Larger Than Life Read online

  “I love you,” he said huskily. Swiftly, he moved to stand before her. “And I’ll fight for you. But I have to know what I’m fighting, Saber.”

  “You’re not fighting Matt,” she whispered.

  He reached out to enfold her in his arms, holding her tightly. “I’ve never been jealous before,” he said. “I don’t … quite know how to handle it.”

  Saber burrowed closer to him, obeying a sudden need for the touch of him, the feeling of his hard body pressed to hers. There was an unfamiliar ache in the pit of her belly, a hollow longing she’d never known before. Disturbed, she tried to keep her mind on his words.

  “Give me time,” she murmured.

  He framed her face in warm hands, turning it up so that she could see the tenderness in his green eyes. “We’ll take all the time you need,” he said gently.

  Saber gazed up at him for a long moment, then said quietly, “There is something I want to tell you about now.”

  Travis watched the lovely, delicate face tighten, felt tension flow into stiffening shoulders. Silently he led her to the couch and sat beside her. “Then tell me,” he said.

  So she did, her voice level and calm, her silver-gray eyes flickering from time to time with the caged wildness that had fascinated him from the beginning. She talked about the months missing from her life, and a battle that had scarred her physically and wrenched a woman from a girl.

  A battle of survival … and she lived it again.

  It had been a freak accident, a combination of violent storm and the failure of delicate instruments. The chances of her surviving the crash had been a million to one. And the odds against her continued survival—alone, lost, too many miles from civilization, and in a hostile, unfamiliar environment—had been astronomical.

  She was a delicate creature with no experience of physical or emotional hardships. Educated for city streets and dinner parties. Accustomed to soft beds and clean clothes and processed foods. She had never before seen violent death or wilderness or her own blood.

  Now, as the midday sun glinted off twisted, ugly chunks of metal, she tied an awkward knot in the strip of material torn from a silk blouse. Blank gray eyes stared at the improvised bandage covering the jagged cut on her thigh. She’d been unable to find the first-aid kit in the Lear; there was so little left. And the cockpit …

  She didn’t look toward the ungodly tangle of fuselage and trailing wires that had held the controls of the jet and was now a tomb for the two men within it. She had shared two nights and two days with the dead men and the dead jet, clinging numbly to the vague understanding that she was supposed to remain at the crash site and await rescue.

  Her shocked gray eyes combed the sky constantly, endlessly; her ears strained to catch the comforting throb of engines. Nothing.

  It came to her slowly, reluctantly, finally, that no one was coming.

  There was no one to help her.

  No one to tell her what to do.

  The storm that had beaten them to the ground had first driven them far off course, crippling the delicate instruments that should have told them where they were.

  Lost. And alone for the first time in her life.

  She unfolded a grimy handkerchief and slowly chewed the last of the berries she’d found near the jet. They did little to ease the empty ache in her stomach. Then she picked up the backpack she’d improvised from bits of salvaged clothing and slung it over one shoulder. She gained her feet, leaning awkwardly on the slender, strong branch of a tree she’d found; it was hardly a comfortable crutch, but at least it braced her weak, throbbing right leg.

  What little food there’d been on the jet had not survived in an edible condition. There’d been nothing to carry water in except a Thermos, and it was empty; she’d stuck it in the backpack. She had taken three small bottles of liquor that had miraculously survived the crash unbroken; the fourth she had poured on her thigh to splash agony on the raw, jagged flesh.

  Planning to do some hiking, she had at least packed comfortable boots, and she had a broad-brimmed hat. She had cut her jeans off at the thighs because of the wound, and found a torn but relatively intact, overlarge cotton shirt that had once been sleepwear.

  She had a penknife she always carried because her father had given it to her years before. And she had found a couple of very dull knives among the scattered remains of the Lear’s galley cutlery.

  Not much. Not much at all to spell the difference between survival and a lonely, agonizing death.

  Hobbling painfully, she turned away from the crashed jet.

  North. For want of a better choice. It was, at least for a while, downhill. She had carefully calculated the direction this morning, finding east when the sun rose and hoping she was right. She had reason now to be thankful for a lifelong habit of reading; among others, she’d read a great many “how-to” books and was especially grateful for those titles that had seemed merely ironic and amusing, considering her sheltered life-style: How to Live Off the Land; How to Cook Over an Open Fire; How Not to Be Lost in the Woods … and others. So amusing then.

  So vitally important now.

  She wished she had been a Girl Scout….

  SEVEN

  SABER TOLD HIM everything. She told him of those first days when, weakened by hunger and pain, she’d very nearly died. She told him of the desperate search for water, for food. She talked distantly of mountains, forests, lakes, loneliness. Of learning to hunt and fish, and read the signs of coming weather.

  She didn’t look at him, but into the past.

  “I found later that countless times I’d barely missed people. It was hard to travel in a straight line because of the terrain; I’d have to walk south for a day, or follow a meandering stream. When I tried to chart my journey later, I saw that at times I’d been just a mountain away from a town.

