Fire Brand

“Come on, we’ll go inside.” He’d reached out to take her arm, but she moved back jerkily. She had plenty of reason not to like being touched, but instead of being angry, he only nodded at her reticence. “You don’t like being touched. Okay. I’ll remember,” he’d added, and he had.

The biggest surprise of her life had been meeting Aggie McCayde. The only woman she’d known for any length of time had been the matriarch of the big race horse farm where her father had been working, in Lexington, Kentucky. Her own mother had died when she was barely old enough to go to school, so Agatha McCayde came as a very big surprise to a girl used only to the company of her father. Aggie took one look at the sneezing fifteen-year-old and immediately began fussing over her. Her husband Copeland had welcomed the girl with equal kindness, but Bowie had kept apart, looking irritated and then angry. He left for Tucson a day early, as she’d later learned. When he saw how Gaby was fitting in with his parents, his visits became fewer and briefer. He seemed to have difficulty getting along with Copeland and Aggie, a problem that Gaby didn’t have at all. She opened her heart to the older couple as they opened their heart and home to her.

For the first time in her life, she was cosseted and spoiled. Aggie took her shopping, watched over her when the nightmares came and she woke up sweating and crying in the night. The older woman listened to her problems when she enrolled in the local high school that fall, helped her overcome her difficulty fitting in because she was so shy and uneasy. Aggie even understood when Gaby didn’t date anyone. That wasn’t really so much design as circumstance, she recalled. She wasn’t a pretty teenager. She was skinny, shy, and a little clumsy and nervous, so the boys didn’t exactly beat a path to her door. Aggie loved her and doted on her, which was why Bowie really began to resent her. She noticed his attitude, because he made no attempt to hide it. But incredibly, Aggie and Copeland didn’t seem to notice that they were treating her more like their child and Bowie more like an outsider. By the time she realized it, the damage was done. She knew Bowie resented her. That was one reason she’d opted for college in Phoenix, but it had been difficult there—much more difficult than she’d realized—because her old-fashioned attitudes and her distaste for intimacy put her apart from most of the other students. She formed friendships, and once or twice she dated, but there was always the fear of losing control, of being overpowered, long after the nightmares had become manageable and the scars of the past had begun to heal.

Gaby had had one violent flare-up of sensual feeling—oddly enough, with Bowie. Aggie had pleaded and coaxed until he’d taken Gaby to a dance at college. He’d been out of humor, and frankly irritated by the adoring looks of Gaby’s classmates. He was a handsome man, even if he was the only one who didn’t seem to know it, and he drew attention. He’d held her only on the dance floor, and very correctly. But there had always been sparks flying between them, and that night, physical sparks had flown as well. Gaby had seen him in a different light that one night, and she let months go by afterward before she went to Casa Río. After that, Gaby began to concentrate more than ever on her studies, and on the job she’d taken after classes at the Phoenix Advertiser. Between work and study, there had been no time for a personal life.

Now the job took most of her time. In a city the size of Phoenix, there was always something going on. When she began to work full time, the excitement of reporting somehow made everything worthwhile; she was alive as she never had been before. But the surges of adrenaline had awakened something else in her. They’d prompted a different kind of ache—a need for something more than an empty apartment and loneliness.

She was twenty-four years old now, and while the job was satisfying, it was no longer enough. She hungered for a home of her own and children, a settled life. That might be good for Aggie, too. The older woman had been lonely since Copeland’s death eight years before. Gaby helped her to cope after it happened. Bowie had resented even that, irritated that his mother had turned to her adopted child instead of her natural one. But now Aggie was globetrotting, and even though Gaby only spent the occasional weekend at Casa Río, she was missing the small, dark-eyed woman whose warmth and outgoing personality had brought a frightened teenager out of a nightmare.

That bubbly personality was one that Gaby had developed when she had begun to work with the public. Inside, she was still shy and uncertain, and she found it difficult to relate to men who looked upon casual sex as de rigueur. In her upbringing, sex meant marriage. That was what she really wanted from life, not an affair. It helped, of course, that she’d never been tempted enough to really want a man. Except Bowie.

