Chapter Three
After the morning meal was finished, Rachel stood and gathered dirty plates together. “I need to run to town in a little while. You need anything Fate?”
“Depends on where you’re going.”
Dyuvad rose and stacked Tiny and Fate’s plates on top of his, then carried them to the counter. If it violated Earth custom, tough. He wasn’t a guest to be waited on at his leisure. “Is your offer to allow my company still open?”
“Of course. Here.” She dumped the plates she held into the sink, then took the plates he held from him. She kept her eyes carefully averted, even when their fingers brushed. “Where do you need to go?”
“I am in need of additional clothing.”
Fate leaned back in his rail-backed chair, lifting the front two legs off the floor. “You’ll want the mall, then. Ain’t no decent place around here for clothes, ‘lessen you want Wal-Mart or them fancy digs the tourists lap up.”
“Serviceable clothing is preferable.”
Rachel shook her head in a sharp disagreement. “You’ll need Sunday go-to-church clothes, too.”
Fate’s thin features melted into a sorrowful plea. “Aw, Rach. Don’t corrupt the man with them ol’ biddies at church. It ain’t right to do a man that way, it just ain’t right.”
“I didn’t say he had to go to church, Fate, just that he needed nice clothes.” She flipped shiny white levers, and water poured out of a metal faucet into the sink. “I promised the girls we could go to the lake this afternoon if we get all our chores done. Yasmin’s supposed to meet us there.”
The legs of Fate’s chair thunked solidly into the linoleum floor. “Ya don’t say.”
“She’s engaged.”
“Don’t I know it,” Fate muttered.
“And I have to run into town to the bank and the grocery store first anyway, so we may not have time for play.”
“Don’t forget the library, Mama,” Kelly said. “It’s prize day.”
Rachel grimaced and rinsed the last dish. “The last day of the summer reading program. Can’t miss that.”
Her shoulders sagged a little lower, and Dyuvad frowned. He hadn’t meant to add extra work to her already heavy load. From the sounds of it, she already had enough responsibility, too much for one woman. While he was there solely on Tiny’s behalf, he could see no reason not to help Rachel out, too. “Tomorrow is soon enough for clothes shopping. I will help with the chores, provided someone shows me what needs doing.”
Fate stood and propped Tiny on one narrow hip. “I can pitch in, too, especially if it means lake time. Many hands make light work.”
“More like many hands leave less for you to do,” Rachel muttered. “All right. Y’all get out of my kitchen so I can clean up, and then we’ll head into town. If we hurry, we can still meet Yasmin at the lake after lunch.”
Kelly pumped her fist into the air. “Yes! Come on, y’all. We got work to do.”
She raced out of the kitchen followed by a shambling Fate carrying Tiny.
Dyuvad leaned a hip against the counter. “Who is Yasmin?”
“My sister-in-law.”
It took him a moment to work out the meaning, and when he did, a thread of displeasure rippled through him. “Your husband’s sister or Fate’s wife? ”
She snorted out a laugh. “Yasmin is my ex-husband’s sister. Fate ain’t never been married. No woman will have him, more’s the pity.”
The displeasure dissipated, replaced by a surprising dose of male satisfaction. “There is much to clean here. Do you need assistance?”
She laughed again, this one lighter and accompanied by a grin. “I got it. Run outside and help Fate, if you want. Hate to put you to work on your first day here, but if you’re willing…”
“I am willing, Lady Rachel.”
He nodded his head in a respectful bow and left her to her work. He had his own to do, in exchange for his board and as part of his commitment to the Net telepath who’d sent him to Earth.
Fate was outside with Rachel’s daughters, sorting animals into groups. Dyuvad studied their actions, carefully memorizing the way they handled the creatures, and pitched in where he could. The tasks themselves were simple enough. He had no doubt he’d be able to complete each one on his own within a few days.
Rachel called the girls inside for quick baths. Fate mumbled something about cleaning up and stalked out of the yard along a well-worn trail. Dyuvad retreated to his new lodgings, sent a quick update to his ship through his wrist com, then sorted through his currency. One third of it could go into the bank account he intended to open locally, another third could be carried on his person, and the last would stay here. He’d just found a good hiding place for it when a light knock hit his door.
“You may enter,” he called.
Rachel opened the door and stuck her head inside. “Sorry to bother you. We’re about ready to go.”
She’d already changed into a simple, green shirt the same color as her eyes and short pants that hit her at mid-thigh, leaving her shapely legs bare. He stripped his shirt off and dropped it onto the couch next to his pack, then sat down beside it. “I need a moment, please.”
