Larger Than Life Read online

  Was that she?

  It was disturbing to think of herself in that way. She didn’t want to be that way. Yet now that she considered it, she realized her entire life had molded just that trait. Guardedness, a sense of wariness where other people were concerned. Never allowing anyone to get too close, never letting her inner self be touched.

  Until Travis.

  Pushing all emotion aside with an effort, Saber made use of the “worst” scenario she had taught herself in order to keep things in perspective. What was the worst that could happen if she became more deeply involved with Travis? She could give her heart and be left empty and alone. Could she take the worst and refuse to let it destroy her? She didn’t know.

  A part of her wanted badly to reach for what Travis offered. He was an intelligent, humorous, sensitive man, possessing an innate warmth and a great sexuality that drew her strongly. Instinct told her now that he would keep her secrets as well as she could herself, but she had no idea how those secrets would affect their tenuous relationship.

  It was ironic in a way. Always, she’d wanted to be loved for what she was, not who she was. She’d fought to escape a life thick with the risk of being taken at value of face—or bank account. Now, by her own ability, she was again a who, a personage. As he’d said … a larger-than-life personality.

  Which did Travis believe he loved—that larger-than-life person or the woman he barely knew? Could it matter to him that that part of her had been born in a hell of survival?

  He was fascinated by the abrupt change from girl to woman, and she couldn’t help wondering if he, too, would prefer the girl she had been to the woman she now was.

  Was that what she feared? That he would learn the truth of her physical and emotional catharsis and, the mystery solved, fold up his tent and steal away into her past? Case solved and on to elusive horizons? It was fun, sweetie, and let’s do it again sometime?

  Saber smiled in spite of herself. No, Travis would never be flippant. He thought that he loved her; she believed that. Only time could sort out her own tangled emotions, and only time and honesty could prove his to be real.

  Thoughtfully, she climbed down off the boulder and began the walk back to the ranch. There was still a ghostly panic in the back of her mind; she expected it and accepted it with equanimity. She was strong enough, she believed, to be able to deal with that. And strong enough to take a chance, because she’d realized sometime during the past moments that she had to.

  She was already half in love with Travis Foxx.

  He was waiting for her near the valley floor, leaning on a whitewashed fence and watching as she approached. She could see as well as feel a certain tautness in him, a tense waiting, and felt a sudden compunction that she’d left him so abruptly. Something he needed to know about her ….

  “I’m sorry, Travis,” she said as she reached him. “A habit of mine: whenever I’m bothered I go off alone to think things through. I should have explained.”

  He smiled, still watchful. “I’ll remember next time.”

  They turned to follow the fence line back toward the still-distant cluster of buildings, and she felt a sudden warmth when he reached to clasp her hand firmly.

  “And did you think things through?”

  She nodded. “I tried.”

  “Will I be getting my marching orders?” he asked lightly.

  But she could hear the strain. And it was an odd strain, she thought, confused. Again she had an instinctive urge to walk away and avoid… what? Something dangerous. Like a volcano churning at its core: unthreatening on the outside, but potentially overpowering.

  Saber pushed the thoughts aside. “Not unless you want them.”

  “I don’t.” A roughness crept into his voice, but he cleared his throat before continuing. “And so, Miss Duncan? We go on from here?”

  Saber took a deep breath and nodded again. “I can’t—promise anything, Travis. I don’t know if I can give you what you want, and I don’t know what I want myself. But I won’t send you away. Or run away myself.”

  His fingers tightened slightly. “You’re afraid, aren’t you? But you’re going to face it.”

  She no longer felt startled by his perception. “I don’t like to allow fear to control me. I may … shy away from time to time. But I’ll have to face it.”

  Travis was quiet for a while; they were almost at the main house before he spoke. “If I push, tell me.”

  “All right.”

  He stopped just as they approached the path to their cottage, gazing down at her with warm, restless eyes. “How can I help?”