She pulled her mind back to the present and drove up in front of the building that housed the newspaper she and Fred worked for. She only hoped there wasn’t going to be another last-minute story to cover. She was tired and worn, and she just wanted to go back to her apartment and sleep for an hour before she tried to fix herself something to eat. She remembered the engagement party and groaned. Maybe she could find an excuse to miss it. She hated social gatherings, even though she was fond of Mary, the girl who was getting engaged.

She and Fred waved as they passed Trisa, the receptionist, and entered the newsroom. Gaby didn’t even look around; she was so tired that she just dropped into the chair at her computer terminal with a long sigh. Almost everyone on the newspaper staff was around. Johnny Blake came out of his office, his bald head shining in the light, his thick brows drawn together as he listened to Fred’s version of what had happened.

“That the long and short of it, Cane?” he asked Gaby. As she raised her eyebrows, Fred mumbled something about getting the film to the darkroom and eased quickly away.

Johnny glared at her without smiling. “Get the story?” he asked.

“Sort of.”

He stared. “Sort of?”

“It’s your fault,” she told him. “Harrington and I aren’t cut out for police reporting. You made us go.”

“Well, I couldn’t go,” he said. “I’m in management. People in management don’t cover shootouts. They’re dangerous, Cane,” he added in a conspiratorial whisper.

She glared at him. “This, from a man who volunteered to cover the uprising in Central America.”

“Okay, what went wrong?” he asked, sidestepping the remark.

She told him. He groaned. “At least we did get some good copy,” she comforted him. “And I got a shot of the gunman, along with some swell shots of the police in the rain surrounding the building,” she added dryly.

“One shot of the hostage would have been worth fifty shots of the police in the rain!” he raged. “You and your soft heart...!”

“Wilson, from the Bulletin, got lots of nice pictures of the stand-off,” Gaby told her boss, rubbing salt in the wound. “And probably one of the hostage, too.”

“I hate you,” he hissed.

She smiled. “But the police tackled him and broke his camera and probably exposed every frame he shot.”

“I love you,” he changed it.

“Next time, don’t send Harrington with me, okay?” she pleaded. “Just let me go alone.”

“Can’t do that, Cane,” he said. “You’re too reckless. Do you have any idea how many close calls you’ve had in the past three years? You never hold anything in reserve in that kind of situation, and thank God it doesn’t happen often. I still get cold chills remembering the bank robbery you had to cover. I hate asking you to sub for the police reporter.”

“It was only a flesh wound,” she reminded him.

“It could have been a mortal wound,” he muttered. “And even if you aren’t afraid of Bowie McCayde, the publisher is. They had words after the bank robbery.”

That came as a surprise. Aggie hadn’t said anything about it, but she had probably sent Bowie to throw the fear of God into Mr. Smythe, the publisher.

“I didn’t know that,” she said. She smiled. “Well, he’ll never find out about today, so there’s no need to worry... What are you staring at?”

“Certain death,” he said pleasantly.

She followed his gaze toward the lobby. Bowie McCayde was just coming in the door, towering over the male reporters and causing comments and deep sighs among the female ones. He was wearing a gray suit, his blond head bare, and held an unlit cigarette in his hand. He looked out of humor and threatening.

Gaby’s heart jumped into her throat. What, she wondered, was he doing in Phoenix? She hadn’t seen him for two months—not since they’d celebrated Aggie’s birthday at Casa Río. It had been an unusually disturbing night because just lately, Bowie had a way of looking at her that made her nerves stand on end.

Her breathing quickened as he approached, the old disturbing nervousness collecting in her throat to make her feel gauche and awkward. Just like old times, she thought as his black eyes pinned her to the spot while he strode across the newsroom. She was capable and cool until she got within five feet of this man, and then she just went to pieces. It was a puzzle she still hadn’t worked out. It wasn’t really fear—not the nauseating kind. It was more like excitement...

“Hello, Bowie,” she said awkwardly.

He nodded curtly to Johnny and scowled down at Gaby. “I’m taking you out to supper,” he said without a greeting or an invitation, ignoring her soaked clothes and straggly hair. “We’ve got to talk.”

She wondered if she’d heard him right. Bowie, taking her out?

“Something’s wrong,” she guessed.

“Wrong?” He waved the unlit cigarette in his hand. “Wrong?! My God.”

“Is it Aggie?” she asked quickly, her olive eyes mirroring her concern.

