“I’ve always wanted to be snowbound.”
“Will you let me finish a sentence?” she demanded irritably.
“Sorry.” Golden eyes that were fathoms deep and impossibly limpid gazed into hers. “You were saying?”
With a tremendous effort Brooke tore her gaze away and stared into the fire. Why did she suddenly feel that she’d been pulled into those golden pools and sucked under? “I forgot,” she murmured. Truthfully. What had she been about to say? Protest. That was it. She’d been about to protest his hand-holding business. But it didn’t seem important now.
Feeling mildly pleased by his victory in the small and silent skirmish, Cody surged ahead in an effort to hold on to his lead. “Are we completely cut off from civilization, barring the radio and the Sno-Cat?” he asked interestedly.
Absently Brooke said, “Until they repair the phone line. Since you fixed the generator, we can do without electricity from town. And we have enough provisions to last the winter; I always stock in the fall.”
“How long d’you think the storm will last?”
“Could be days.” Her own words prompted misgivings, but Brooke ignored them; worrying wouldn’t change anything. “Storm systems can be tricky up here in the mountains. It’s almost as if they turn in on themselves and grow more powerful instead of weaker.”
Cody looked at her for a long moment, suddenly realizing something. “There are no guests coming next week, are there?” he asked gently.
Brooke wasn’t surprised; she shook her head slightly. “No. Because of the weather, I rarely take guests this time of year. I just told you that hoping you’d leave.”
“And now?”
“And now what?” She refused to look at him.
“Are you glad I stayed?”
Lightly she asked, “Fishing?”
“Fishing.”
Brooke was afraid to meet his clear golden eyes, afraid that his gaze would pull the truth out of her. His very presence was tugging at her now, demanding truth. Demanding honesty. And she wanted to scream at him suddenly for demanding anything of her.
“Never mind, Brooke.” Intuitively Cody sensed her abrupt resistance, the flare of emotions. He silently cursed himself for pushing; they had a long way to go yet. He squeezed her hand lightly and then released it. “It’s been a—long and eventful day. Why don’t we turn in?”
Silent, she rose to her feet, reaching for the crutches and handing them to him. Her hand felt strangely alone without the warmth of his, cold and alone. But she didn’t want to think of that. She concentrated on the wall of the wind and on the wolf lying on the bearskin rug.
“He’ll be alone again,” she murmured.
On his feet and braced by the crutches, Cody looked down at Phantom. “He’ll be all right. He knows where his water is, and he knows we’re in the house with him. He’ll be fine, Brooke.”
She nodded, preceding Cody from the room. He left her at her door with a quiet good night, going on down the hall to his own room. Brooke closed the door and leaned back against it for a moment, then automatically began getting ready for bed.
Preparing to slide between the sheets, Brooke paused for a moment and looked toward her door. She went over and opened it, discovering Phantom standing out in the hall. He looked up at her, his tail waving once. Brooke glanced down the hall toward Cody’s bedroom, then stepped back to admit the wolf.
“Come on in,” she invited softly. “We just won’t tell Cody.”
Moments later, lulled by the steady wail of the wind outside and by the quiet presence of Phantom on the rug by her bed, Brooke slipped into a deep and dreamless sleep.
FIVE
A WEEK PASSED, and then another. That first blizzard lasted three days and, with Nature apparently in one of her infrequent fits of regularity, was followed by overnight storms every three days for those two weeks. Cody’s repair job on the generator held; they had plenty of power and food. Insisting that Cody remain inside and not risk the treacherous footing outdoors, Brooke made the daily trips to feed Mister and bring in wood.
Experience of Montana winters had bred self-sufficiency and strength in Brooke; she coped easily with the outside chores and accepted the violence of the weather with tolerance.
