called sooner, but I’ve been busy. Actually, I decided to take some time off. I’m staying with a friend. You can’t reach me, but I’ll be in touch.” She hung up, feeling guilty for the evasion, but at least he would know that she was all right without knowing where she was.
“Out here you may not need one, but thank goodness for the answering machine.” She handed the phone back to him. “Thank you, John.”
He liked the way his name rolled off her tongue as if they’d known each other for years. He wasn’t aware that they were friends, yet somehow he liked the idea of that, as well. His throat went dry. “It’s no big deal.”
“I meant for asking no questions.”
“Oh.” He shrugged. “I figure if there’s anything you want me to know, you’ll tell me.”
He went back to the kitchen and ladled the soup into a bowl. Thinking that she might still be too weak to get out of bed, he dragged the chair close to the side of the bed and placed the bowl on the seat. He put the spoon in her hand, his strong fingers closing around hers and enveloping her hand in the warmth of his before it pulled away.
Rennie was jolted by the unexpected heat that raced up her arm to flush her cheeks with color. She spoke up nervously. “Aren’t you eating?”
“There’s only one chair. I’ll wait until you’re finished.”
She slid over on the bed and moved her bowl to one side of the chair seat.
John placed a second bowl of soup next to hers and sat down reluctantly beside her on the edge of the bed. He tried to ignore that warmth of her arm that barely brushed his sleeve.
“When you’re up to it,” he said, “I’ll walk you around so you can get the feel of the place. If you’re hungry, help yourself to whatever there is.”
“You’re assuming I can cook.”
“I’m assuming you can open a can of soup or boil water for spaghetti. That’s all you’ll find.”
“I’m good at spaghetti. In college I lived on it. It’s inexpensive and filling.”
“You don’t strike me as the type who’s had to live on a budget.”
Rennie wasn’t surprised that he knew she was well off. She had practically admitted it only a few minutes ago when she had spoken without thinking. Still, what did he know about her reasons for preferring to make her own way rather than live off her family’s wealth, or how her one stab at independence had not come without a price? Annoyance surfaced in her tone.
“Why? Because you think I can afford more? Didn’t you say something about preconceived notions?”
John didn’t like having his own words echoed back at him like that. “I don’t judge people on what I see. I leave that to the hypocrites of the world. But there was nothing preconceived about that Cessna you were flying. You didn’t earn the money for that on a professor’s salary.”
“That’s true,” she said. “I tapped into the trust fund my father set up for me before he died.” She tilted her head up at him. “I owe no one an explanation or an apology for my background. The only person I owe that to is myself. So, I take it you’ve seen the wreckage?”
“I went to have a look at it this morning. It’s hard to imagine anyone walking away from that. I guess if someone wanted to be presumed dead, that would be one way to do it.”
Rennie sucked in her breath. “If you’re suggesting that I crashed my plane on purpose so that people would think I was dead, I assure you, I’m not that devious or that cruel.” Hurt, she pushed the chair away and got up.
His hand caught her arm. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply that you are.”
“Besides, if I wanted people to think that, why would I have made that call?”
She didn’t see his broad shoulders lift in a shrug. “You also didn’t tell whoever you called where you are.”
“Yes, for now. It’s not that I don’t want anyone to know where I am, just…one person in particular. Look, it’s complicated and not very interesting.” Not to mention humiliating, she groaned inwardly. Pulling her arm away, she sat back down. “Is there any chance of the wreckage being seen from the air?”
John cleared the bowls away and dragged the chair back to the table. “It’s lost in all the soft muck and undergrowth. That’s what cushioned the impact.”
He heard her soft breath of relief and shook his head. Whatever she was running from, could it be as bad as the guilt he himself was trying to escape? He questioned whether she could ever accept what he had done with no questions asked.
“I have to go out in a while. I’ll ask Willie Cypress to look in on you. He’s the one who found you. He can be trusted not to tell anyone you’re here.”
In the brief time Rennie had been with him, she had come to crave his company, what little there was of it and however reluctant he was to give it to her. Eagerly she asked, “When will you be back?”
“Daybreak.”
“Oh.”
Was that disappointment he heard in her voice? He told himself that she was either just lonely or afraid of the dark and that it had nothing to do with him.
“I go out every night,” he said uncomfortably. “I told you that.”
“Do you have to go just yet?”
He glanced toward the window. In a few hours it would be dark, and an aching voice would call to him from the swamp, beckoning to that dark place inside of him, and he would be powerless to resist it. But for now the sky was still light and the lurid urges that haunted him at sunset were at rest. He felt himself waver.
“Maybe I can stay a little longer.”