Bowie stared at Johnny until the shorter man mumbled an excuse, grinned at Gaby, and beat a hasty retreat to his office. Bowie had that effect on a lot of people, Gaby thought with faint amusement. He never said anything harsh—he just stared at people with his cold black eyes. One of his construction company executives had likened it to being held at bay by a cobra.

“Yes, it’s Aggie,” he muttered. Gaby felt faint.

CHAPTER TWO

BOWIE REALIZED BELATEDLY why Gaby’s face had turned white. “No, no,” he said shortly, noting her horrified expression. “She’s not hurt or anything.”

She relaxed visibly and put a hand to her throat. “You might have said so.”

“Are you through here?” He looked around as if he couldn’t see what she had to do anyway.

“I need to file my story before I go.”

“Go ahead. It’ll keep.” He walked back out into the lobby and sat down on one of the sofas. Trisa leaned her chin on her hands and sat watching him shamelessly while he read a magazine. If Bowie even noticed, there was no sign of it.

Gaby had to drag her own eyes away. He was most incredibly handsome, and totally unaware of it.

She turned on her word processor, got out her notes, and spent fifteen minutes condensing two hours of work into eight inches of copy one column wide.

Bowie was still reading when she came out of the newsroom, after calling a quick good night to Johnny.

“I’m ready...oh, no,” she groaned.

Carl Wilson, the Bulletin reporter, was just coming in the door with a Band-Aid over his nose, breathing fire.

“So there you are, you turncoat,” he growled at her. His ponytail was soaked, and Bowie was giving him an unnerving appraisal. He turned his back to get away from that black-eyed stare. “This is the last straw, Cane,” he raged. “I know you’ve got the whole damned police force in your pocket from your old days on the police beat, but that was a low blow. My camera’s busted to hell, my film’s exposed...!”

“Poor old photographer,” she said comfortingly. “Did the big bad policeman hurt its little nose?”

He actually blushed. “You stop that,” he muttered. “You told them to do it.”

“Not me,” she said, holding up one hand.

Bowie had gotten to his feet now and his narrow black eyes were watching closely.

“If you didn’t point me out, who did?” Wilson persisted, eyeing Bowie warily as he spoke.

“You were walking right into the line of fire,” she reminded him. “We all saw you.”

He sighed miserably. “First my car gets towed away, despite the press sticker, because I parked in front of a fire hydrant. Then I get tackled and my film is ruined...it’s somebody’s fault!” he added with a pointed glare.

Gaby grinned. “God must be mad at you,” she told him. “He’s getting even with you for the Garrison story you conned me out of last week. You do remember having your crony at City Hall send me out to the parking lot while you got the final word on the new landfill site?”

He shifted uncomfortably. “That was in the line of duty. We’re rivals.”

“Yes, and some of us hit below the belt,” she added with a meaningful stare. “But I didn’t have the policeman tackle you. You should know better than to walk through a hail of bullets. Policemen get nervous about that sort of thing.”

“You should know,” Wilson muttered. “Didn’t you get shot in the last stand-off, after the bank robbery?”

She cleared her throat, aware of Bowie’s thunderous expression. “This time, I was safely behind some police cars—not taking a stroll in front of the sniper.”

“Is that so.” Wilson pursed his lips. “Well,” he said slowly, “I might be persuaded to forgive you—if you can spare a shot of the victim.”

“No chance.”

“Okay, I’m easy. How about the police surrounding the building? Come on, Cane, my job’s on the line,” he coaxed.

“If Johnny finds out, mine will be, too,” she assured him. “Do what the rest of us do. Go and beg from the News-Record. They go to press every Tuesday, so this story will be old news by the time their next edition comes out. They’ll share with you.” She grinned as she said it. The News-Record was a small weekly newspaper, but its reporters were always on the spot when news broke, and they didn’t mind sharing one of their less important photos with the big dailies—as long as their photographer got a credit.

He sighed. “Well, beggars can’t be choosers. Okay, doll, thanks anyway.”

He started to bend down to kiss her cheek, but she stepped back jerkily. “You’ll give me Bulletin germs!” she exclaimed, making a joke out of it.

He shook his head. “Leave it to you. Thanks anyway, Cane.” He chuckled, and walked out the front door whistling.