They quickly discovered that Phantom was a thoughtful and considerate houseguest; after the first couple of days of needed rest, he politely requested to go outside once or twice a day, going to one or the other of his human companions and nudging gently before heading pointedly for the back door. The wolf was more adept at swinging his splinted leg now, and seemed to have no trouble coping with the uneven drifts of snow outside. While one of his companions waited at the open door, Phantom would disappear around the corner of the house. He would return within moments, then stand patiently inside the kitchen while his thick coat was brushed free of clinging snow.
He was a silent creature, never whining or yelping as a domesticated dog would have done. Only a faint rumbling growl would emerge from his throat when, after a meal, he’d settle down before the fire in the den with his humans for company.
Brooke and Cody, both instinctively companionable with animals, spoke casually to the wolf as if he were a third person. And every night, after Cody’s bedroom door had closed, Phantom would make his way silently to Brooke’s door and await admittance. Brooke always left the door slightly open, and Phantom was always back in the den or kitchen whenever Cody got up in the morning.
As for Brooke and Cody, the enforced intimacy of being virtually snowbound together with only a silent wolf and each other for company would have either drawn them closer together or else set them inexorably apart.
It drew them together.
Resolutely patient and undemanding, Cody set about teaching Brooke to trust him. They played chess, checkers and Chinese checkers, and Monopoly. They carried on ridiculous conversations in which quotations substituted for dialogue and became progressively more obscure and absurd. Both shared a passion for mysteries, and together they would construct plots and spend hours discussing possible solutions. They talked about everything two different people would find interesting.
They didn’t talk about Brooke’s dragons.
More than once during those days, Brooke would have continued her story if Cody had asked her to. He didn’t. Cody was waiting for a sign. A physical sign.
He had continued to touch Brooke casually and undemandingly. He held her hand, touched her cheek lightly, tugged playfully at the ponytail she occasionally wore. He slipped an arm around her shoulders whenever they sat side by side, hugged her with first one arm and then gradually both. And always, Cody waited for the stiffening that warned him to withdraw from Brooke’s private space.
Cody always respected her instinctive reaction. That respect and his patience began to pay off during the second week; Brooke gradually came to accept his touch without stiffening at all. She accepted as casually as he gave, becoming more and more relaxed in his company.
But still Cody waited. Knowing without being told that Brooke had known few demonstrative people in her life, he realized that when she finally reached out for someone—if even with an automatic, casual touch—it would be the first step in learning how to open up to another person. And Cody wanted to be that other person.
The breakthrough, when it came, went unnoticed by Brooke. But Cody was so jubilant that he only just stopped himself from laughing out loud.
“I washed the dishes,” Cody reported cheerfully as Brooke came into the den after making her midaftemoon trip down to the barn to feed Mister.
“You did that for me?” Brooke patted him lightly on the head as she came around the couch to kneel in front of the coffee table. “How sweet.” She frowned thoughtfully down at the Monopoly game her trip to the barn had interrupted.
Just a little thing—a pat on the head. But it was the first time Brooke had touched him casually and absentmindedly and, to Cody, it was the reward for many restless nights. “Your move,” he managed to remind her easily.
>
“I’ve got a feeling,” she said darkly, “that I’ll end up in jail.” Cautiously she rolled the dice.
And had to go directly to jail.
Cody lifted an eyebrow at her. “Precognition?”
Brooke sighed. “No. Just experience with sheer bad luck.”
Cody made a “tut-tut” sound. “Your luck’ll turn. I’ve got a feeling.”
“Precognition?” she asked dryly.
“Horse sense.”
“Ah. I thought only horses had that.”
“Sheathe your claws, you little cat.”
“Was I clawing? I beg your pardon, I’m sure.”
“You’ve been clawing from the start,” Cody pointed out, wounded. “The moment we met, you knocked me flat on my—”
“Language!”
“…ego.” Cody lifted the other brow at her. “And you’ve been sticking pins in my ego ever since.”
“I never!”
“Oh, yes. In fact, you see before you a quivering mass of insecurity. A bundle of nerves. A man bordering on severe trauma.”
Brooke blinked at him. “Goodness. Did I do all that?”
