“Paula said something about that.” She studied his profile as the light changed and they moved forward again. “So I guess you’re a renegade, huh?” she asked him.
He lifted a hand off the wheel and pointed his forefinger at her. “There’s another theory about the origin of the word ‘Seminole.’ Have you ever heard it?”
Cindy searched her mind. “I don’t think so.”
“It comes from the time when the Spanish ruled in Florida, before Jackson and company took over. The story goes that Seminole is a corruption of the Spanish word ‘Cimarron.’ Know what it means?”
Cindy shook her head.
“Wild,” he said, and grinned at her.
She believed him.
“Did you really live in a lean-to?” Cindy asked suddenly, remembering something else Paula had said.
He took a left and headed out of town for the open road. “It wasn’t a lean-to, it was a chiksee.”
“One of those open houses used in the Everglades?”
He shot her an admiring glance. “Right. I wanted to see if I could build one from the ground up, and when I got finished I liked it so well I lived there for a while. The chiksee is very well adapted to Florida weather, with a raised floor and a roof of bark and palmetto leaves. But it got kind of buggy in the hot weather and I eventually traded it in for an apartment.” He laughed softly. “I guess I don’t have the stoic endurance of my forebears.”
“You must share my fatal weakness for air conditioning,” Cindy commented, and he laughed again.
They were traveling on a thin strip of paved road through the scrub pines and date palms that comprise most of the vegetation of northern Florida. Occasionally a cypress would sweep its lacy tresses to the ground, creating a cool pocket of shade within its drooping branches, but the landscape was mostly covered by the tough cow grass that could survive for long periods without water. Cindy opened the top button of her lightweight sweater; it was already hot, and promising to get hotter.
“It’s only June,” Fox said, noticing her action. “Wait until August.”
“I think I’d rather not,” Cindy replied faintly. “I melt in the heat.”
“I think it’s heredity,” Fox observed. “Northern Europeans seem to thrive in a cooler, wetter climate.”
This statement made Cindy think of his mother. “You’re obviously very fond of your father’s people,” she said carefully. “Don’t you identify at all with your mother?”
“Why should I?” he answered simply. “She didn’t identify with me.”
“You’ve never had any contact with her?” Cindy persisted, wondering if she might be pushing him too far, but eager to understand everything about him.
He was silent for a few moments, considering her question, or his answer to it. Then he said, “When she left me with my father, she said she didn’t want to be bothered about me in the future. ‘Bothered’ was the exact word. I gather that I was an embarrassment, not exactly the right bloodline, you understand. As a small child I was curious, of course. Once I became old enough to understand the implications of the situation, I realized that contacting her would be futile, and probably painful. I don’t want anybody who doesn’t want me,” he concluded in a defiant tone that brought quick tears to Cindy’s eyes. In those words she heard the child’s rejection and the man’s determined vow to overcome it.
“It was her loss, Drew,” she said to him, with a catch in her voice that she hoped he missed.
He didn’t miss it. He glanced at her and smiled briefly. “Don’t be unhappy, princess. It was a long time ago.”
“I can’t imagine a mother abandoning her child that way,” Cindy added slowly.
“No, I’m sure you can’t,” he replied, in a tone which made her turn her head to look at him.
“Don’t hate her, Drew,” Cindy said. “She was weak, and you’re not. It’s always difficult to understand a flaw in someone’s character when you don’t share it.”
“I don’t hate her anymore. When I was younger, her leaving me was sad, but now it’s only... interesting.”
“Interesting?” What an odd choice of words.
“Yes. I felt sorry for my father, when he was alive, because he loved her. He carried that sorrow to his grave. But now that he’s gone, so is the reason for the emptiness she left. I never knew her and so I never missed her.”
“What was he like?”
Fox glanced at her. “My father?”
“Yes.”
A small smile played about his lips. “Quiet. Very smart, but not showy about it. He loved me, and I miss that. In anyone’s life there are only a few people, if that, who love you that way—completely, selflessly. He was that person for me and I know I’ll never be loved like that again.”
Cindy was silent, unable to get words past the lump in her throat. This was the man Paula saw as aloof and uninvolved? She didn’t know him. She simply didn’t know him.
Her reverie was interrupted by a chuckle from Fox, low and self-conscious. “Wow. You sure are getting me to talk. I don’t think I’ve blabbed that much about myself in twenty years. The FBI could use your services.”
“I didn’t mean to pry,” Cindy said, surreptitiously dabbing her damp lashes with a fingertip.
“You didn’t. Something about you gets me going. In more ways than one,” he concluded dryly, and she could feel her face growing warm.
He glanced over his shoulder and pulled off the road into a grove of orange trees. A fruit stand stood at the edge of the orchard.
“Would you like a drink?” he asked. “It’s great stuff, fresh squeezed, the best in the state.”
“Oh, yes, please. I’m getting awfully thirsty in this heat.”
Fox helped her out of the truck and she sat at an oak table under the trees while he went to get the drinks. He returned with two tall wax cups filled with orange juice swimming with pulp. He handed her one and watched with amusement as she swallowed half the contents in one gulp.
“Fabulous,” she pronounced, pausing to take a breath. “Delicious.”
He shook his head as he drank from his own glass. “It doesn’t take much to please you, does it?” he asked rhetorically.
“Cold juice on a hot day would please anybody,” she answered.
“That’s not what I meant,” he said, but when she looked at him inquiringly, he merely shook his head again and didn’t elaborate.
Cindy watched him as he stood a few feet away from her, one leg up on the bench where she sat, an elbow propped on his upraised knee. His shirt was open at the neck, exposing the strong column of his throat. The honey tan skin glowed with the dull finish of polished marble warmed by the sun. His eyes, narrowed against the glare of the sun, were emerald slits outlined by black lashes as thick as a child’s. A slight breeze ruffled his hair and scattered the wisps, like drifting black feathers, across his forehead.
“Why do you look at me like that?” he asked abruptly, and Cindy started, chagrined that she was caught staring.
“I...” she said and stopped.
“You what?” he prompted. “You can tell me.”
“I like to look at you,” she answered simply.
His expression changed, became intent, listening. “Why?”
“Your features are different, intriguing, a combination of traits that shouldn’t go together but somehow do. You don’t look like anybody else.”
“That makes me sound like a freak,” he said, half smiling, half serious.
“Oh, no,” she protested, concerned that he had misunderstood her. “I think you’re beautiful.”
He tossed away his empty cup and reached her in two strides, pulling her into his arms.
“You keep saying things like that to me,” he whispered against her hair, “and we’ll never make it to Eli’s.”
“Who’s Eli?” Cindy asked dreamily, her eyes closing.
“My grandfather,” Fox replied, a trace of amusement in his voice. “Remember him?”
“Vaguely,” she sighed, relaxing into his shoulder, and he laughed softly.
“Miss Warren, you wouldn’t be making a pass at me in a public place, would you? What an unprincesslike thing to do.”