Bowie hadn’t said anything. He had a cigarette in his hand, and he was watching her like a hawk. “Bullets?” he asked, moving closer.

“A robbery. The perpetrator got twenty dollars. He killed a store manager and took a pregnant woman hostage, and threatened to kill her. They had to drop him.” She lowered her eyes. “He was little more than a boy. The police reporter is out sick, so I had to cover the story. I don’t do the police beat anymore,” she added, trying to ward off trouble.

“Bullets?” he repeated, his voice deeper, rougher this time.

She looked up. “I’m twenty-four years old. This is my job. I don’t need your permission to do it. It was just this one time...”

“Count your blessings,” he said curtly. He glanced toward the receptionist, who smiled at him, and turned away uncomfortably. “Let’s go.”

Gaby winked at Trisa as they passed her, but Bowie kept his eyes straight ahead, pausing only to open the door for Gaby and lead her to his black Scorpio.

She sank into the soft leather seat with a sigh, and let her eyes wander over the dashboard. It was a honey of a car. She wished she could afford one.

He got in beside her, making sure her seat belt was fastened before he clicked his own into place and started the car. “Does your receptionist make a habit of staring at people that way?” he asked irritably as he pulled out into traffic. “I was beginning to feel like a museum exhibit.”

“Look in a mirror sometime,” she murmured only half humorously. “I used to have girlfriends by the dozen in college until they learned that you didn’t live at Casa Río. It rather spoiled their dreams of the perfect weekend vacation.”

He gave her a cold glance. “I hate being chased.”

“Don’t look at me.” She held up her hands in mock horror. “I’m the last woman you’ll ever have to beat off.”

“So I’ve noticed.” He eased the car into another lane. “You still don’t like being touched, I see.”

“Wilson is a womanizer,” she murmured. “I don’t like that kind of man.”

“You don’t like men, period. You’re damned lucky that Aggie doesn’t know what a hermit you are. She’d have you on the guest list of every party that featured even one single man.”

“I know.” She sighed and glanced at his perfect profile. “You won’t give me away, will you?”

“Have I ever?”

She ran a hand over the back of her neck. “We don’t see that much of each other, so how do you know about my social life?”

He lit another cigarette. “You’re soaked. Do you want to go to your apartment and change before we go to the restaurant?”

“Yes, I’d like to, if you don’t mind.” Then she thought about Bowie in her apartment, and something inside her retreated.

He saw that hunted look out of the comer of his eye. “You’re safe with me, Gaby. I hoped you knew that without my having to say it.”

She swallowed. He read her all too well. She stared at her slender, ringless fingers. “I know. I’m just a little shaken by this afternoon. I don’t do police news anymore, and it’s been a long time since I’ve seen anybody shot.”

“What a hell of a line of work you chose,” he said.

“I like it, most of the time.” She clasped her fingers, because reaction was beginning to set in. It always amazed her how calm she was while she was getting a story, but after covering this kind of story she went to pieces after the numbness wore off. Sometimes she had nightmares and there was usually nobody to talk to about them. She couldn’t tell Aggie, because the older woman disapproved of her work anyway and had tried to get her to quit. She had no close friends.

“You said you aren’t still on the police beat?” he asked conversationally.

“No. Because after Aggie had you tell Mr. Smythe to take me off it even though I asked Johnny Blake to put me back on he wouldn’t.” She glanced at him. “I don’t miss it anyway. I love political reporting.”

“That’s reassuring,” he said dryly.

“Aggie did put you up to it, didn’t she?” she asked. “Speaking of Aggie, what’s going on?”

“I’ll tell you over dinner.” He parked the car in front of the apartment building where she lived—a sprawling white complex with a swimming pool and tennis courts and security people.

“I’ve moved since you were in Phoenix last,” she said suspiciously. “How did you know where I live?”

“Come on. You’re soaked.”

She threw up her hands. “Do you ever answer questions?”

“You’ll catch cold if you don’t get out of those wet things,” he replied nonchalantly, still sidestepping her queries—as usual.

He got out of the car, opened her door, and let her go first in the slight drizzle. It was getting dark already, and she was too tired to pursue it.