“Yes.”
“Sorry.”
“Sorry, she says. The woman totally destroys a man, and she says she’s sorry. As if that’ll help. Right, Phantom?” The wolf, lying on the bearskin rug near Brooke, thumped his tail once and watched them out of sleepy yellow eyes.
Reasonably Brooke said, “Well, I don’t know what else I could say. How, by the way, did I commit this act of destruction?”
Forced to the point, Cody neatly evaded it. “You’ve broken my spirit,” he accused mournfully.
“How?” she repeated.
“Here I am,” he said sadly, “prepared to do battle in the best dragonslaying tradition, and the fair lady won’t even allow me to defend her.”
Since this kind of playful tiptoeing-around-the-subject had been going on for nearly a week, Brooke was accustomed to it. “I’ll let you get me out of jail,” she offered helpfully.
“Poor substitute,” Cody sniffed with disdain.
“C’mon, be princely. Get me out of jail.”
“Maybe I’d better leave you there; you can’t run away from me now.”
“I couldn’t run far anyway. The weather, you know.”
“This is true.” Cody reflected for a moment. “All right, then. I’ll trade you the get-out-of-jail card.”
“Trade it for what?”
“Chapter Two,” he said lightly.
Absently toying with the dice, Brooke looked up suddenly. She saw the golden eyes resting on her in gentle inquiry, felt no demand from Cody. Only a quiet question. With exaggerated care she placed the dice on the gameboard and clasped her hands together on her thighs. “It’s time, huh?” she murmured.
“I think so. But I won’t push if you’re not ready.”
She gazed at him steadily for a moment, her green eyes naked in their uncertainty. Then she squared her shoulders. “All right.”
Cody leaned back on the couch, deliberately withdrawing from even the most tenuous contact with her. She would reach for him this time, he thought. He hoped. He needed her to reach for him. Needed her to need him. “What happened after your mother discovered you were psychic?” he asked.
Brooke took a deep breath. “My teacher told her about the research being done at some of the universities and about the parapsychological institutes. And I suppose she meant to be helpful when she told Mother that some of the institutes paid…subjects…to be studied. Mother contacted some of the places, and the next thing I knew, we were on a plane.
“That was the beginning. Most of the researchers were kind to me, and they made it all seem like a game.” Her voice dropping to the gruff, detached tone Cody remembered from their first meeting, Brooke recalled the “games.”
“I’m thinking of a toy, Brooke, what is it? There’s a man in the next room, Brooke; what picture is he drawing? I’m going to ask you a question, Brooke, in my head; I want you to answer it out loud. I’m thinking, Brooke; what am I thinking? These cards all have pictures, Brooke; I want you to tell me what the picture on each card is before I turn it over.”
Brooke closed her eyes for a moment, then went on. “I was…studied off and on for years. And when the reputable institutes and universities had learned all they could from me, Mother found some that were less reputable. That’s when the publicity began. Pictures and interviews and poor, foolish people—believing that I could look into their minds and somehow straighten out their troubled lives. People who were afraid of me and yet wanted to…touch me. Staring. Always staring at me.”
Rising suddenly to her feet, Brooke began to move restlessly around the room. Touching an object here and there, not looking at Cody. Still speaking in that gruff, detached voice.
“And then Mother met a self-styled promoter. He handled mostly carnivals and sideshows. When he looked at me, he saw a gold mine. To this day I think he believed that I was just a ten-year-old kid with a gift for tricking people. He didn’t believe in anything he couldn’t spend or put into the bank, but he knew how to attract people to a show. And he built a show around me.”
His pent-up anger needing release, Cody muttered, “How could your mother allow—”
Brooke laughed painfully. “Allow? She loved every minute of it. We went from small town to small town just like a circus. I was billed as a mentalist and stood up on stage reading minds. The promoter and Mother were making money; they were happy. The crowds that came to the show were always a mixed lot. There was always a heckler or two in the audience who called me a phony, and some called me a witch or worse. My…gift was hailed as being from God and cursed as being from the devil. Oh, I heard it all.”
