Desert Devil (6 page)

"I mean, not about this, anyway," she added lamely, remembering the other matter.

"I didn't think I was going to get off that easily," he said dryly. But with a hardening voice, he added, "But I meant what I said. A legal battle will not be pleasant."

Juli suddenly felt both foolish and guilty discussing a legal battle while sitting here in the comfort of his home with the feel of his competent hands still warm on her skin. "I'd like to go home now, if it wouldn't be too much bother," she said in a small voice.

For a moment Juli thought he was going to pick her up and carry her again, and her heart unexpectedly pounded erratically at the thought, but he merely aided her with his hand on her elbow. Outside he helped her into a low-slung silver Porsche.

It turned out to be a rather long drive, since they had to circle all the way around the long ridge. The road had several dips in it where it crossed old washes, though there was no water to be seen now. Finally, he pulled into the rough driveway that led to the trailer and braked beside her little car. In the glare of the headlights, the trailer looked even more lonely and forlorn than it had earlier. Not a light was to be seen on the desert floor around them, and on the horizon the jumbled boulders had strange, menacing shapes. Juli hesitated, oddly reluctant to leave the car.

"I see you know where David lived," she remarked finally. She had not given him directions to reach the trailer.

"As a matter of fact, I didn't know until I was going through his file today and saw the address. Then I realized his must be the trailer I could see from my ridge."

"Did you see me walking up the slope to the ridge?" Juli asked suddenly.

In the glow of lights from the instrument panel he seemed to hesitate, then nodded.

"You could have called out and told me I was trespassing," she pointed out.

"I suppose so." He shrugged. "Frankly, I didn't think, dressed as you are, that you'd manage to get all the way to the ridge."

His eyes moved over her again and Juli suddenly felt vulnerably exposed and acutely conscious of the way the halter top revealed the curve of her breasts.

"You're a very determined young woman, aren't you?" he added unexpectedly, his voice contemplative.

She knew he was not referring merely to her climb up the cactus-covered slope. "I… I like to see justice done. If my Aunt Kate has something coming to her, I intend to see that she gets it. But I am not out to 'con' your company out of something!" she added heatedly.

"You don't know yet how long you'll be staying?"

"No. Actually, I've thought a little of moving out here. The insurance company I work for has a regional office in Phoenix. I could get a transfer."

"Oh?"

He sounded politely disinterested, and Juli wondered angrily why she had blurted that out. It had been only a passing thought, anyway, not something she was seriously considering. And certainly not something about which
he
, president of Taylor Electronics, would care about, one way or the other.

"Of course, that was before David's accident," she added hastily. "I have Aunt Kate to consider now." She pushed the door handle down to let herself out. "Thanks for… for everything."

He was fingering the keys in the ignition, a faint scowl on his face. He glanced over at her. "Juli, I've been thinking. It's possible that David was working on something of his own here at the trailer. He was a loner and kept to himself. It might be worth your while to search though his things. I assure you, if you discover something David was doing on his own, Taylor Electronics will make no claim on it."

Juli looked at him, lips parted in surprise. It was not a thought which had occurred to her, but, knowing David as she did, the idea seemed a distinct possibility. Not that she'd know what she was looking for among his things, of course, but it was considerate of Thorne Taylor to make the suggestion. She wondered if he realized he had called her
Juli
, not the usual, mockingly formal
Miss Townsend
.

"Thank you," she said again. "I appreciate the suggestion."

He waited until she was inside and had the lights on before turning the car around in the yard. She watched as the red taillights receded down the bumpy road. Had she misjudged him? Was he really concerned and trying to be helpful?

Or was he, she wondered doubtfully, merely trying to divert her attention away from his company's underhanded doings?

Later, after a supper of canned soup and stale crackers, Juli lay in bed aching with weariness and yet unable to sleep. Was she being unduly suspicious of Thorne Taylor, unfairly accusing him? Had David had an exaggerated idea of the value of something he had done for the company? Or had David, as Thorne suggested, been working on some project of his own here at the trailer? And if that were true, how had Thorne and Taylor Electronics cheated David in the past?

Her feelings toward Thorne were confused, the anger and hostility she had felt earlier confronted by her disturbing awareness of his powerful masculinity, his smoldering virility. A shiver of sensual awareness went through her as she remembered the heat of his lean, bronzed body pressing against her bare skin when he had carried her. Later he had called her "Juli," speaking her name as if it came naturally. The shiver changed to a warm softness that spread through her body, a seeping tide of drugging, honeyed warmth.

She dashed the tantalizingly pleasant feeling with the cold water of reality. Nothing had really changed. He had made no concessions, admitted nothing. Thorne Taylor was still her adversary, and she must not let her purpose here to be distracted by the treacherous response of her senses to that devastating combination of the savage and sophisticated in him.

