doing my best to change with it.” His eyebrow cocked at her. “Although I will admit that harems have their place. God knows what I’d do without mine on cold nights.”
“Oink, oink,” she murmured.
“Cats, honey, cats. All female, all Siamese. Four of them.” He shrugged. “Dogs are all right. I keep one around the grounds for intruders. But it’s damned hard to pet a two-hundred-pound Doberman with killer instincts. The cats are friendlier.”
“I thought Siamese were vicious,” she remarked.
“They fight back,” he replied. “But they’re loving animals, too. I don’t know about you, Georgia, but I can’t tolerate people or animals without a little spirit. I hate patronage.” His eyes darkened. “God, I hate it!”
She studied his hard face. His gaze was averted, and he seemed to be carved from the same stone the old fort had been. He must be an important man, she decided. He had a quality she’d never seen in any of her contemporaries. Something extra. Magic.
“Is that why you travel alone?” she asked, the words slipping out before she could stop them.
He glanced down at her. “It’s one reason. But I don’t always travel alone.”
A woman. The words flashed into her mind and he read them in her eyes and smiled faintly.
“No, honey, not on a business trip,” he murmured dryly, “I’d never be able to think straight with that kind of distraction. I meant, I take Lucifer with me occasionally.”
She stopped in the middle of the sidewalk with her mind swimming. “Lucifer?”
“The two-hundred-pound Doberman,” he said.
Her eyes searched his. “You said he was a guard dog. Do you need guarding?” she asked, measuring him.
“I can handle myself. But Lucifer is a powerful deterrent, and I have enemies.”
“You mean, enemies who might try to kidnap you for ransom?” she asked, all emerald eyes and arched brows.
“Or worse,” he agreed. “My, my, what an expression! You are a babe in the woods, aren’t you?”
“Cal, what do you do?” she asked bluntly, calling him by name for the first time.
“I’m a businessman,” he said vaguely.
“I know, but—”
He lifted a big finger and pressed it to her lips. “Not now,” he said gently. “I think I like it better this way for the time being.”
“Are you a Russian spy?” she teased. “A Martian scout?”
He chuckled softly, “I’m a hardworking man on holiday.”
“You look as though you could use one,” she remarked as they walked along the narrow street that ran along the docks. It wasn’t really wide enough for cars to park alongside it and still let traffic through, but by some miracle of navigation, the most incredibly large automobiles were able to squeeze through the narrow street. And tourists soon learned how to press back against the buildings to keep from being separated from their toes.
“Isn’t this fun?” Nikki laughed.
“Speak for yourself,” Cal grumbled, trying to fit his bulk alongside hers as a pink Cadillac slid past them.
“How did you get to be so big, anyway?” she asked him.
“My father was a Dutchman—from Friesland originally, as a matter of fact. A giant of a man from a land of large people. My mother was French.”
“How in the world did you wind up in Chicago, then?” she asked, fascinated.
“I was born in the middle of the war,” he explained. “My father had left Holland with his division to take part in the Allied invasion of Europe. He met my mother in France. They married and I was born the same year. They came to America because of me, I was told,” he added with a dry laugh. “There were no opportunities in Europe after the war, unless you were involved in the black market. My father had the idea that Chicago was as close as he would ever get to paradise. He settled down, got an engineering job with one of the auto makers, made a few minor investments and let himself be talked into some stock in an oil rig.”
“And lost his shirt, I imagine,” she teased.
“Not quite.” He paused at one of the straw vendors’ stalls. “This sun’s getting hot. How about a hat?”
“Only if you get one, too,” she replied. “I don’t want to walk around alone in a hat.”
“And you call yourself a reporter,” he chided. “Where’s your spirit of nonconformity? The hell with what people think. Let them worry about what you think, for God’s sake.”
She flushed uncomfortably, “I’m an introvert by nature,” she admitted reluctantly. “Everything past, ‘Hi, my name’s Nicole!’ is pure bravado.”