“But the authorities. School,” Cody said, trying to find something acceptable, something normal in her life.
Staring into the case containing the ivory pieces her uncle had collected, Brooke shrugged. “Occasionally a concerned citizen would get suspicious and call the police. But the promoter was canny and Mother always had good instincts; we usually stayed one jump ahead of the truant officer. There was always another little town over the horizon. Another audience.”
Whirling suddenly, Brooke came to stand at the end of the couch, staring down at Cody with bitter, painful memories in her green eyes. “Can you imagine what it was like? Standing up in front of all those people in that ridiculous long black robe…voices battering at me as if I were in the middle of a wild crowd—but they were inside my head. I couldn’t get away from them, I couldn’t shut them out. My head hurt all the time, and sometimes I felt as if I’d explode. The people were afraid of me, and I didn’t know why. They were afraid of me, and sometimes they hated me because they didn’t understand…and I didn’t understand either.”
Her eyes burned with unshed tears and memories. “They were afraid of me, but they were also hungry—always demanding, always wanting more. And I couldn’t shut them out.”
So still that he might have been formed of stone, Cody looked up at her and forced himself to wait.
Barely seeing him through the hazy wash of tears, Brooke was consciously aware for the first time of a hunger of her own. A need. A need for the human contact she’d denied herself for years. Memories of those faceless, demanding eyes rose up before her, causing something deep inside her to shy away from thoughts of contact. But then, as she blinked back the tears and the memories, she saw Cody’s familiar eyes gazing steadily at her. Golden eyes full of compassion and understanding, and a muted anger for her and for what she’d gone through as a child. Without thought her hand reached out jerkily toward him, like the hand of a puppet, its strings sharply tugged.
The almost helpless gesture won an immediate response from Cody. He caught her hand in his own, drawing her down gently until she was sitting close beside him. He slipped one arm around her shoulders comfortingly, still holding her hand. And in his fierce determination to keep his own physical desires at ba
y, Cody found that he himself was more open, more receptive to another’s feelings that he’d ever been before. His intuition had picked up the signals Brooke had unconsciously sent, revealing her dragons to him, stripped of their mystique and of half their power.
“You’re punishing yourself, honey,” he said softly.
She looked at him, uneasy, aware on some level of her mind that Cody had somehow learned something about her that she didn’t know consciously herself. “I—I don’t know what you mean,” she murmured, grateful for the warmth of his nearness and yet fearful that it was the first step toward the demands that had driven her to hide inside herself.
Cody hesitated for a split second, knowing that what he was about to say would cut, and cut deeply. But he realized that this wound, at least, had to be reopened to allow the poison of bitterness to escape. He only wished that he wasn’t the one forced to use the knife. Not when she’d only just learned to trust him.
Carefully he said, “You talked about the audience always being hungry, always demanding, and I’m sure that’s true. But it was your mother who demanded the most, wasn’t it, Brooke? She was the one who demanded that you step out on a stage and…perform.”
Restlessly Brooke tried to draw away from him, finding that he wouldn’t let her go this time. “We had no money,” she murmured tightly. “My mother had to find some way of supporting us.”
“Stop defending her,” Cody ordered flatly. “She exploited you. She exploited you and you hate her for that.”
“It isn’t natural to hate your mother,” Brooke whispered, staring straight in front of her and sitting stiffly at Cody’s side.
“That’s why you’re punishing yourself,” he said quietly. When she turned her head almost reluctantly to look at him, Cody added, “You think it isn’t natural, that children are supposed to love their parents unreservedly. You felt her hate when you were too young to understand it, but you kept fighting it. You kept trying to win her approval. And when she demanded that you step out onto a stage and open your mind to the worst and most degrading kind of abuse, you did it. Because you didn’t want her to hate you. By doing that, you ended up hating her.”