“Mmm. Now open your mouth and say ‘ah.’ “
“Ahhh.”
He tilted her head toward the light.
“What do you think?” she finally asked.
“You definitely have an infection, but I’m not sure it’s coming from your ear.”
She had an infection?
He slipped his hand just under her waistband and pressed her abdomen. “Does that hurt?”
“No.”
“Good.” He turned to reach for one of her ankles and moved it slightly apart from the other. “Lie still while I check an alternate pulse.”
She lay very still. Her forehead creased with worry. How could she have an infection? She felt fine. Then she remembered she’d had a slight headache the other morning, and sometimes she felt a little dizzy when she stood up too quickly. Maybe she was sick and didn’t even know it.
She regarded him with concern. “Is my pulse normal?”
“Shh.” He moved the other ankle so that her legs were separated and then gently clasped both her knees through her sweat suit. “Have you had any joint pain recently?”
Had she? “I don’t think so.”
“Usually, I’d expect joint pain.”
“You would?”
He flipped up her sweatshirt and touched her breast. “Any tenderness here?”
“No.”
His fingers brushed her nipple, and although his touch seemed impersonal, her eyes narrowed with suspicion. Then she relaxed as she noted the intense concentration on his face. He was being thoroughly professional; there wasn’t a hint of lechery in what he was doing.
He touched her other breast. “How about here?” he asked.
“No.”
He pulled down her sweatshirt, modestly covering her, and she was ashamed of herself for having doubted him.
He looked thoughtful. “I’m afraid . . .”
“What?”
He covered her hand with his and gave it a comforting pat. “Daisy, I’m not a gynecologist, and normally I wouldn’t do his, but I’d like to check you. Do you mind?”
“Mind?” She hesitated. “Well, no, I guess not I mean, we’re married, and you’ve seen—but what do you think is wrong?”
“I’m fairly certain it’s nothing, but glandular problems can be tricky, and I just want to make sure.” He slipped his thumbs into the elastic waistband of her sweatpants. She lifted her hips and let him remove the baggy bottoms, along with her panties.
As he tossed her clothing aside, her suspicions once again prickled, only to abate when she realized he wasn’t even looking at her. Instead, he seemed distracted, as if he were lost in thought. What if she had some rare disease, and he was trying to figure out how to tell her?
“Would you like me to drape you with the sheet?” he asked.
Her cheeks flamed. “You—uh—don’t have to. I mean, under the circumstances . . .”
“All right, then.” He pushed gently on her knees. “Tell me if I hurt.”
He didn’t hurt. Not one bit. As he examined her, her eyelids drifted shut, and she began to float. He had the most amazing touch. Gentle. Exquisite. A brush here. A tender probe there. Delicious. His fingers left a soft, moist trail. His mouth—mouth!
Her head shot up off the pillow. “You pervert!” she screeched.
He gave a roar of laughter and fell back on the bed, clutching his sides.
“You’re not a doctor!”
“I told you that! You’re so gullible.” He laughed harder. She threw herself at him, and he fended her off with one hand while he pulled down his zipper with the other. “You deserved it, you little faker, with your phony ear infection.”
Her eyes narrowed as he tugged at his jeans. “What are you doing?”
“There’s only one cure for what ails you, sweetheart. And I’m just the man to deliver it.”
His eyes sparkled with laughter, and he looked so pleased with himself that her irritation faded and she had to work hard at maintaining her scowl. “I’m going to kill you!”
“Not till I collect my fee.” His jeans made a soft whish as they hit the floor along with his briefs. With a wolfish grin, he covered her with his body and entered her in one smooth thrust.
“Deviant! You awful . . . ah . . . you . . . horrible . . . mmm . . .”
His smile stretched from one ear to the other. “You were saying?”
She fought against her rising excitement, determined not to give in to him too easily. “I thought there was something wrong with me, and—and all the time you were—ahh . . . you were copping a cheap feel!”
“Watch your language.”
She moaned and grasped his hips in her hands. “Coming from someone who just violated his Hippocratic oath . . .”
He gave a bark of laughter that sent vibrations of pleasure rippling deep within her. As she looked up into his face, she saw that the tense, dangerous stranger she had married had disappeared. In his place was a man she had never seen before—painfully young, joyously carefree. Her heart sang.
His eyes had begun to glaze. He tugged at her bottom lip with his own.
“Oh, Alex . . .”
“Quiet, love. Be quiet and let me love you.”
His words made her pulse leap. She matched his rhythm and clung to him while tears filled her eyes. In another few hours she would have to face him in the arena, but for now, there was no danger, only delight. It danced through her body, filled her heart, and exploded in a canopy of stars.
Afterward, as she stood in the bathroom fixing her makeup for the next performance, her feeling of well-being collapsed. No matter what she wanted to believe, there was no real intimacy between them as long as Alex had so many secrets.
“You want some coffee before we go back out in the rain?” he called out.
She set down her lipstick and left the bathroom. He stood at the kitchen counter wearing only his jeans, with one of their yellow bath towels looped around his neck. She tucked her fingers into the pockets of his terry cloth robe. “What I want is for you to sit down and tell me what you do when you’re not traveling with the circus.”