Her eyes slid to the side, landing somewhere to his left. “You really don’t have to be so formal. ”
“My grasp of your language is incomplete.” He unlaced his boots and toed them off. They were sturdy and thick-heeled. He had no doubt they mimicked local, popular fashion. Thankfully, they were also comfortable, though he would’ve preferred a cooler shoe, given the region’s high temperatures and humidity. “At what time do you school your daughters?”
Her gaze snapped to his. “They don’t have school in the summer.”
He stood and unfastened his breeches. Jeans, they were called, made from denim. The knowledge popped unbidden into his head and he stifled a wince. “Where I am from, children never pause their education.”
She turned her back on him. “Are you from Europe? I hear they have really good year-round schools there.”
“I am not.” He shucked his jeans, taking his socks with them, and tugged a fresh pair of each out of his pack. “Why?”
“I’m just trying to figure out where you’re from. You look like a Pacific Islander, truth be told. Well, your skin does, anyway.” She sighed and jiggled her knee back and forth in an unsteady rhythm. “I’d give about anything to have skin that tanned like yours without wrinkling me into a little old lady.”
“You are far from being old enough to wrinkle.”
“Fat lot you know,” she muttered. “You always drop your drawers around strange women?”
“Does my nudity bother you?”
She choked on a breath and her shoulders hunched around her ears. “God’s truth, if I’d known you were naked back there, I would’ve left already.”
“You may look, if you wish.”
She slapped her hands over her face, and though he couldn’t see them, he was sure her cheeks had flamed red. “You’re the devil, ain’t you?”
He grinned and stuffed his legs into the stiff fabric of his jeans. That was one concept he understood readily enough, without the autolearner’s implanted programming prodding his memory. “I could tempt you to sin, if it pleases you. ”
“One of us is going to hell, sure as Sunday, and I’m pretty sure it won’t be me.”
He laughed as he shrugged on a fresh t-shirt. “I am fully dressed now, Lady Rachel.”
“I wish you’d call me Rachel, especially if you’re gonna wander around naked in my presence.”
Raw humor threaded through her voice, unwittingly encouraging Dyuvad to prod her into another reaction. “I sleep in the nude, if you—”
She whirled around, cutting off his teasing. “If you’re gonna suggest I come witness it, forget it. I ain’t even tempted.”
Yes, she was. It was there in the way her eyes lingered on him, in the flush still blooming in her cheeks, and in the faint smile curving her full mouth. He had a sudden urge to prod her into a full-blown smile, to hear her laughter ring out again, and immediately shoved it down. Teasing Rachel was one thing. A light flirt hurt no one, and it would be nice if they could find their way to friendship during his stay on her planet. Anything more would be foolhardy until he unraveled Tiny’s predicament.
After that, though, he was free to do as he pleased. Tempting Rachel into sin held a surprising appeal, one he wouldn’t mind exploring before he returned home.
Rachel plopped down on the bench of a rickety, wooden picnic table. She’d managed to snag the last one shaded by the towering trees growing along Lake Burton’s shores, and thank goodness for it. It was ninety if it was a degree, and lordy, was it humid. The air had to be thick enough to cut with a dull butter knife.
She swiped the back of her hand across her sweat-dotted forehead. As soon as Fate’s truck had rolled to a stop, Kelly had helped Tiny out of her car seat and made a beeline for the shallows. Fate had ambled along after them in his decade-old swimming trunks and a t-shirt while Dyuvad had helped Rachel carry towels and snacks to the picnic area .
She’d shooed him off right after. The man was too good looking for her peace of mind, he was. She’d about had a heart attack when he’d stripped down at the house, then again when he was trying on bathing suits at Wal-Mart. He’d opened the dressing room door holding the swimsuit she’d picked out for him instead of wearing it. She’d gotten an eyeful of him in all his glory and blushed to high heavens, and he’d just stood there grinning like a buffoon until she’d slammed the door shut on his nudity.
If the man had a shy bone in his body, it was well hidden.
He didn’t have a spare ounce of fat on him either, far as she could tell, and it didn’t go unnoticed. As soon as he stepped foot on the beach, the eyes of every woman over the age of fourteen had snapped to him and stayed there the whole time he helped Rachel set out their things, and while he stripped off his shirt and toed off his shoes, and when he jogged across the beach and waded into the deep side of the roped off swimming spot.
She clucked her tongue. Half the women there were married with children and the other half probably had intendeds. She wasn’t one to judge, though. Why, it’d be fairly hypocritical of her to, given the way her nerves jangled every time Dyuvad was within spitting distance. Besides, he had a nice body. Wasn’t a thing wrong with admitting the truth, was there?