  “A part of me wanted to give up at first. And I think … that part of me died. I can remember when it happened. It was the fifth or sixth day, and I hadn’t had anything to eat. I was trying to catch a tiny fish in a stream with my hands. But it moved so quickly and I was awkward and weak. Then—somehow—I was looking down at that fish on the bank, and I felt suddenly strong. I knew then I was going to make it.”

  She dropped her eyes to the strong hand holding her own; it was white-knuckled with tension, but gentle in its touch. Meeting his gaze for the first time since she’d begun talking, she wondered at the oddly blurred look of his green eyes, the pallor beneath his tan. But he said nothing, and she went on.

  “You wondered if I was the same singer who recorded two years ago; I’m not. That girl, that weak girl. She didn’t know how to live. So she curled up inside herself and didn’t exist anymore.”

  She sighed, a breath of sound. “Once I’d learned how to survive, I was—well, proud. After a while, I learned to enjoy being alone. Really alone. The world seemed so new and fascinating. The last few months, I even avoided people once I’d found them. I just wandered.”

  Travis stared at her. He wasn’t aware of holding his breath as he gazed into those silvery eyes, as he saw what she’d kept carefully hidden until now. Behind the glaze of intelligent serenity lay the explosive power she allowed to escape only on stage, the almost primitive, driven strength that had enabled her to survive when she should have died.

  “You made it,” Travis said softly, saluting her courage. “No one helped you. No one told you what to do. A devastating crash, a terrible injury, and nothing but your hands and your wits—and you survived. You survived alone and, instead of losing yourself, you found yourself. The hothouse flower grew and flourished under the most hostile conditions possible.”

  “Did I find myself?” she asked, eyes flickering. “Or … lost part of myself? I … I regret what I lost, Travis. But I can’t regret what I found. I never knew until then how badly I wanted to live. I never knew I was strong enough to live like that.”

  “Larger than life. No wonder your voice changed,” he said slowly. “Everything but stre
ngth and determination was stripped away from you.”

  “But is that all that’s left?” Saber gazed up at him, troubled. “It used to be easier to laugh. And to cry. It used to be easier to … do what was expected of me. I never had to wonder about my place in the scheme of things. Now I wonder if the best part of me was destroyed during those months.”

  “No,” he said flatly.

  Saber smiled. “You never knew me before.”

  “I saw the pictures,” he said. “Heard the voice. That girl was a gentle, fragile creature, with no power, no passion in her voice. But you—you have the gentleness; it’s in your eyes, your soft voice. And when you sing, that passionate part of you is released.” He looked at her steadily. “That’s what puzzled me about you from the beginning. Onstage, you are explosive, powerful. You reach out and grip the hearts of thousands of people. But why … only onstage, Saber? Why do you hide that part of yourself the rest of the time?”

  She turned her eyes away from him, gazing into distance and time, or perhaps another life; she was too far away for him even to guess where she was.

  “I … When I got back, there were—people—who were troubled by what I’d become. People who regretted the loss of that girl. It seemed there was suddenly … too much of me.” Saber shook her head, blinking away those disturbing thoughts and meeting his eyes again. “Onstage, it seems right,” she finished simply.

  Travis, listening, was suddenly aware of a yearning ache within him. Though he had seen both, he had yet to hold either Saber within his heart and his arms. Instinct told him Matt Preston was the “people” troubled by Saber’s metamorphosis, and that she had tried to find a bridge linking those two parts of her. Neither one nor the other, strength disguised as stage presence and vulnerability masked by control.

  What had her manager said? That … at best her energy was an illusion and at worst a shield? That offstage she caged the jungle-cat wildness and hid behind the bars …. A perceptive man, Travis thought. But not entirely correct.

  The stage presence was the reality; it was the cage that was a manufactured illusion.

  Travis suddenly lifted her hand to his lips. “One day,” he said, “I hope you’ll realize you never have to hide anything from me. There could never be … too much of you.”

  She looked at him, her silvery eyes puzzled. “How can you be so sure?” she asked, the vulnerability peeking through. “Why is it that you … seem to understand me? Without knowing me?”

  “I love you,” he replied.

  After a moment, Saber gently pulled her hand from his grasp and rose to pace the room. She seemed distracted, troubled. “I just wanted to be free,” she murmured as if to herself. “But now I don’t know—” Suddenly she faced him, her eyes focusing on him. “I think I’ll go for a walk, Travis. D’you mind?”

  “No,” he said quietly. There was nothing else he could say.

  “It may be a long walk,” she warned, averting her eyes.

  “All right.”

  Travis watched her leave the cottage, a sick feeling of dread tightening in his chest. She would see Matt Preston, and he knew it.

  He thought of the elusive parts of Saber, wondered dimly if he were trying to chain lightning. Was he strong enough to hold such an explosive, elemental force?

  Was Matt Preston?

  Swearing softly, Travis left the cottage.

  Travis played a few sets of tennis with one of the other guests—who turned out to be a U.S. senator—and won every game. Then, after showering and changing, he went up to the main house for lunch.

  He found the artist.

  And Matt Preston.

  They were sitting together at a table near the big bay window in the dining room. Mark talking and Preston listening with a faint smile. Travis wasn’t very interested in what they were saying; their relationship seemed unimportant now.

  He made his way to the table where Cory sat, eating absently while she frowned down at a sheaf of papers.