“Are we back to that again?”
“I don’t think we’ve ever really left it. I’ve had enough, Alex. I want to know.”
“If this is about what I did to you . . .”
“That just brought it on. I don’t want any more mystery. If you’re not a medical doctor or a vet, just what kind of doctor are you?”
“How about a dentist?”
He looked so hopeful that she nearly smiled. “You’re not a dentist. I know for a fact that you don’t floss every day.”
“I do, too.”
“Liar. Every other day, max. And you’re definitely not a shrink, although you’re certainly neurotic enough.”
He picked up his coffee mug from the counter and stared down into its depths. “I’m a college professor, Daisy.”
“You’re what?”
He looked up at her. “I’m a professor of art history at a small private college in Connecticut. I’m on sabbatical right now.”
She’d prepared herself for a lot of things, but not this, although now that she thought about it, she shouldn’t have been so surprised. There had been subtle clues. She remembered Heather saying that Alex once had taken her to a gallery and talked to her about the pictures. There were the art magazines that she thought had been left behind by the trailer’s former tenants and a number of references he’d made to famous paintings.
She walked over to stand next to him. “Why did you make it such a mystery?”
He shrugged and took a sip.
“Let me guess. This is just like what you did with the trailer, isn’t it? Choosing this place instead of something nicer? You knew I’d be a lot more comfortable with a college professor than with Alexi the Cossack, and you didn’t want me to be comfortable.”
“I couldn’t let you lose sight of how different we are. I’m still a circus performer, Daisy. Alexi the Cossack is a big pa
rt of who I am.”
“But you’re also a college professor.”
“It’s a creaky old campus.”
She remembered the threadbare college T-shirt she sometimes slept in. “Did you go to the University of North Carolina?”
“I did my undergraduate work there, and I got my master’s and doctorate at NYU.”
“It’s hard to take in.”
He brushed his thumb over her chin. “It doesn’t change anything. It’s still raining like a son of a bitch, we have a show to put on, and you look so beautiful right now that all I want to do is take that robe off you and start playing doctor all over again.”
She forced herself to put aside her worries for the moment and enjoy the present. “You’re a brave man.”
“And why’s that?”
“Because this time you’re going to be the patient.”
That night, halfway through the evening performance, the wind picked up. As the nylon sides of the big top began to swell and deflate like a great bellows, Alex ignored Sheba’s assurances that the storm would blow over and ordered Jack to stop the show.
The ringmaster made the announcement in a low-key manner, telling the audience they needed to take down the big top as a safety measure and guaranteeing everyone a full refund. While Sheba fumed and added up the lost revenue, Alex instructed the musicians to play a lively tune to speed the crowd’s departure.
Some of the audience members wanted to hang back in the top’s marquee to keep dry, and they had to be urged along. As he helped with the evacuation, he kept thinking about getting to Daisy and making sure she’d followed his orders to sit in the truck until the wind abated.
What if she hadn’t done as he said? What if she was out there in the wind right now looking for someone’s lost child or helping an elderly person get to a car? Damn it, and wouldn’t that be just like her! She had more heart than common sense, and she wouldn’t think twice about her own safety if she thought someone was in trouble.
A cold sweat broke out on his skin, and it took all his self-control to look reassuring as the crowd filed through. He kept telling himself she’d be all right and even managed a smile as he remembered the dirty trick he’d played on her.
He’d laughed more in the short time they’d been together than he had in his entire life. He never knew what she’d do next; she made him feel like the kid he’d never been. What would he do when she was gone? He refused to think about it. He’d cope, that was all, just as he’d coped with everything else. Life had made him a loner, and that was the way he liked it.
As the last of the crowd left the big top, the wind grew more fierce, and the wet nylon whipped and billowed. Alex was afraid if they didn’t get the top down quickly, they’d lose it, and he moved from one group of workers to another, issuing orders and helping loosen the jumper ropes to get the quarter poles down. One of the workers released a rope too soon, and it lashed him across the cheek, but he’d felt the lash before, and he shrugged off the pain.
Cold rain trickled down his neck and blinded his eyes, wind plastered his slicker to his chest, and all the time he worked, he thought about Daisy. You’d better be in that truck, angel. You’d better be keeping yourself safe. Safe for me.
Daisy huddled in the center of Sinjun’s cage with the tiger curled around her and the rain pommeling them through the bars. Alex hadn’t trusted the safety of the trailer in the storm, and he’d told her to go to the truck until the wind abated. She’d been on her way there when she’d heard Sinjun’s wild roar and known the storm had terrified him.
He’d been left outside, exposed to the elements, while the workers attended to the big top. At first she’d stood in front of the cage, but the lashing of the wind and rain made it hard to stay upright. He grew frantic when she tried to find some shelter beneath the cage, and that left her with no other choice but to climb inside with him.
Now he curled around her like a big old pussy cat. She felt the vibration of his quiet breathing through her back, and the warmth from his body drove out the chill. As she huddled closer against his fur, she felt nearly as peaceful as she’d been only hours before when she lay in Alex’s arms.
