Tainted Gold (4 page)

“Thank you.” Quillen shut the door, turned around, and leaned against it for support. “It was my grandmother’s.”

“How many apartments are there?” he asked, walking toward the tiled Victorian fireplace.

“Six, including this one.”

With one hand resting on the oak mantel, he looked at her over his shoulder and grinned. “You wouldn’t happen to have a vacancy, would you?”

“No, sorry. Most of my tenants have been here for years.”

“Too bad.” His grin dimmed momentarily, then flashed again. “How about a roommate? Need one?”

Oh, Lord, give me strength, she prayed, then answered lightly, “’Fraid not.”

“Well, that’s my second strike, so I think I’ll quit while I’m behind.” He let his fingers trail the length of the mantel, then smiled as he came toward her. “Since you look good enough to be dessert, you must be ready.”

“Just let me get my jacket,” she answered, and fled toward her bedroom.

Partially closing the door behind her, Quillen collapsed on the foot of her bed as her little inner voice spoke words of encouragement. Hang in there, kid, you’re doing great, it told her, sounding uncannily like a corner man in a boxing match. Okay, so he looks like a tall, dark version of Robert Redford with a healthy dash of Cary Grant thrown in for good measure. So what? He’s probably married or an ax murderer.

“Oh, shut up,” Quillen muttered, picking up the fatigue-styled jacket that matched her slacks.

She crossed the room quickly and smiled as she pulled the door open. Tucker stood beside her table gazing at the painting on her board. He looked up as she entered.

“Quillen, this is wonderful. You’re very talented.”

“Oh, thanks,” she replied lightly to cover the embarrassment she always felt when someone complimented her work. “But it’s very rough. I’ve just started the brown line.”

Joining him beside the table, she turned on the Luxo lamp mounted on the top edge of
her board. Its brilliant circle of high-intensity light warmed the surface of the heavy vellum stock and showed a lone man standing on a craggy mountaintop, a sword in one hand, a shield in the other.

“How come he doesn’t have a face?” Tucker asked.

“I haven’t found a model for him yet,” she answered, and added silently, until tonight.

“Do you use real people?”

“Sometimes. It depends on how much information I get. If I’m lucky, the publisher sends me a copy of the book galleys or the manuscript, but usually I just get character sketches which are pretty brief.”

“How about my face?” he suggested. “Think it’d suit this guy?”

“I was just thinking the same thing,” she admitted.

“No, not
this
face.” He grimaced and dug in his pocket again. “I meant Realgar’s face.”

“Oh,
please
,” she begged, crinkling her nose and staying his hand.

“Hey, come on. Realgar’s face has a lot of character.”

“His face,” she told him tartly, as she switched off the lamp, “has a lot of wrinkles.”

“Wrinkles wouldn’t look good on a warrior, huh?”

“He’s not a warrior,” she corrected him with a soft-voiced smile. “He’s a prince.”

“Oh, well then,” he said expansively, as he laid his hand on her shoulder and steered her toward the door. “I’m flattered.”

Legs don’t fail me now, Quillen prayed as his fingers softly traced the sleeve seam of her gray silk blouse, and a sensitized chill laced across her shoulder blades. When they reached the tan wood-paneled Jeep Wagoneer parked at the curb in front of her house, he eased up beside her to open the passenger door and his body pressed against hers from hip to elbow as he opened the door. He offered her his hand. Gratefully, Quillen took it and let him help her up onto the high seat. She drew a deep, steadying breath as he closed the door and rounded the nose of the Jeep.

This is proof positive, she thought, that I
don’t go out enough and that I spend too much time alone. Look at me, for heaven’s sake, I’m trembling like a teenager on her first date.

“I thought we’d have dinner at The Cascades,” he said as he got in behind the wheel, inserted the key in the ignition, and started the engine. “All right with you?”

“Good choice. It’s the best restaurant in town.”

“So I’m told.” He smiled at her as he put the Jeep in gear and wheeled it away from the curb.