Chapter 4
“Could we go outside for some fresh air?”
John heard the plaintive plea in her voice and saw the hand stretched out to him. He admired the courage it took for her to ask, when it was obvious that she was still in some pain and that she was afraid. He took her hand and guided her to her feet.
Her fingers were long and slender, her skin impossibly soft to the touch, and warm, as if she’d been rubbing her hands before a fire. He was surprised by the confidence of her grip until he remembered that these were the same hands that skillfully piloted a plane. She might look weak and helpless, but he suspected that she was stronger than he, and that possibly even she knew that.
“The door’s in this direction.” He moved slowly across the room allowing her to get her bearings as she followed with her hand tucked in his. At the door he eased her forward and placed her fingers around the knob.
Rennie opened the door to a warm spring day. Standing in the doorway, she drew into her lungs deep breaths of air that was sweetly scented by an early-morning shower. The sunlight felt soothing upon her face, its warmth like a tonic to her bruised muscles and aching sensibilities. She took a cautious step outside and was silent for several moments. Finally she said, “This place must be very beautiful.”
John glanced at her with surprise. “What makes you say that?”
“Because anything that feels this beautiful must be. Tell me what’s out there. What does it look like?”
He looked skyward at the turkey vultures that carved arcs in the sky, and around them to the broad channel that ran past the cabin, monotonously bordered by mangroves. To the untrained eye they were surrounded by a million acres of soggy plants. It was hard to convince anyone of miracles in the absence of any visible evidence. But then, to find the miracles you had to have lived there all your life and have known where to look.
He came to stand beside her. For the first time he noticed that her head came just to the top of his shoulder. A breeze captured one golden strand of her hair and tossed it about in front of her eyes. Eyes he knew to be as blue as the patches of sky that appeared between the thick cypress branches. He could not take his own eyes from her as he spoke.
“In this spring light the saw grass is lime green at the bottom and yellowish brown at the top, with a rainbow of colors in between. The mangrove islands look like they’re hanging in the air. The shadows of the clouds turn the water silver and green and gold. I could watch the clouds for hours. Sometimes I feel like Meursault in Camus’s L’Etranger, who passed his time in prison waiting for clouds to drift past his ceiling grate. Western skies are expansive, I’ll grant you, but they’re interrupted by mountains. Here the view goes on forever.”
He spoke with awe, as if he were seeing it all for the very first time and was profoundly moved by it, his softly spoken sensitivity telling Ronnie that he was the kind of man who saw things most others did not.
There was so much she didn’t know about this stranger in whose care she had entrusted herself, yet she felt no fear. The only danger lay in the unseen attraction she had for him that tugged at her heartstrings and left her bewildered. With a sigh she ventured, “What else about you don’t I know?”
John stiffened beside her. “What do you mean?”
“Camus?”
“I read a lot in college. Immersing myself in books helped take my mind off the fact that I was the only Seminole enrolled.”
“It was pretty much the same for me,” she said, “feeling apart because of your background. I chose a local college rather than the Ivy League school my family wanted me to attend because I thought that being around regular, working-class people would help me forget that I wasn’t one of them.”
“Did it work?”
She gave just a little smile, partly because of the irony and partly because it hurt to smile too broadly. “What do you think?”
“I think that no matter how hard you try, you can never get away from yourself.” It was something he had learned in the past eighteen months, but if he told her that, he’d have to tell her the rest. He didn’t want to think about it, and yet he couldn’t think of anything else.
“The tribal council donated the money for my tuition. At that time I was one of the few of my people to even go to college, so I felt it was my duty to make them proud of me.”
“Duty,” she repeated dispassionately. Yes, she knew all about duty. Duty to a mother who married both times strictly for money and who tried to convince her to do the same. And duty to a stepfather who insisted that marriage to Craig Wolfson was the best thing for her. Maybe that was her problem: believing someone else always knew what was best for her.
“It’s a funny thing about duty,” she muttered. “While you’re busy fulfilling your duty to others, you can lose sight of your duty to yourself.”
“Are you talking from experience?”
“Some families are just more complicated than others,” she answered. “And you? Do you have any family?”
He didn’t mind her questions, as long as they did not delve too deeply or were too difficult for him to answer. “My mother lives on the reservation. I have an older brother who raises cattle. He’s divorced. He has a son in high school who likes to dress in baggy jeans and hundred-and-twenty-dollar sneakers and who spends his time watching MTV.”
“You sound as if you don’t approve.”
“Seminole parents send their kids to public school so they’ll be able to compete, but too often the kids forget the old ways. I guess it’s hard for a kid to go to school and at the same time learn his own culture. Don’t get me wrong. He’s a great kid. He’s also Seminole and doesn’t know the difference.”