  Saber didn’t have to think. “Make me laugh.” She felt suddenly that she wanted to cry, and was surprised. She hadn’t cried in a long time. In spite of the urge, she found herself smiling. “Teach me how to open up. Just be yourself, Travis.”

  Travis took her at her word. But he remained cautious, careful, unwilling to move too fast or step too near. She was a complex woman, much of her buried beneath the surface, and he’d known from the first that he would fully understand her only when she gave him her complete trust.

  That the trust would be hard won he’d also known from the first. Like the flower he’d compared her to, she would close up protectively at the first careless touch.

  An engima, his love.

  But Travis was patient in spite of—or because of—his love and desire. Instinct told him that when this woman did finally open up to him, he would be glad of his own patience. And if the cost of that patience were to be cold showers and restless nights in a lonely bed, there would be no regrets. The lover in him might chafe at time wasted, but a deeper part of him knew there was no waste. Not if she loved him in the end.

  The remainder of the afternoon and evening was spent quietly. There was awareness now; Saber could see the warmth in his green eyes and was conscious of his presence, but she was gradually able to relax once more. Except for those fleeting moments of eye-opening shock, as if she’d stepped too close to a fire.

  They had dinner at the main house, and the last remnants of tension dissolved in laughter when Cory and Mark joined their table. It was difficult to do anything but laugh while the artist was single-mindedly sketching Cory on the back of a menu and she was just as single-mindedly trying to persuade him to eat his dinner; she was finally forced to remove the menu and hand him his fork. Mildly disgruntled, Mark settled down to eat, but not without a pained glance at his patroness that made everyone else laugh.

  “He’s impossible,” Cory told her guests. “The child hasn’t the sense to come in out of the rain.”

  “I’m only a year younger than you,” Mark pointed out, unoffended.

  Cory rolled her eyes, then grinned. “You’d never know he was twenty-six, would you?”

  Travis was surprised and showed it, having long since realized that Mark had no objection to being discussed; he rarely noticed what was said about him and was the most inoffensive young man Travis had ever met. “I would have guessed him younger than that.”

  Cheerfully, Cory said, “He’ll never age. When the rest of us are creaking around in our dotage, he’ll look years younger—and act it.”

  “You’ll never be in your dotage,” Mark told her. “Bone structure. You’ll be elegant, Cory.” His perceptive eyes focused across the table at Saber. “And you,” he said briskly, “will always be beautiful. I’d like to paint you at eighty,” he added.

  Travis and Cory were smothering chuckles, but Saber responded gravely, “If we’re still around, Mark, you’ve got a date.”

  He nodded with such an air of making a mental note to himself that his companions had to laugh yet again. But Mark wasn’t finished.

  “You’ll age well, too,” he told Travis with his amiable frankness. “Classic bone structure. You won’t even go gray until very late, I think, or wrinkle hardly at all.”

  “Glad to hear it,” Travis managed to say, while the ladies choked into their napkins. “D’you have an inside track we should know abo
ut, or is it merely artistic intuition?”

  Mark smiled, eating with the methodical gestures of someone simply conforming to society’s whims rather than assauging hunger.

  “I think he’s psychic,” Cory offered. “He can never find his paints, but if anybody else loses something, he can always find it.”

  “If I were a horse, where would I be?” Mark murmured, still eating.

  This baffled his companions for a moment, until Saber laughed suddenly. “I see. That old story about the little boy and the lost horse. He thought to himself, If I were a horse, where would I be?”

  “And I went … and I looked … and I was,” Mark said placidly.

  Cory shook her head at him. “You need a keeper.”

  “I have one.” He smiled at her.

  Travis and Saber laughed while Cory choked. “Brat!” she told him.

  Mark sighed. “Yes, but what’ll I do when your man comes?”

  “What man?” she asked, clearly at sea.

  “Your man. I imagine he’ll be turning up any day now,” Mark said, mildly regretful. “But that book’ll get you into trouble, and he’ll call me a puppy.” On this cryptic comment, the artist excused himself and left the table.

