The Welcoming

yap that only added to the ambience. Gulls, out for an early feeding, swooped low over the water, slicing the silence with their lonely cries. The fragrance of flowers, a celebration of spring, carried delicately on the quiet breeze.
    He wondered why he’d been so certain he preferred the rush and noise of cities.
    As he stood there he saw a deer come out of the trees and raise her head to scent the air. That was freedom, he thought abruptly. To know your place and to be content with it. The doe cleared the trees, picking her way delicately toward the high grass. Behind her came a gangly fawn. Staying upwind, Roman watched them graze.
    He was restless. Even as he tried to absorb and accept the peace around him he felt the impatience struggling through. This wasn’t his place. He had no place. That was one of the things that made him so perfect for his job. No roots, no family, no woman waiting for his return. That was the way he wanted it.
    But he’d felt enormous satisfaction in doing the carpentry the day before, in leaving his mark on something that would last. All the better for his cover, he told himself. If he showed some skill and some care in the work he would be accepted more easily.
    He was already accepted.
    She trusted him. She’d given him a roof and a meal and a job, thinking he needed all three. She seemed to have no guile in her. Something had simmered between them the evening before, yet she had done nothing to provoke or prolong it. She hadn’t—though he knew all females were capable of it from birth—issued a silent invitation that she might or might not have intended to keep.
    She’d simply looked at him, and everything she felt had been almost ridiculously clear in her eyes.
    He couldn’t think of her as a woman. He couldn’t think of her as ever being
his
woman.
    He felt the urge for a cigarette again, and this time he deliberately suppressed it. If there was something you wanted that badly, it was best to pass it by. Once you gave in, you surrendered control.
    He’d wanted Charity. For one brief, blinding instant the day before, he had craved her. A very serious error. He’d blocked the need, but it had continued to surface—when he’d heard her come into the wing for the night, when he’d listened to the sound of Chopin drifting softly down the stairway from her rooms. And again in the middle of the night, when he’d awakened to the deep country silence, thinking of her, imagining her.
    He didn’t have time for desires. In another place, at another time, they might have met and enjoyed each other for as long as enjoyments lasted. But now she was part of an assignment—nothing less, nothing more.
    He heard the sound of running footsteps and tensed instinctively. The deer, as alert as he, lifted her head, then sprinted back into the trees with her young. His weapon was strapped just above his ankle, more out of habit than necessity, but he didn’t reach for it. If he needed it it could be in his hand in under a second. Instead he waited, braced, to see who was running down the deserted road at dawn.
    Charity was breathing fast, more from the effort of keeping pace with her dog than from the three-mile run. Ludwig bounded ahead, tugged to the right, jerked to the left, tangled and untangled in the leash. It was a daily routine, one that both of them were accustomed to. She could have controlled the little golden cocker, but she didn’t want to spoil his fun. Instead, she swerved with him, adjusting her pace from a flat-out run to an easy jog and back again.
    She hesitated briefly when she saw Roman. Then, because Ludwig sprinted ahead, she tightened her grip on the leash and kept pace.
    “Good morning,” she called out, then skidded to a halt when Ludwig decided to jump on Roman’s shins and bark at him. “He doesn’t bite.”
    “That’s what they all say.” But he grinned and crouched down to scratch between the dog’s ears. Ludwig immediately collapsed, rolled over and exposed his belly for rubbing. “Nice dog.”
    “A nice spoiled dog,” Charity added. “I have to keep him fenced because of the guests, but he eats like a king. You’re up early.”
    “So are you.”
    “I figure Ludwig deserves a good run every morning, since he’s so understanding about being fenced.”
    To show his appreciation, Ludwig raced once around Roman, tangling his lead around his legs.
    “Now if I could only get him to understand the concept of a leash.” She stooped to untangle