Honey and Smoke (2 page)

Her breath frozen in her throat, she backed into the cavern and edged across the floor. The man stretched out on his belly and crawled down the passageway, the rifle held in front of him. She watched him merge with the darkness, fade into it, become it. She heard her ragged little attempts to breathe and wondered if he heard them too.

Feeling her way along the cavern wall, she tiptoed to the main tunnel. Her invader made soft scuffing sounds, and she decided that he had risen to his feet. He struck something that made a metallic ring. Betty ducked into the main tunnel and plastered herself against the cold earthen wall.
Don’t let him find the lantern
, she prayed.

He found it. The edge of its light flared into the tunnel; Betty nearly tripped over her brogans as she eased down the passage. She stepped through a black rectangle outlined in wood beams. Inside the smaller tunnel she huddled.

She hated this side tunnel. She had decided to take a live-and-let-live attitude with the bats who nestled there, but they, ungrateful creatures, now began to squeak loudly at her intrusion. She could hear their wings fluttering as they fretted from their upside-down perches on the ceiling. The floor was slippery with their bad manners.

Betty forgot the bats as measured, slow bootsteps started down the main tunnel toward her. Lantern light danced on the walls. She planted her hands and knees on the nasty floor and crept deeper into the black, cool shaft. She had explored here; she knew that there was nothing to fear in front of her. She had never been fainthearted.

But she’d never been trapped in a cave by Rambo either. She chewed her lower lip and fought to keep her
breath from making ragged sounds. Light flared on the wall beside her. He was just outside the entrance to this tunnel. The bats fluttered and squeaked.

Betty forgot decorum and scrambled into the next opening, a larger tunnel, bat free. She glanced over her shoulder and saw light flood the area she’d just left.

The bats left in a rush of wings, and from the muffled curses that accompanied them, at least a few must have taken kamikaze dives at the man blocking their exit.

Betty leapt to her feet and bolted, waving her hands frantically as she tried to find the next opening. She was running out of tunnels, but the next one led back to the cavern, and maybe, just maybe, she could circle back and escape.

Then she heard long, hurried steps behind her. The hair rose on the back of her neck. She tried to think what to do, and realized how unprepared she was.

There hadn’t been many courses in hand-to-hand combat at the prestigious women’s college she’d attended. And in the eight years since then she’d only had to resort to Kung Fu when someone tried to take her seat at the ballet.

Still, the Quint family was made of hardy pioneer material, and suddenly Betty was sick of scurrying through the darkness like a terrified rat.
The firecrackers. Use the firecrackers
.

She halted, jammed a hand into one voluminous pocket of her overalls, and pulled out a string of delicately misnamed Lady Fingers. She carried them every time she came to work in the cave, just in case something more troublesome than bats had tried to take up residence.

Her teeth chattering with fear, she jerked a lighter from another pocket and lit the fuse.

The bootsteps entered her tunnel. Light streaked toward her. Betty turned around and threw the firecrackers between Rambo’s legs.

A small war couldn’t have made as much fury and
noise. He jumped and made a heavy thud when his head hit a ceiling beam. He dropped the lantern, and the light curved away from her. She pivoted and ran, bumping into the walls, slipping on the damp stone floor.

To her horror he ran after her. She reached the central cavern and saw the dim light of the exit passage on the other side.
Freedom
.

But Faux Paw decided to head from the tunnels at the same moment. She dashed between Betty’s legs and kept going as Betty sprawled sideways. The fall wasn’t painful because she landed atop dozens of her carefully nurtured Oriental mushrooms, which grew in a soft bed of dirt and dried horse manure.

The discomfort came a moment later, when a thick masculine knee settled on her fanny and a strong hand grabbed the back of her neck. With her cheek pressed into the odiferous humus and flattened mushrooms, she gasped for breath and exploded with fury.

“Off me! Off me! Dammit.”

“Kid, you play dangerous games,” he said. “When I tell your daddy what you’re up to, he’ll probably chew your ass.”

“My cave. My land.”

“Cut the crap. What have you got stashed in here?”

“Have you … arrested. Off me!”