  Cory stared at her guests. “Sometimes that boy worries me.”

  “Is he psychic?” Saber asked. “All these years and I’ve never been sure.”

  Their hostess shrugged. “Beats the hell out of me. Sometimes he says things that sound like nonsense—but I’ve never known him to miss in eight years.”

  Saber was amused. “Then I’d say you’d better get ready to meet your destiny.”

  “Oh, great.” Cory sounded a little harassed. “That’s all I need right now.”

  “What book?” Travis asked plaintively.

  Cory glared at him. “A stupid book. A mistake. And I don’t want to talk about it. I’d better go find Mark before he falls down the stairs or something.” Regally, she tossed her napkin aside and left the table.

  Travis looked at Saber. “What book?”

  She smiled. “Well, it’s no secret. D’you keep an eye on the bestseller lists?”

  “Generally.”

  “Then maybe you remember a runaway bestseller that hit the top about six months ago—and is still there? The Art of Courtship?”

  He blinked. “Yes. By … C. B. Stewart.”

  “Cory Briann Stewart,” Saber murmured. “It started out as a joke. All her friends come to Cory for romantic advice—men as well as women. Someone told her she should write it all down so they could read her advice instead of pestering her. And she did. As a joke. And—as a joke—one of the friends sent it off to a publisher.”

  Travis whistled softly. “But the joke was on them.”

  “I’ll say. It’s the only time I’ve ever seen Cory bewildered. She got roped into a promotional tour before she realized. After six weeks of talk shows and the like, she came tearing back here to hide.”

  Thinking of some of his own experiences, Travis winced. “I can imagine. Stupid questions and sly remarks.”

  “Oh, yes. Mind you, Cory can take care of herself.” Saber grinned suddenly. “They had to bleep her twice on national television! Anyway, after being harassed, scorned, and patronized, not to mention having her personal convictions and opinions belittled, Cory came home.”

  Travis shook his head sympathetically but said, “I’ll have to read it.”

  “You won’t find a copy here. If Cory kept hers, it’s under lock and key.”

  “Did you read it?”

  “Of course.”

  “And?”

  “Cory has an instinct about people,” Saber said seriously. “And her advice is always sound. The book is generalized, of course, but I’ll bet it straightened out more than a few relationships.”

  “Would it help us?” he asked lightly.

  She looked at him for a moment, then smiled. “We don’t need the book—we’ve got Cory.”

  “Should we ask her advice?” He was still playing it light.

  Saber laughed and tossed her napkin aside. “She’ll probably advise whether we ask or not. I’m going for a walk; I’ll gain ten pounds if I keep eating like this.”

  “On you,” he told her, rising to pull out her chair, “ten pounds would look good. But I’m at the age when I have to be on guard against a spreading middle. Lead the way, ma’am.” But he realized she hadn’t answered his question.

  They walked together in silence, listening to the sounds of a warm summer night. It was peaceful and a full moon lighted their way. Eventually, they wound up near the swimming pool, glowing blue from its underwater lights.

  “Let’s swim,” Travis said, looking down at her with a grin.

  “In the buff?” she asked dryly.

  “Why not? From the sound of it, everyone else’s up at the clubhouse.” Taking her silence for refusal, he added quickly, “We can go put our suits on.”

  Saber knew he’d bought a few extra things at the ranch store, including a swimsuit. He’d gone in swimming several mornings, but she had always managed to avoid the pool. Now she strove to keep her voice casual. “Oh, not tonight. I’m … a little tired.”

  He took her hand silently as they walked past the pool, and she wondered if he’d noticed how the heel of her hand had rubbed her thigh before she could halt the movement. Stupid habit! She’d have to concentrate, try to realize when she was doing that. But if he hadn’t noticed …

  He had.