Her apartment was done in whites and yellows, with oak furniture, Mexican pottery, and a few modem paintings. It was bright and open and sunny, and she had plants growing everywhere.

“It looks like the damned Amazon jungle,” he observed, staring around him.

“Thank you.” She took off her raincoat. “I’ll only be a few minutes. There’s brandy on the table if you want a drink.”

“I’m driving,” he reminded her.

“I’ll, uh, just get changed,” she stammered. He made her feel ridiculously weak. She dodged into her bedroom and closed the door.

It was the first time she’d ever had a man in her apartment. She was all thumbs while she took a quick shower, washed and dried her hair, and put on a neat gray crepe dress with white collar and cuffs, and shoes to match. She curled her hair into a neat bun atop her head, added a dash of pink lipstick, some powder, and a hint of perfume, and went to join Bowie.

He was standing at her window, looking out, his black eyes narrow and brooding. He turned as she came back, his appraisal electrifying as it slid boldly down her body and back up to her face.

“Is it too dressy?” she asked nervously.

“I’d have said it was twenty years too old for you,” he replied. “You’re an attractive young woman. Why do you dress like a matron?”

She bristled. “This is the latest style...”

“No, it isn’t. It’s a safe style. You’re covered from neck to calf, as usual.”

Her face was going hotter by the minute. “I dress to please myself.”

“Obviously. You sure as hell won’t please a man in that rig.”

“For which you should be grateful,” she said with a venomous smile. “You won’t have to fight me off all evening.”

He considered that carefully, his sensuous lips pursed, a faint twinkle in his black eyes as the cigarette smoked away in his hand. “I’ve never made a pass at you, have you noticed? What is it now—eight years?”

“Nine,” she said, averting her eyes to the window.

“And I know as little about you now as I did that first night,” he continued. “You’re an enigma.”

“I’m also starving,” she said, changing the subject with a forced, pleasant smile. “Where are we going to eat?”

“That depends on you. What appeals to you?”

“Something hot and spicy. Mexican.”

“Fine by me.” He held the apartment door open for her, one of his habits that secretly thrilled her. Aggie had raised him to be a gentleman, and in times when most men left women to open their own doors and lift their own burdens, Bowie was a refreshing anachronism. He was courteous, but not chauvinistic. Two of his executives were women, and she knew for a fact that he had hired a female architect and several female construction workers. He never discriminated, but he did have a few quirks—such as insisting on opening doors and carrying heavy packages.

They went to a festive Mexican restaurant just two blocks from Gaby’s apartment, and were given a table on a small patio near a wealth of potted trees and flowers.

“I love this,” Gaby sighed, fingering some begonias in a tub.

“You and Aggie have this hangup about flowers, I’ve noticed,” he murmured. He laid his cigarette case on the table and glared at it. “I hate damned cigarettes.”

Gaby’s eyebrows lifted. “Then why smoke?”

“I don’t know.”

“Nerves?” she asked daringly.

He leaned back, crossing his long legs under the table. His black eyes pinned hers. “Maybe.”

“About Aggie,” she guessed, because she couldn’t imagine making any man nervous, least of all Bowie.

“About Aggie,” he said flatly. He fingered the case, smoothing over his initials. J.B.M., it read—James Bowie McCayde. He’d never liked his first name, so he’d always been called Bowie.

“What’s she done?”

“It isn’t what she’s done, so much as what she’s about to do.” He leaned forward suddenly. “She’s bringing a man home to Casa Río.”

“Aggie’s bringing a man... I need a drink—something big.”

“That’s what I felt, too. It isn’t like her.”

The waiter came, but Bowie ordered coffee, not drinks, and sat patiently while Gaby read the entire menu twice before settling for a taco salad.

“My God, you didn’t need a menu to order that,” he said curtly when the waiter had gone.

“You didn’t need one to order steak ranchero, either,” she told him with a grin, “but you read the menu.”

“I wanted to make sure they still had steak ranchero.”

She shrugged. “Who is this man?” she asked.

“I don’t know him. She met him on a cruise down to Jamaica. His name is Ned Courtland.”

“I don’t know him.”

“Neither do I. She says he’s a cattleman from somewhere up north.” He glowered at the table. “More than likely, he’s got a couple of calves in a lot out back and he’s looking for a rich widow.”