A breathless Yasmin dropped onto the picnic table’s other bench seat. Rachel’s sister-in-law was tall and willowy, and pretty as a button in a white, sleeveless sundress that contrasted nicely with her native tan. They’d been friends since the first day of Kindergarten, two stranger-shy girls thrown together by fate, if Rachel told the story, or by the bus driver’s assigned seating arrangements, according to Yasmin. Either way, they’d bonded over a whole lot of mutual that day, their fear of what school held for them, their love of the written word, and irritation at their brothers, Yasmin’s older, Rachel’s younger.
Not a lot had changed in the past twenty-odd years, except for their dreams.
Yasmin dug a cold canned soda out of the cooler and popped the top. “Sorry I’m late. We had an off schedule flower delivery come in on top of a last minute wedding.”
Rachel checked on Fate and the girls. They were right where they were supposed to be, digging up sand at the edge of the lake. Dyuvad had swum out to the floating dock outside the safety ropes. Him, she wasn’t worried about a bit.
“Anybody I know?” she asked.
“Tourists eloping from the ‘burbs. She’s in that way.” Yasmin waggled her perfectly arched, black eyebrows and grinned. “They were happy enough, though why they decided to hotfoot it all the way from Lawrenceville to Clayton to get hitched is beyond me.”
“A wedding in the mountains is romantic.”
“It’s a waste of money they’ll need for that baby,” Yasmin said tartly. “But good money for me, so I can’t complain. And seeing as how they have one on the way, I made the bride a diaper bouquet.”
Rachel hid a startled laugh behind her own coke. “You did not.”
“Oh, yes, I did, and she loved it. Honestly, Rach, if half my clients were as easy to please as her, I’d be rolling in it.”
A faintly bitter note underscored Yasmin’s words. Rachel cupped a hand over her friend’s and squeezed gently. “Everything ok?”
Yasmin shrugged one shoulder and her eyelids slid down, hiding her deep brown eyes. “Marty’s been making noises about Juan again, how shameful it is that his future brother-in-law is in prison for murder. Like I can do anything about it!"
Rachel bit back her scorn. Marty Benfield was a vice president at her bank and a bigwig in local society, if bigwig was defined as a self-important, arrogant know-it-all who threw his weight around whenever he got the chance. What Yasmin saw in the man was beyond Rachel, but it wasn’t her place to pick her friend’s decisions apart.
“I’m sorry,” she said at last. “I thought Marty would’ve come around to the idea that you and your brother are different people by now.”
“Like he believes you and Juan are different people?” Yasmin snorted, an indelicate gesture completely at odds with her refined features. “The divorce has been final for, what, almost two years now? And I’m part of the second generation of my family to be born here, and still, he nags at me about immigration and green cards. I’m a native-born citizen. My grandparents were legal residents, for crying out loud!”
“His prejudices run deep, my young Padawan.”
Yasmin huffed out a short laugh. “What would I do without you?”
“Live a dull, humorless life.”
“That’s the truth.” Yasmin’s gaze drifted to the water. “Oh, dear Lord, are those the swimming trunks I got Fate for his eighteenth birthday?”
“One and the same.”
“He’s a dinosaur, Rach. Take the man shopping and spare us the fashion nightmare.”
“I dragged him to Wal-Mart today, and he went straight to the guns and ammo.”
“Figures.” Yasmin’s dark eyes went round. “Holy moly, who is that and where can I get one?”
Rachel didn’t even have to look to know who Yasmin was talking about. Her gaze drifted toward the beach anyway and landed right on Dyuvad, wading out of the water like a human Poseidon. His wet swimsuit clung to hard, muscular thighs and the bump of his masculinity. He sluiced water out of his short hair and walked toward her, completely ignoring the salacious stares of a dozen women dressed in string bikinis. God’s truth, if a couple of other men had been behind him, it would’ve been like watching the opening credits of Baywatch .
Her heart did a half-gainer into her stomach and her skin heated hot as fire. She hid her blush behind a long swig of lukewarm coke, then said, “Dyuvad rented my spare room this morning. That’s why we were in Wal-Mart today. He rolled into town with maybe two spare changes of clothes and a wad of cash thicker than my fist.”
Yasmin frowned and leaned closer. “Drug dealer? ”
Rachel shot a glare at her. “Do you really think I’d let a drug dealer anywhere near the girls, especially after Juan got messed up in that gang?”
“Sorry, Rach. It’s just, you know. The sudden appearance, the lack of clothes, the cash.” Yasmin shrugged. “Spells fishy to me.”
“He’s a foreigner, that’s all.” Though he’d pulled out a shiny, new Georgia driver’s license as ID when she’d helped him open a bank account. “And he’s good with chores. He pitched right in this morning and didn’t complain a whit. I’m so thankful to get a man like him, I could just spit.”
Yasmin snickered. “I bet you could.”