“You don’t seem to have forgotten the old ways,” Rennie observed, “if that tea you made is any proof of it.”
“That’s because my mother resisted every effort to Americanize my brother and me. When other parents were encouraging their kids to speak only English, my mother never gave up the old language at home. She taught us about healing, how to strain the poisonous juices from the otherwise edible roots of the coontie plant, how to clear brush for a garden, to gather palmetto fronds for thatching, to pole a dugout canoe, to hunt deer. Whatever I needed to know as a Seminole she taught me.”
“And your father?”
He replied matter-of-factly, “He ran out on us when we were kids.”
“And here I thought I had it rough when my father died when I was eight. At least he didn’t leave on purpose.”
“I don’t blame my father,” said John. “Not anymore. He’s like the rest of us. We can’t help being who we are. He was the restless kind who tried his hand at a lot of things. Beekeeping, trapping, cane grinding, running an airboat, gambling. There was always a poker game going in the back room when I was a kid. But I guess the thing he was best at was roaming.”
There was a faint fondness in his tone that children and grown-ups alike often have for a parent who has forsaken them, a love that suffers countless disappointments yet never quite goes away. To hear him speak about the father who deserted him, she realized that his feelings were no different from hers for the father who had died, and it made her feel a special kinship with him despite their differences.
“Why aren’t you raising cattle like your brother?”
Solemnly he said, “I guess you could say it’s my destiny to be here.”
How could he explain that the lure of the wild Everglades was too much for him to ignore? That this was where his heart belonged and where fate decreed that he be? Destiny. Fate. Curse. Whatever he called it, it all boiled down to one thing. He and this land were entwined in the deepest and darkest sense.
He touched his hand to her elbow and turned her gently around. “I think we should go back inside.”
Rennie was curious about the enigmatic man, but other than a few superficial facts about himself, she knew she would learn no more from him for now, for in the taut silence that followed them back into the cabin, she got the distinct feel of a door being shut in her face.
“If you’re not going to be around much, perhaps you should show me where things are,” she suggested.
John’s dark, quiet gaze strayed to the window. Again he thought of nightfall, when the haunting from the swamp would grow and obsess him. It usually began around that time of day when it was no longer light but not quite dark, that lazy limbo in which time seemed to stand still. And then, almost suddenly it seemed, it would be dark, and the longing that haunted him quietly by day would turn into full-blown obsession.
None of that would happen yet for many hours. But no matter how much he dreaded the approach of darkness, for the first time in a long time he could not wait for it to fall across the land. All the wild things of the night could not be as dangerous to him as this slender, tawny-haired woman was right now. Sure, they liked the same kind of soup. And okay, so maybe the loneliness they each experienced at college was not so very different. And losing a father was always tough under any circumstance. All right, so for some crazy reason they had these things in common. It didn’t mean she would understand the part he played in Maggie’s death and not hate him for it as much as he hated himself. Where would he even begin to tell her about it?
“John?”
Her soft voice called him away from the window and his tortured thoughts. “I heard you. I was just wondering where to begin.”
“Why don’t we start with the kitchen?”
There was no way to avoid taking her hand again and feeling her heat as he guided her through the doorway into the kitchen. He took her slowly around the small room, waiting patiently as her hands moved tentatively and then grew more confident as they explored the refrigerator, the stove, the sink, the cabinets.
“Soup,” he explained, when she examined the cans in the cabinet. “It shouldn’t be hard to remember that tomato is on the left, chicken noodle’s in the middle and minestrone is on the right.”
Disheartened, she said, “My life has been reduced to right and left.”
“There’s no guarantee that you’ll see again, but there’s no reason to think you won’t.”
Her shoulders slumped. The world was a scary place when you couldn’t see. Not knowing what was out there and whom to trust. Sometimes it was even scarier when your eyes were wide open. When you let yourself be swayed by what others thought was best for you. When you were too blind to see the mistakes you were making.
Rennie sighed and turned toward the sink. “Does this need washing?” she asked of the ceramic bowl in the sink.
“Yes, but—”
“Just because I feel like an invalid doesn’t mean I have to act like one.” Feeling around, she turned on the water, found a sponge and what she assumed was a plastic bottle of dishwashing liquid and proceeded to wash the bowl.
John gave her credit for trying, even if she did leave soap in the bowl after rinsing it.
“Where does it go?”
“In the cabinet. Top shelf.”