He didn’t hurt her, but his fingers curled tighter around her neck. “I came in here after an animal. I didn’t expect to find—what? What are you growing in here, kid? Don’t lie. It won’t do you any good.”

Betty ignored her terror enough to consider her options. She suspected that he wouldn’t listen to pleas of innocence. He thought she was a juvenile delinquent, and whether he thought she was male or female wasn’t clear. She wasn’t going to enlighten him. At least he was taking a paternal attitude, she was a little reassured, but not much.

Her stubborn silence seemed the best offense. She ground her teeth and refused to talk to him.

After a minute he sighed in exasperation. “All right, here’s the way we’re going to do this. You won’t like it, but it will make my life easier.” She heard unidentifiable sounds, then discerned the slap of a belt being removed from its belt loops. A second later he deftly grabbed her right hand with his free hand and looped the belt around it.

“No!” she yelled. “No way!”

Flapping arms when pinned facedown didn’t offer much defense. But still he quickly scooped her hands together and bound them behind her back. “Okay, kid, let’s take a trip to the sunshine.”

He stood, wrapped his hand in the back of her overalls, and dragged her gracefully out of the mushroom bed and onto the granite floor.

She was so mad now that she didn’t care what happened. As he pulled her along beside him like a large piece of luggage, Betty craned her head sideways and tried to bite his knee.

He shook her a little and moved out of range. “I’ll remember that, kid,” he assured her.

When they reached the narrow passageway to the opening, he halted. “On your belly,” he ordered, as if she had a choice. But he lowered her gently. “Crawl. I’ll be right behind you.”

Humiliated, her fanny poking into the air every time she drew a leg forward to push herself, she wiggled up the smooth stone slope. Her tormentor crawled so close behind her that his hands brushed her hips and legs.

Betty pushed herself out of the cave onto the matted grass and leaves of the forest floor. Frightened, angry, sputtering for breath, she twisted on her side and glared at him. He seemed huge. The rifle hung by a webbed strap from one of his thick shoulders. A sick realization of just how small and helpless she was in comparison made her burst into self-defense.

With a hoarse cry of rage she raised a booted foot and kicked him in the shoulder. He made no sound but moved with lethal speed. Rearing on his knees, he
grabbed her feet with his hands and flipped her onto her back. Then he put one hand on her stomach and one on her throat.

Slowly he bent over her until his camouflage-painted nose was only inches from her dirt-smeared one. The look in his eyes, startling in their intensity and surrounded by the dark camouflage colors, was vivid with controlled fury. “I could rip your tonsils out with my fingernails,” he whispered between gritted teeth. And then his threats became
really
colorful.

Betty stared up at him as he continued to whisper about chewing and gouging and kicking various parts of her anatomy. There was no doubt from some of his references that he thought she was male. But no man had ever talked to her in this violent, lurid way before, and her dignity rebelled.

“What do you think I am?” she yelled back at him. She dug the back of her head into the ground and scrubbed her cap off. “I’m a woman, you idiot! You’re mauling and cursing a woman! Is this your idea of gallantry? You trespass on my land, shoot at me, trap me in my own cave, and then yell at me? You big macho bastard!”

He froze. Then he sat back on his heels and regarded her with a fathomless expression. His gaze moved over the bulky gray sweatshirt and denim overalls. He reached out and flicked the clasp open on one strap of the overalls’ bib, then pulled the bib aside and scrutinized her chest.

“Oh, don’t,” she said in horror.

He jerked his hand back. “That’s not what I meant.” He flung the bib into place and groaned in disgust. “I just wanted to make sure that you were a woman. But you’re not just a woman, you’re a stealth bomber with a bosom.”

“Funny.”

He reached over a second time and wiped grime from her face. “I must be getting old. Hell, yes, you’re very female.” He looked closely at her shoulder-length black
hair. Then, muttering an oath of self-rebuke under his breath, he turned her onto her stomach and quickly freed her hands.

Relief shuddered through her. She whipped around, shoved herself upright with one hand, and slapped him across the face with the other. He barely blinked. “Okay. I deserved that.”

Betty scooted several feet away from him. “What gives you the right to manhandle someone who’s minding her own business?” she demanded raggedly.