  In the cottage, Saber moved restlessly to the radio and turned the dial until she found quiet music, passing two stations playing her own songs in the process. She felt oddly uneasy. There was something about Travis, that same niggling sense of … what? Something—leashed. Banked power. Not necessarily threatening, just elusively there. Unnerving. She was aware of his silently watching gaze but managed to ignore it at least partially until he spoke.

  “You won’t go in swimming,” he said quietly. “You never wear shorts in spite of the heat. And on stage, your gowns are long; if there’s a slit in the skirt, it’s always on the left. Never the right.”

  Slowly, she moved to curl up in the roomy armchair before meeting his intent eyes. He sat down across from her.

  “Is it a scar, Saber?”

  She nodded, oddly relieved that he’d guessed.

  “You don’t limp,” he noted.

  “No. There was no bone broken, nothing crippling. Just a deep cut.”

  “Does it … still hurt?”

  “No.”

  “Then it’s a reminder,” he guessed perceptively.

  “I suppose plastic surgery could remove it,” she said, “but somehow—yes, it is a reminder. It’s a battle scar.”

  He didn’t ask what battle had scarred her; he knew that was a question she’d have to answer without being asked. When she was ready. Instead, he said, “I’ve always thought battle scars were marks of courage. We’re too quick these days to remove what we think of as flaws.” He stood up suddenly. “I’m going in swimming. Why don’t you join me?” Without waiting for a response, he went into his bedroom to change, closing the door behind him.

  When he emerged some moments later, he found the living room empty and Saber’s bedroom door closed. He hesitated for a moment, then grabbed a large towel from the bathroom and left the cottage. At the deserted pool, he tossed his towel and terry robe over a poolside lounge, stepped out of the light canvas shoes, and dove cleanly into the cool water.

  Would she come? Would she trust him to see the battle scar she thought of as a physical flaw? He didn’t know. Instinct told him this was a first hurdle in gaining her complete trust. He thought she felt somehow scarred … more than physically. She had chosen to keep a reminder to be touched unconsciously whenever she was disturbed, which meant she had not yet come to terms with that battle.

  He ached at the thought that she’d been hurt so badly. What had she gone through during those missing months? What could have scarred her physically, chan
ged her emotionally? What could have changed a sweet, gentle girl into a taut, guarded woman with a hint of wildness deep in her silvery eyes?

  Travis swam methodically, fiercely, needing the release of action. He swam until he was breathless, then floated on his back to recover. After a moment or two, he realized Saber had come.

  She stood at the shadowed edge of the pool, the long terry robe she wore a white blur surrounded by dimness. Stood silently. Waiting.

  “Come on in,” he called casually, shifting positions to tread water. “It feels terrific.”

  After a long moment, while he watched calmly, she dropped her towel on the lounge beside his, stepped out of her thongs, and untied the sash of her robe. He couldn’t see her expression, but her movements were carefully controlled as she tossed the robe aside and stepped to the edge of the pool. Then she dove gracefully into the water.

  He remained where he was while she swam the length of the pool before halting, breathless, to tread water a couple of feet away from him.

  “You’re right. It feels great.”

  Travis had not looked for the scar, knowing it would be nearly impossible to see in the dimness. And he didn’t look now through the lighted blue haze of the water. He just smiled at her. “See what you’ve been missing?” Without waiting for a response, he challenged, “Race you!”

  For nearly an hour they played in the water. Both were good swimmers, strong and graceful, and they competed in underwater acrobatics as well as in various strokes. Saber forgot her scar as she relaxed, and Travis had the satisfaction of seeing her elusive dimple appear more than once.

  Travis was deliberately first out of the water, standing on the tiled side to towel himself dry. “I don’t know about you,” he said, “but I’ve had it. Ready to call it a night?”

  Saber hesitated, treading water, then took an audible breath and headed for the shallow end. As she climbed the steps leading out of the pool, the moonlight lit what it had only shadowed before. Her black suit gleamed and her skin seemed paler than it actually was. And midway up her right thigh twisted a dark and jagged scar.