“It’s real easy to get to from here,” Quillen told him, leaning toward the middle of the seat to point out directions. “At the corner turn right, cut through town—”

“Or turn left, take the highway to the junction, and turn right,” he finished.

“But that’s the long way around,” Quillen objected.

“True,” he agreed, “but it’s the scenic route.”

“For someone who’s new in town,” she observed dryly, “you certainly know your way around awfully well.”

He glanced her a smile as he braked the Jeep at the corner stop sign. “It pays to ask questions,” he said, and looked away to check the oncoming traffic.

For just a second as he turned his head, Quillen could’ve sworn she saw him frown. It reminded her of the shadow she thought she’d seen on his face earlier, but once he had maneuvered the Jeep around the corner and looked back at her, his smile was as bright as ever.

While he drove, Tucker kept up a running commentary on his impressions of Colorado in general and Cassil Springs in particular. His rapid, enthusiastic endorsements hardly gave Quillen an opportunity to comment, but she didn’t mind. She enjoyed listening, and turned sideways in the seat to watch his face as he talked.

By osmosis, it seemed to her, she absorbed his buoyant good spirits and the peace and tranquility of the gold and orange hills lining the highway. It’s just that it’s been a long, crazy day, she told herself, trying to account for her jittery, girlish reactions to Tucker as she thought back briefly to her nasty, early-morning confrontation with Desmond Cassil.

“What a wonderful idea it was to come this way,” she blurted out suddenly. “We didn’t have to go through town or anywhere near city hall or Cassil Construction.”

The Jeep lurched suddenly and veered over the yellow line. Quillen grabbed the armrest on the door, but Tucker instantly righted the Wagoneer and reached across the seat with his right hand to pat Quillen’s left knee reassuringly.

“Sorry, just a squirrel,” he told her, then grinned. “I also swerve for
dogs, cats, and beautiful blond artists with gold in their green eyes.”

“How about mountain lions?” she teased.

“Especially mountain lions,” he replied emphatically. “But I swerve in the opposite direction.”

The Cascades nestled in a conifer-ringed nook in the hills on a blacktopped lane not far from the junction of the state highway and the county line road. It was built of mortared logs, with a wide veranda, stone chimneys, and a shake-shingled roof. The paved lot surrounding the sprawling building was not quite half full, but Tucker cruised slowly past several empty slots between diagonally parked cars. If Quillen hadn’t known better, she’d have sworn he was looking for a particular automobile or license plate rather than a place to park the Jeep. Finally, he found a spot that suited him near the rear of the lot, a fair distance from the overhead lights which were just beginning to glow in the late, daylight-savings-time dusk, and smiled apologetically at Quillen as he switched off the engine.

“Hope you don’t mind walking. I hate to get my doors pinged.”

“I know exactly how you feel,” she sympathized. “My Blazer is only three months old, and I park carefully everywhere I go.”

The early evening air was cool, and Tucker helped Quillen into her jacket as they walked toward the door. His hand settled on her shoulder again, and he rubbed his thumb along the seam as he’d done earlier. Her reaction this time wasn’t as intense, just a warm, pleasurable glow that matched the scent of evergreen needles and hickory smoke on the alpine air.

Once inside, he slid his hand down her arm and cupped her elbow as they crossed the large, pine-planked foyer lit by softly glowing brass lanterns hung from the beamed ceiling and mounted on the split-log walls. Several couples and parties were waiting for tables, but Tucker led her straight to the hostess’s lectern.

“Evening,” he said to the brunette behind the podium. “Ferris. I have a reservation for two, please.”

“Yes, sir,” she answered as she picked up two menus. “Right this way, please.”

“See?” he said in Quillen’s ear as they followed the hostess down a latticed corridor. “It pays to call ahead.”

“Is this also part of your setup?”

“Of course.”

“What would you have done if I’d said no?”

He grinned at her and squeezed her elbow. “The possibility never entered my head.”