She reached up on tiptoe to place the bowl on the shelf, but when it wouldn’t quite reach, he stepped forward to give her a hand. His arms swept past her on either side to grasp the bowl that teetered on the edge of the shelf. The hard-muscled length of him came up against her as he leaned forward to push the bowl into place. For several moments neither of them moved. His hands came to rest palms down on the counter on either side of her. She could feel his arms coming to rest a hairbreadth from her body, which had gone all rigid.
“Turn around.”
The plea in his voice made Rennie catch her breath. She was confused and afraid. It was one thing to fantasize about him, but quite another to actually give in to this crazy attraction she felt for a man she couldn’t see.
“It’s not what you think,” he said. “I want to say something to you, and even if you can’t see me, I want to say it to your face. Turn around.” His tone was demanding, the plea slightly more urgent than before.
Rennie turned slowly around, brushing against his arms that did not withdraw until she was facing him. She knew that his eyes were upon her and felt herself melting from their heat.
“Please understand,” he said. “I would have taken you in even if you weren’t as beautiful as you are. And as far as telling no one that you’re here, I’ll respect that. But don’t expect anything more from me. The fact is, I’m going to stay as far away from you as I can get. Believe me when I say it’s for the best.”
Rennie was aghast. “If you’re assuming that I want more from you than a place to stay, you’re mistaken.”
“All I’m saying is, the imagination can play powerful tricks on us, and we all make mistakes when we’re feeling helpless.”
“I see,” she said tersely. “And I suppose that was my imagination just now when you leaned against me? That’s funny, because it felt more like—”
“I never said I wasn’t attracted to you,” he said. His arousal had been instantaneous and her alluding to it was embarrassing. “But let’s be frank. You didn’t exactly move away, either. And that’s the problem.”
“If there’s a problem here, it’s yours,” she said. “I’m not in the habit of passing myself around like a dish of salted peanuts, and certainly not to a man I don’t know.”
“And if I were to kiss you right now, what would you do?”
What would she do? Scream? Slap him? Melt into his arms and cling to his strength as if for dear life? For all she knew, the man resembled Godzilla. But what difference did that make? It wasn’t his face she was attracted to. It was his strength, his kindness, his difference. Even the distance he placed between them only drew her closer. It was the way he asked no questions. It was the honesty with which he confessed his own attraction to her. It was the plea in his voice when he said it, as if he were begging her not to test him. It was all that and everything she didn’t know about him. It was, simply, him.
How was it possible to feel such attraction to a man she couldn’t see, or to feel a longing for a man she had known for only a brief time? It had to be that she was feeling lonely and vulnerable in the aftermath of her experience with Craig.
“I’m tired,” she said. “I’d like to lie down.”
She made her way out of the kitchen on her own. With her hands outstretched before her, she groped her way back to the bed and sank down onto the soft mattress.
John let her go without offering assistance. She was right, it was his problem. He had created it a year and a half ago and now he was suffering the consequences of his actions in a way he never could have imagined. It was useless to deny his attraction to her, yet he could do nothing about it, and maybe that was the price he had to pay for his guilt.
Her voice from the bed called him away from his dark thoughts. “You’ve done so much for me.”
The soft, lilting tone should have warned him that it wasn’t as simple as that, but there was something about her vulnerability that drew him, and he heard himself say, “If there’s anything else I can do…” his words trailed off awkwardly. What could she possibly want from him other than a place to stay?
“Actually, there is. You can help me with my work while I’m here.”
“I don’t know much about anthropology.”
“Maybe not, but you must know about Seminole folklore.”
He looked at her curiously. “Why do you want to know about that?”
“I was recently awarded a grant to study the myths and legends of the Seminole people. That’s what I was on my way to do when my plane went down. I was looking for an airstrip. There’s supposed to be one at about 25© longitude.”
“You mean that beat-up little strip over in the next county? I didn’t know anyone even knew about it.”
“The night watchman at the university told me about it. He’s an old Seminole with family on the reservation. He said to call him when I arrived and he would have one of his relatives pick me up and take me around. He told me I could stay with them on the reservation while I was doing research.”
The hairs at the back of John’s neck were rising. “I can tell you some of the legends, sure.”
“That would be great. I can’t thank you enough. And once I’m a little stronger, do you think you could take me around so that I can speak to some of the people? No offense, but you don’t sound very old, and we both know that it’s the elders who carry on the oral tradition of any indigenous people.”
Misinterpreting the taut silence that greeted her request, she said, “I said before that I could pay you. Not all of my money was buried beneath the wreckage.”
“No.”
“Well then, perhaps I could make a contribution to the Everglades Research Center.”
“I mean no, I won’t take you around.”