His eyes were light green. They never wavered from hers. “There was no reason for anyone to be in that cave. I thought you were a kid hiding drugs. Why didn’t you come out when I called you?”

“I can’t imagine where my manners were. I
always
respond when I’m given orders by strange men in military gear carrying big rifles. Why did you shoot at me?”

“I didn’t shoot at you. I was aiming at a deer.”

“A ten-foot-tall deer.”

“Some kind of strange bobcat ran into me, and my shot went bad. I swear. I tracked the cat here.”

“It’s my pet!”

He did a double take, then recovered. “Calm down. I wasn’t planning to make a rug out of it. I only wanted to get a better look at the thing.” Lifting a dirty hand, he pointed at her to emphasize his next intense words. “I would never hunt where it wasn’t safe to shoot. I thought this land was empty.”

“It’s not empty. It’s mine. And there are no-hunting signs posted everywhere.”

“I walked in from the south. You didn’t post them there.”

“But … but there’s no road on that side for at least ten miles. That’s why I never thought anyone would wander over my boundaries from that direction.”

He shrugged. The rifle rode the heavy muscles of his back. “I like to hike,” he said simply. He cleared his throat. “You can file assault charges against me. I do owe you an apology, and it’s sincere. Will you accept?”

His honesty caught her off guard. The way his gaze kept flickering over her face and body distracted her. Betty wiped a gloved hand to her face and wondered if she looked awful. “I’m supposed to just grin and say, ‘Aw, shucks, Rambo, no harm done’?”

“You have to admit, there were extenuating circumstances.” Admiration grew in his eyes as he studied her. “You were damned good in that cave. Resourceful.”

Betty realized that she was adorning her cheek with bat guano. She dropped her hand into her lap.
He has beautiful green eyes
, she couldn’t help thinking. And his hair, now that she could finally see it, was a rich almond shade of brown. And all the camouflage in the world couldn’t disguise a finely honed masculine body in its prime.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Where do you live?” he countered.

“Who are you?” she repeated.

“You never accepted my apology.”

“I don’t accept apologies from nameless strangers.”

“Max Templeton. I’d offer to shake hands, but I doubt you’re in the mood.”

“You’re right. Are you local?”

“Lately, yes.”

“Good. Then you’ll feel at home in the local jail.”

“You’re not making this apology process easy.”

“You trespassed on my property and assaulted me.”

“Don’t forget a misdemeanor charge concerning the careless use of a firearm.”

“You’re not taking this seriously.”

“You tossed a handful of firecrackers between my legs. I’m too upset to think straight.”

“You don’t look upset.”

“You don’t look upset either. Let’s go have a beer and get acquainted. I’ll buy. My apology will be much more acceptable with a froth on it.”

She slumped. A ticklish new fear sat in the bottom of her chest, the fear that something potent was brewing between the two of them. Flights of fancy and reckless
behavior were a bad combination, she knew from past experience.

“Just take another hike,” she told him. “Back where you came from. And don’t trespass on my land again.”

“What were you doing inside that cave?”

“Growing mushrooms.” She gave him a rebuking look. “Ordinary, edible mushrooms.”

“You have pieces of mushroom on your sweatshirt.”

She glanced down at her gray shirt and winced. A lot of work had been mashed. “Great.”

“I’ll pay you for damages.”

“Forget it. Just leave.”

“This cave is called Quint’s Hideout. Back in the early nineteen-hundreds a local named William Quint mined gold in it. Later he made moonshine here.”

“I know. I’m his granddaughter. I own the cave now.”

“You mean—” he glanced toward the north. “You bought the Quint place?”

“That’s right.”

“There hasn’t been a Quint around here for fifty years. The house belonged to the Gibson family, the last I heard. And none of them live here anymore either.”

“Right. It’s been vacant for a few years. I just bought the place from the Gibsons.”

“It must be in terrible shape.”

“No worse than my nerves at the moment.”

“You look steady. I’m impressed. And apologetic. Really. I’ll walk you home, and you can explain why you love mushrooms so much.” He leaned toward her with disarming effect and smiled. “I live just north of town. We’re practically neighbors.”

“I can walk myself. It’s just over the ridge. And if I ever see you on my land again, I’ll call the sheriff.”