It was a restless night. She awakened once to a howling and yipping that some basic, primitive instinct within her recognized as coyotes wailing, even though she had never heard them before. Another time something scratched against the trailer. Heart pounding, she peered out, only partly relieved when she saw the whip-like tentacles of a desert plant brushing against the metal of the trailer. The moon had risen and it was an unreal landscape outside, all silver and shadows, the dark silhouettes of saguaro as menacing as an army of alien beings advancing through a sea of gleaming cholla. Not a light was visible from her window, only the vastness of the desert. She shivered, suddenly cold in her filmy nightgown.

In the morning, of course, everything looked different. One of the first things she came across as she hung her clothes in the closet was a book on desert vegetation. She took it outside, wandering around in the pleasant warmth of the morning sunshine to compare the living specimens with photographs in the book. The tentacled plant which had scratched against the trailer was an ocotillo, not a true cactus in spite of its heavily thorned branches. She identified the tiny hedgehog cactus, growing in clumps, one with an astonishingly large magenta-colored bloom. There was the creosote bush, one of the hardiest and most common plants of the desert, with its tiny yellow blossoms. The book said the waxy-leaved jojoba bore a fruit that early settlers had ground up and used as a coffee substitute when the real thing was unavailable. The golden-hued tree overhanging Thorne's patio had evidently been a native palo verde, Arizona's state tree. She was surprised as she wandered around at the number of birds singing and swooping among the seemingly inhospitable desert plants.

Reluctantly, she gave up her pleasant browse through the desert and drove into town to buy supplies and get on with her task here. The markets had a marvelous array of lush fruits and vegetables, and she went overboard buying tiny, sweet tangerines, pink-fleshed grapefruit, shiny green peppers, and red-ripe tomatoes. She picked up cleaning supplies and found a store which sold bags for the vacuum cleaner. She visited the electric company to bring the bill up to date and make sure the electricity would not be turned off. When she inquired about a water bill, she was told the trailer must be supplied by a well on the property because city water service did not yet extend out that far.

That was evidently true, she decided later as she peered into the shed out behind the trailer. She didn't see a pump, though she ruefully realized she might not know one if she saw it. There was an upright water tank, and since water seemed to be reaching the trailer faucets satisfactorily, she decided not to worry about it. More boxes of rocks half-filled the shed. Juli could not imagine why David had bothered gathering such a dull, unremarkable collection.

Later, however, she had a sudden inspiration about what to do with all the rocks. She arranged them in a neat row to outline a walkway from the trailer steps to the parking area, then used the remainder to mark off a small yard in front of the trailer. She was pleased with the results. The area immediately looked neater and more cared for, and the small barrier seemed somehow to hold the vastness of the desert at bay.

She worked diligently inside the trailer for several days, cleaning, scrubbing, sorting, throwing away. She kept an eye out for anything which might indicate David had been doing private research here at the trailer, but she found nothing. She half-hoped Thorne would contact her or come around, but she heard nothing from him. Every once in a while she found her gaze straying to that ridge of jumbled yellow boulders, wondering what he was doing on the other side, but there was never any sign of him, and she determinedly tried to busy her thoughts elsewhere. The wounds on both her hand and foot were healing nicely and gave her no problems. There was a surprisingly heavy downpour of rain one night, but otherwise the weather was balmy and she quickly acquired a honey tan.

By the weekend it seemed obvious she was not going to hear anything from Thorne Taylor, and she was undecided about what to do next. There were still some things of David's to sort through. He was always writing notes to himself, and it appeared that he never threw anything away. She even ran across the birthday card she had sent him last year. She thought, however, that the trailer was now presentable enough to list with a real estate agent.

On Saturday morning she decided the first thing to do was telephone Aunt Kate, back in Ohio. She hated to let Taylor Electronics win without a battle, but so far it appeared she hadn't much ammunition with which to do battle. Her thoughts were further complicated by her decidedly ambivalent feelings toward Thorne Taylor himself. On a rational, mental plane, her feelings hadn't changed. She still felt suspicious of him, annoyed with his arrogant air of superiority and angry that he seemed untouched by Aunt Kate's plight. But underneath, on some more elemental level, her senses refused to recognize him as anything but a virile, capable, dangerously exciting man, a reaction that both puzzled and dismayed her.

She placed the call from a telephone booth outside a downtown drugstore. It went through quickly, without complications. She barely had time to tell Aunt Kate that she was fine when the older woman interrupted excitedly.

"Juli, you're a marvel! I don't know what you said to Taylor Electronics, but it certainly got results!"