  “Cory—”

  She looked up, still frowning. “Linens,” she said darkly. “The prices are outrageous, and we have to have them, after all.”

  “Cory, have you seen Saber?”

  The redhead nodded. “Sure. She had the cook fix her a picnic lunch and went off with it a couple of hours ago.”

  “Oh.” Travis glanced toward Preston, wondering if Saber had seen him yet. He was distracted when a waitress came to the table to take his order and automatically sat down across from Cory as he told the girl what he wanted for lunch. Not that he wanted anything, really.

  When the waitress had gone, Cory said calmly, “Your face is an open book, my friend.”

  Travis had realized that Cory was the type of woman people talked to. The green eyes were warmly interested in everything, and she had the rare gift of being able to listen. He thought fleetingly that she probably knew secrets worth a fortune.

  “Is it?” he asked lightly.

  “War and Peace,” she said, equally light.

  He abandoned the pretense. “I’ve never before wanted something I couldn’t fight for.”

  Cory seemed mildly surprised. “You can fight for Saber?”

  “How?” he demanded. “She wants time—I’m trying to give her what she wants. She tells me there are things she can’t discuss—I’m not asking.”

  “In fact,” Cory said politely, “you’re being very patient and considerate.”

  Stung by the faintly derisive gleam he caught in her eyes, Travis snapped, “What else should I be?” He sat back to allow the waitress to set his plate before him, then attacked the food, wishing it were something else.

  Cory was studying her iced tea with a reflective air. “Oh, I’m sure you’re doing the right thing, Travis,” she said. “Patience is a very endearing trait.”

  “I don’t want to lose her,” he muttered.

  “Of course not,” she said in a soothing tone.

  Travis carefully laid aside his fork. “Will you stop agreeing with me,” he said through his teeth, “and tell me what to do?”

  “What d’you want to do, Travis?” she asked.

  “I want to carry her off to our cottage and—”

  “I think I can fill in the blanks.” Cory gazed at him, smiling sweetly. “So what’s stopping you?”

  “I don’t want to—”

  “Frighten her? She’s a grown woman, you know. Of course, it might startle her just a bit. Since you’ve been so forbearing, I mean. When one gets accustomed to being treated a certain way—after asking for that treatment, mind you—sometimes it’s the very devil of a problem to straighten out.” Cory gazed into space, musing.

  He stared at her. “But if she’s not sure, and I push her—”

  “Who said anything about pushing her? We were talking about filling in the blanks. And fighting for what one wants.”

  “That isn’t pushing?”

  “Travis,” she said in a courteous tone, “there is a vast difference between a caveman and a lover. And if you don’t know that at your age, there’s no hope for you.”

  Unwillingly, he began to smile. “No wonder your book sold like hotcakes,” he murmured.

  Cory gathered up her papers. “Never mind my book,” she said sternly. “We were discussing your anemic love life.”

  “Not anemic!” he protested indignantly.

  “Oh, really? My dear man, how d’you expect Saber to know what she wants when she’s never had it? Your job is to make very certain she knows what she has been and would be missing,” Cory told him. “And if you can’t handle that—”

  “I can,” he interrupted hastily.

  Cory rose to her feet and looked down her nose at him. “We’ll see. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go and order some ridiculously expensive linens.”

  “Cory?” he said before she could turn away.

  “Yes?”

  “Thanks.”

  Green eyes gleamed at him briefly. “Don’t mention it.” Then she was threading he
r way among the tables in the dining room.

  Travis found he was hungry after all.

  And impatient to find Saber.

  Travis’s impatience grew as the day lengthened. After several hours of wandering around the grounds, he sought Cory, who was on the phone at the front desk in the main house. Judging by her exasperated expression and silence, she was on “hold” and not too pleased about it.

  She dangled the receiver in one hand as Travis approached, saying irritably, “There’s something depressing about canned music while you wait.”

  “Have you seen Saber?”

  “You have a one-track mind.”

  “Cory.”

  She sighed. “She returned the picnic basket about an hour ago, then went back out. I don’t know where she is.”

  “I’ll find her,” he said, turning away.

  “Well, if you don’t find her immediately,” Cory called after him plaintively, “would you please contain your panthering? You’ve made three of my other guests nervous.”

  He lifted a hand in acknowledgment as he left the house, wondering if his impatient wanderings were really disturbing anyone. Not that he cared; he just wanted to find Saber.

  The only measure of comfort he found during the long afternoon was that Saber was not with Matt Preston. The billionaire remained in plain view all the time, posing for Mark’s eager sketching as they sat near a whitewashed fence to the left of the main house.

  As a last resort, Travis followed the path Saber had taken the day before. The sun was going down when he finally admitted defeat and made his way past the house and toward the cottage paths. Absently he noted that artist and subject had decided to call it a day and that the grounds were nearly deserted; the guests were probably getting ready for dinner.

  The discreet shrubbery lighting had not yet come on, and the path was dim, but Travis had no difficulty making out the two people standing before the cottage he shared with Saber. He stopped in his tracks, unnoticed by either of them. Good manners might have demanded that he announce his presence or else go away: he did neither.