He knew now what more she could want from him, and it was far worse than he could have imagined. Suddenly she was so much more than merely a beautiful, vulnerable woman who had tumbled into his life. She was dangerous.
If she delved deeply enough, she might uncover the legend about the panther, a tale his people fiercely guarded from outsiders because of its frightening implications. But worse was the possibility that she might discover the truth about him and loathe him for it. He feared that she might see something of him in the legend, as he had come to see himself. That the same proud arrogance that sealed the ancient warrior’s fate had doomed him, as well. That the warrior’s curse to wander the earth as only part human was no worse than his own fate to live his life only partly alive.
He fought to keep his voice level so that she would not know the turmoil into which her unwitting request had plunged him. “The swamp is no place for someone who can’t see.”
“That’s why I’m asking you to help me.”
Damn it. Did she have to sound so unprotected? So in need of his help? “We’ll see,” he said roughly. “Maybe when you’re feeling better.” His mind worked rapidly to figure a way out of this mess he was suddenly in. Who knew how long it would be before she was strong enough to journey anywhere? Hopefully, by then she’d be so eager to get out of this place that she would abandon her crazy notion. If not, maybe the best thing for him to do would be to take her to the places she wanted to go. In that way he could steer her away from getting too close to the truth.
There were no clocks in the cabin, but John didn’t need one to know what time it was. He had merely to glance at the window and the shifting light beyond. He’d been so preoccupied with Rennie that he hadn’t noticed it was getting dark. The time of day he dreaded was approaching. It was time to brew more tea so that Rennie would sleep peacefully and not notice his absence…or ask more of him than was safe for him to give.
Chapter 5
It was a place that wasn’t on the way to anywhere else. You had to go there on purpose, not that anyone ever did.
John used his paddle to press the nose of the canoe against a wall of saw grass, but the stalks were higher than John and Rennie’s heads and wouldn’t budge. Eventually, his strength prevailed and the walls parted, and little “saws” scratched at their arms as they moved through it.
Rennie knew now why John had insisted she wear his long-sleeved denim shirt. She’d been hesitant at first to accept it, when that wild and earthy scent of his had wafted up from the supple fabric to fill her head with undisciplined thoughts. She was glad to be wearing it, though, for not only did it offer her arms protection from the nasty little blades that pricked the soft cotton, but the scent that she had found disturbingly intoxicating now filled her with a feeling of safekeeping, as if nothing could harm her in his presence.
“This must be how Moses got his start in the bulrushes.”
His deep voice called her away from the thought of him and the warm surge of feelings it elicited.
Finally, the canoe broke free of the tangle. The fragrance of blossoms and earth and crystal-clear air filled Rennie’s nostrils. “John.”
He knew by the way she said his name what she was asking. “There’s a jungle of cypresses rising from the swamp,” he said, describing the scenery for her. “They’re glowing coppery with morning sunshine and their limbs are laced with Spanish moss and red and white orchids.”
“This place must be Paradise,” she said.
“Some might say that. But you should know that this paradise is dying.”
She turned her sightless eyes toward him and tilted her head questioningly.
“Years of development and agricultural poisons are killing it inch by inch,” he said. “Thanks to a plan dating back to the fifties to dry up the swamp, only about half of the original Everglades remain.” There was an undisguised anguish in his voice, as if he were talking about a good friend that he was watching slowly die. But for now it was still there and teeming with life.
Rennie cocked her head to the side and listened. There was a little plop in the water. “What’s that?”
“A yellow-bellied turtle just dived off the rock it was sunning itself on,” he answered.
A screech from above drew her attention skyward. “And that?”
“An osprey. Clinging to the edge of an elaborate nest. She doesn’t appreciate our company.”
She turned her head toward a rustling that came from a crook in the forest.
“Baby alligators,” he said, “fighting their way across the water lettuce.”
The calm green place that John described offered its heart to Rennie’s troubled soul. She couldn’t see the towering palms, the live oaks and sweet gums, the moss-draped cypresses or the gumbo limbos that he said were there, but she felt them as keenly as if she could. Out here life didn’t seem so terribly complicated at all. She leaned back in the canoe, savoring the sun’s warmth on her cheeks and listening to John Panther’s deep-throated voice describe the sounds and sights that were all around them.
Êîíåö îçíàêîìèòåëüíîãî ôðàãìåíòà.
Òåêñò ïðåäîñòàâëåí ÎÎÎ «ËèòÐåñ».
Ïðî÷èòàéòå ýòó êíèãó öåëèêîì, êóïèâ ïîëíóþ ëåãàëüíóþ âåðñèþ (https://www.litres.ru/nancy-morse/panther-on-the-prowl/) íà ËèòÐåñ.
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