“Watch it,” she cautioned him, only half-kidding. “You’re being brazen and arrogant again.”

The hostess led them to a blue, linen-covered table placed before a diamond-paned window in one of the small, intimate dining rooms. Smiling, she told them to enjoy their dinner and returned to her station. Tucker helped Quillen out of her jacket and held her chair for her.

“At this point we can do one of two things,” he said as he sat down across from her. He folded his hands on the closed menu and looked at her soberly over the flower-ringed candle flickering in the middle of the table. “You can either read me the menu, or I can put my glasses on and risk shattering the erotic fantasies of me which I hope have been occupying your thoughts all day.”

Mimicking his serious expression, Quillen, too, folded her hands and leaned forward earnestly. “Which would
you
rather do?”

“I’d rather take my chances and put on my glasses,” he admitted. “I find it very embarrassing to be read to like a child, and it always gives me an insatiable craving for zwieback.”

“Then by all means put them on.”

“Thank you.” He nodded gravely and withdrew a pair of brown tortoiseshell glasses from the inside pocket of his tan leather jacket. He slid them over the bridge of his nose, then bent his elbows on the table edge. “How are your fantasies doing?”

“Still alive.”

“So my glasses make me look sexy, right?”

“No, I wouldn’t say that,” Quillen answered thoughtfully, cocking her head to one side. “They make you look very scholarly.”

“That’s it.” He made a face and jerked his glasses off by the right earpiece. “Read me the menu and pass the zwieback.”

“What’s wrong with looking scholarly? You are a scientist.”

“Shh.” He pressed his index finger to his lips. “Don’t let that get around town, it’ll ruin my reputation.” He put his glasses on again, glanced out the window at the majestic view of the craggy, blue-gray peaks rising above the trees, some already snow-capped, and did a double take. “So
those
are the Rocky Mountains!”

“Uh, Tucker, about that squirrel on the road—”

“Don’t worry, Quillen.” He reached across the table and squeezed her wrist. “I
don’t need my glasses to drive, just to see.”

“You’re farsighted, aren’t you?”

“Like an eagle. I can hit the bull’s-eye with a bow and arrow at a hundred yards, but I can’t read small print without these.” He tapped one finger on the brown temple of his glasses. “Occupational hazard of being a scholar.”

“You should meet my friend Cal Wilson. He’s into archery. He also performs at the festival.”

“Is he the big, tall blond guy who looks like the Jolly Green Giant?”

“That’s Cal.”

“We’ve met,” he answered shortly, and opened his menu. “Would you like a drink?”

That funny little shadow flickered over his face again—or was it just that the candle wick burned into a pool of hot wax and chose that moment to flare and smoke? Quillen couldn’t decide. The only thing she knew for sure was that she’d said something wrong, although she couldn’t imagine what.

Throughout dinner, Tucker fluctuated between manic and depressive. One minute he was making her laugh as he told her about the first magic kit his mother had bought him when he was eight, and the next he was gazing distractedly out the window as if he were weighing a heavy decision. Twice he turned toward her, his mouth open to speak, but both times he firmly pressed his lips together and picked up his wineglass instead.

By the time they finished dessert, his abrupt mood swings had altered the tone of the evening from festive to funereal. Quillen was totally perplexed and convinced that it was all somehow her fault. See? her little voice taunted. I told you he was too good to be true.

“Oh shut up,” she replied, unconsciously out loud.

“Hmm?” Tucker’s elbow slipped off the table as he turned away from the window.

“Nothing.” She smiled wanly and folded her napkin on the table.

“Well, that was delicious.” He smiled back at her brightly, but to Quillen it seemed forced. “Coffee?”

“No, thank you.”

“Shall we go, then?”

“Please.”

He signaled the waitress. After she had returned his change on a black plastic tray, he rose and held Quillen’s chair. This time, as he helped her slip into her jacket, she looked purposely down at his hand on her left shoulder. There was no telltale band of lighter skin on his ring finger, but that didn’t prove anything.