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the suspiciously meek tone of his voice, then gathered a pair of jeans and a crimson-and-papaya colored pullover and stepped into the bathroom. She locked the door firmly behind her. The action made her wonder how Flint had gotten into the kitchen. She could have sworn she'd locked the door the night before when she'd returned from the cottage. Then she remembered her sense of nervous awareness when she'd glanced out into the rainy darkness and realized he'd followed her. Maybe she'd been too startled to remember to lock the kitchen door. Or maybe he was good at getting into locked places.
    Half an hour later she poured pancake batter into neat circles on the heated griddle and laconically wondered how on earth she'd let herself get maneuvered into making breakfast for Flint Cottrell.
    "This has gone far enough, Zipp," she confided to the cat who was sunning himself in the window. "I've got to get control of the situation or the next few weeks are going to be a disaster."
    Down the hall the shower finally clicked off. Flint sauntered into the kitchen a few minutes later, running a rather beat-up comb through his damp hair.
    "Smells good. Hey, you've got real maple syrup, not brown sugar water."
    He wore such an air of pleased expectation on his hard face as he sat down at the table that Rani almost felt guilty about the grudging way she was fixing breakfast. Almost.
    Her natural wariness about the bizarre situation in which she found herself was enough to prevent an outright attack of feminine guilt.
    "You can pick up some supplies in Reed Lake today so that you'll be able to cook your own breakfast tomorrow morning," Rani said as she placed a stack of steaming pan-cakes in front of him. "Also your own dinner this evening," she added bluntly.
    He nodded disinterestedly, his attention clearly on the pancakes as he carefully buttered each one and poured syrup over the top. "This is nice country. Clean and green. I noticed you could see the lake from your living room window, can't see anything from my cottage except the trees."
    "Theoretically gardeners should be more interested in the greenery than the lake."
    "I guess."
    "Have you done a lot of gardening, Flint?"
    "When the jobs come up, I take them."
    "But you've worked quite a bit as a handyman also?" Rani pressed as she seated herself.
    "Yeah."
    "Have you, uh, had any other professions?" She wasn't sure why she was asking the questions. A strange kind of perverse curiosity probably.
    He looked up. "I've been fairly flexible. I've generally done whatever came along. 1 like gardening best, though."
    "Your resume must be quite long by now," Rani observed with a hint of disapproval.
    "It probably would be if I ever got around to typing one. lost of the people I've worked for didn't expect to see formal resumes."
    "How long have you been job-hopping like this?"
    Flint shrugged. "Since I got out of school. I took a job on freighter during my junior year in college. One thing led to another. I never looked back. Tended bar for a while in Singapore. Acted as a stringer for one of the wire services in North Africa. Worked in the oil fields in the Middle East. Did a stint as a guide for some anthropologists in Indonesia. Hired myself out as a bodyguard for an industrialist in Italy. The industrialist had a great garden. I spent a lot of time in it when I was off duty. There's always something for a man who's flexible and who doesn't mind hard work."
    Rani's fork went still. "And in between you chase legends."
    "I like tracking them down," he admitted.
    "What do you do with them when you track them down?"
    "Find out the real truth, do an article and try to sell it."
    "The real truth?" Rani paused. "What sort of article are you planning to do on the Clayborne ring, Flint?"
    "A factual one. I'm going to straighten out the record on it the way I've done with the other legends I've chased."
    "What do you mean?"
    "I prove the wild tales are generally false."
    "You mean show that things such