Daisy wasn’t in his truck.
She wasn’t in the trailer.
Alex ran through the lot, frantically searching for her. What had she done this time? Where had she gone? Damn it, this was all his fault! He knew how scatterbrained she could be, and he should have watched her better. The moment the storm broke, he should have carried her to the truck and tied her to the wheel.
He’d always prided himself on having a cool head in a crisis, but now he couldn’t think. The storm had eased soon after they’d gotten the top down, and he’d spent a few minutes making a cursory check for damage. Some flying debris had hit the windshield of one of the trucks, and a concession wagon had overturned. They had some ripped nylon, but they didn’t seem to have suffered any serious harm, so he set out to find her. When he’d reached his truck, however, she hadn’t been there, and that was when his panic had set in.
Why hadn’t he watched her better? She was too fragile for this life, too trusting. God, don’t let anything happen to her.
On the other side of the lot, he saw a flash of light, but one of the semis blocked his view. As he ran toward it, he heard Daisy’s voice and his muscles went weak with relief. He rushed around the front of the semi and thought he’d never seen anything more beautiful in his life than the sight of her holding a flashlight and directing two of the workmen as they loaded Sinjun’s cage into the back of the menagerie truck.
He wanted to shake her for frightening him so badly, but he resisted the urge. It wasn’t her fault that he’d turned into a lily-livered wimp.
As she caught sight of him, her mouth curled in a smile so full of delight that warmth spread all the way to his toes. “You’re safe! I was so worried about you.”
He cleared his throat and took a calming breath. “Need some help?”
“I think we’ve just about got it.” She scrambled into the truck.
Although he wanted nothing so much as to carry her back to the trailer and love her until morning, he understood her well enough by now to know that no amount of bullying on his part would get her out of that truck until she’d made certain all the animals under her charge were safely tucked in for the night. If he let her, she’d probably read them a bedtime story.
She finally emerged and, without a moment’s hesitation, stretched out her arms and threw herself off the top of the ramp into his arms. As he caught her against his chest, he decided this was what he liked the most about her. The way she didn’t hesitate. She’d known he’d catch her, no matter what.
“Did you stay in the truck during the storm?” He planted a rough, desperate kiss in her wet hair.
“Ummm . . . I stayed warm, I’ll tell you that.”
“Good. Let’s get back to the trailer. Both of us could use a hot shower.”
“First I need to—”
“Check on Tater. I’ll come with you.”
“Don’t glower at him this time.”
“I never glower.”
“Last time you glowered. It hurt his feelings.”
“He doesn’t have—”
“He does, too, have feelings.”
“You spoil him.”
“He’s spirited, not spoiled. There’s a big difference.”
He gave her a pointed look. “Believe me, I know all about the difference between spirited and spoiled.”
“Are you implying—”
“It’s a compliment.”
“It doesn’t sound like one.”
He bickered with her all the way to the elephant trailer, but not for one moment did he let go of her hand. And not for one moment could he manage to wipe the smile from his face.
18
During the months of June and July, Quest Brothers Circus reached the heart of its tour, winding its way west through the small towns of Pennsylvania and Ohio. Sometimes they fo
llowed the rivers, large and small: the Allegheny and the Monongahela, the Hocking, Scioto, and Maumee. They played the little towns that the big show had forgotten: coal-mining towns with empty mines, steel towns that had been abandoned by the mills, factory towns where the plants had closed. Big industry might have forgotten the everyday people of Pennsylvania and Ohio, but Quest Brothers remembered, and the show traveled on.
By the first week of August, the circus had crossed into Indiana, and Daisy had never been happier. Each day was a new adventure. She felt as if she were a different person: strong, confident, and able to stand up for herself. Since Sinjun’s escape, she’d earned the respect of the others and was no longer an outcast. The showgirls traded gossip with her, and the clowns asked her opinion of their newest tricks. Brady searched her out to argue politics and bully her about improving her muscle tone by lifting weights. And Heather spent time with her every day, but only when Alex wasn’t nearby.
“Did you ever study psychology?” she asked one afternoon in early August as Daisy treated her to lunch at a McDonald’s in the eastern Indiana town where they were performing.
“For a while. I had to change schools before I finished the course.” Daisy picked up a french fry, took a nibble, then set it back down. Fried food hadn’t been settling too well in her stomach lately. She cupped her hand over her waist and forced herself to concentrate on what Heather was saying.
“I think I might want to be a psychologist or something when I grow up. I mean, after everything I’ve been through, I think I could help a lot of other kids.”
“I’ll bet you could.”
Heather looked troubled, which wasn’t unusual. There was little of the carefree teenager left about her, and Daisy knew that the stolen money still weighed heavily on her conscience, although she never mentioned it.
“Does Alex—I mean, does he ever say like what a dork I was and everything?”
“No, Heather. I’m sure he doesn’t even think about it.”
“Whenever I remember what I did, I could die.”
“Alex is used to women throwing themselves at him. To tell you the truth, I don’t think he even notices anymore.”