“Oh, hush. You know what I mean. He’s a real godsend as a renter. Paid cash up front for six months’ board and he’s got a strong back he’s not afraid to use.”
“So you like him for his back.”
“I like being able to pay my taxes without having to scrape and squeeze. The man part, I can take or leave. I sure as tootin’ don’t need one.”
“Every woman needs a man like that, chica.”
Rachel couldn’t quite bring herself to disagree, and thankfully, Dyuvad didn’t give her a chance to. He strolled right up and nodded respectfully. “The water is very nice, Lady Rachel. You will join me.”
It wasn’t a question. She treated it as one anyway. “Maybe later. Dyuvad, this is Yasmin Olvera.”
“It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Lady Yasmin.”
Yasmin patted her heart with one elegant hand. “I want one, Rach. I swear, I’ll give you half my business if you can dig up a carbon copy.”
Dyuvad grinned. “I have two brothers. One is unmated.”
“Be still my little heart.”
Rachel rolled her eyes. “You already have a man, Yasmin.”
“Not like him.”
And a good thing, too. The women of Rabun County probably couldn’t handle another Dyuvad running around, let alone three. “She’s not serious.”
“Says you,” Yasmin muttered. “So, Dyuvad. Where are you from?”
He dropped onto the bench beside Rachel, exactly far enough away to satisfy propriety. “A long way from here, though my home region shares much in common with this one.”
“And what do you do there?”
“Yasmin,” Rachel warned.
Dyuvad casually reached into the cooler and snagged a bottle of water. His gaze turned shrewd as he sipped it, and for a while, Rachel thought he wasn’t going to answer.
He set the bottle down on the table in front of him and twisted the cap on. “Many things, Lady Yasmin. My father is a farmer and a leader of men, my mother a former soldier. I have trained with both of them, although I am neither a farmer nor a soldier.”
“So you’re a…” Yasmin’s gaze drifted away from Dyuvad and her high forehead knit into a scowl. “Uh-oh.”
Rachel swiveled around in her seat and spotted the six young men strutting down the path from the highway to the beach. They were all Hispanic, all in their late teens and early twenties, and at least one was a member of Juan’s old gang, based out of the Gainesville area. Crap. What were they doing at Lake Burton when Lake Lanier was so much closer to them?
She hissed in a breath and turned right back around. “Let’s hope they don’t recognize us or the girls.”
Dyuvad leaned close and lowered his voice. “What is it about these men that bothers you, Lady Rachel?”
“It’s a long story.” A really, really long one, and she wasn’t about to spill it in public when so many eyes and ears were on her handsome renter. “I’m just gonna go fetch the girls real quick. They need a rest anyway.”
“I will accompany you.”
“No, I got it.”
The young men walked by right at that moment. One nodded at Rachel, then grinned at Yasmin, and though it was friendly enough, Rachel didn’t trust him as far as she could throw him. She’d learned a lot of hard lessons during her marriage to Juan, the primary one being that a snake’s bite always hurt, no matter how pretty its stripes.
As soon as the men were past, she whispered, “We’re going home.”
Dyuvad stood and rested a firm hand on her shoulder. “I will fetch Fate and the girls. Stay here with Lady Yasmin.”
“I can—”
He cut midnight blue eyes at her. “Do as I say, woman.”
He was gone before she could sputter out a response. Good thing, too, as her fear at spotting those young men was quickly replaced by a burning anger. How dare he speak to her like that, and him a near stranger? Why, she oughta tear a stripe into him, and she might, just as soon as she got her girls home safe and sound.
Yasmin blinked wide eyes at her. Rachel rounded on her, already mad enough to spit. “Don’t even, Yasmin. Just don’t say it.”
“I was just going to point out that for a godlike being, he’s a wee bit domineering.”
Some of the starch left her spine, and Rachel laughed. “What would I do without you?”
“Live a lonely, boring life. Can I say it now?”
“Oh, go ahead.”
“That was sexy as sin, the way he went all alpha soldier on you.”
Maybe just a little. Enough to siphon off the last of Rachel’s mad, anyway. She sighed and stood. Easy come, easy go. Her temper had always been like that. “Help me pack up. We can bring out the water hose and the kiddy pool. If you bat your eyelashes at Fate, he might be persuaded to grill some burgers for us later.”
“Batting I can do,” Yasmin said. “The kiddy pool? Meh.”
As she and Yasmin stuffed snacks and drinks away into their proper containers, Rachel kept one eye on Dyuvad rounding up the rest of her family and the other on the young men splashing toward the floating dock. It worried her something fierce that those men had shown up out of the blue. Maybe nothing would come of it. Nobody had bothered her for at least a year now, but it wouldn’t hurt to start locking her doors again at night, just to be on the safe side.