by BETH KERY
I felt him glance at me and wanted to scream out for him to keep his gaze on the road.
“Yes.”
“I don’t understand. Why do you want to go there? Now.”
“You’re wondering why I want to return to Les Jumeaux after marrying you?”
“Le jumu… “ I attempted to repeat, confused.
“Les Jumeaux. It means the twins, because it’s two identical homes, separate, but side by side.”
“And we’re going to live in…”
“The North Twin,” he finished for me.
“And the other house?”
“Is owned by Elizabeth’s father.”
Noah Madaster. The name popped into my head, a remnant of me doing all that online research about Elizabeth. Elizabeth’s father had been a high-profile figure from a prominent family, I recalled, a former doctor and one-time governor of Nevada.
“But he won’t be there, will he?” I asked, finding the idea of being neighbors with Elizabeth’s dad awkward.
“No. He and his wife have retired to their ranch in the Carson Valley,” Evan said.
At my sigh of relief, he grabbed the hand resting on my thigh and held it firmly.
“And as for your question, I wanted to come back now because I could. With you at my side, Anna, I can finally return to the place where I grew up, the place I consider home. You’ve made me strong again.”
I watched him as he pressed the back of my hand to his mouth. I felt his kiss all the way to my core.
At that moment, we rose to the summit of the mountain. I had my first glimpse of the expanse of Lake Tahoe, a sparkling sapphire gem nestled in the rocky, pine-covered cradle of the mountains.
It was like an opening. Not just in the landscape. In my spirit. It was the strangest thing.
It felt as if I’d come home, too.
Chapter Three
We arrived at Les Jumeaux just before sunset. The anticipation built in me as we coasted down the winding, steep highway surrounding the lake. The only things that stopped me from digging my nails into the leather seat were Evan’s calm, skilled driving and the distraction of the jaw-dropping view. I found myself absorbing the unique hues of green and blue present in the water and mentally detailing what paints I’d use to replicate them.
An expectant silence hung in the car when Evan finally turned off the highway onto a shadowed, narrow road that led into the pine forest. We arrived at a small stone house in front of a tall wrought iron gate. It was a gatehouse, a checkpoint that had probably once housed a security guard. It stood empty now. Moss and creeping vines grew on the limestone. I watched as Evan leaned out the window and pressed a card to an electronic reader.
With the evening gloom, the giant, sentinel-like pines towering over us, and the quaint stone gatehouse, I felt a little like I’d just entered the scene from a fairy tale. The security system Evan used seemed highly out of place, a technical anomaly in a Hans Christian Anderson tale. Attempted to use, I should say. I saw him press the card to the reader for the fourth time, his jaw tight. The gate didn’t budge. He cursed quietly.
“Here,” I said.
He glanced over at me as if he’d forgotten I was there. But then he blinked and handed me the card. I rubbed it on my jeans shorts.
“Anna, that’s not going to—”
“Try it now,” I said, handing it back. He reached out the window again.
“I have a feeling something else is the prob—”
The wrought iron gate slowly swung open. He gave me a surprised glance. I grinned. He shook his head sheepishly.
“I should have known it only required a sprite’s touch,” he said under his breath as he put the car in Drive.
The road meandered through a ravine, the steepness of which was emphasized by the giant pine trees that surrounded us. After a moment, I realized we followed the path of a creek that ran to the left of us. Sunlight barely penetrated the tunnel-like entrance. I found it beautiful, and a little eerie. At one point, the narrow road forked. Evan veered to the right.
“Where does the other road go?” I asked.
“To the South Twin. The garages are on opposite ends of the property.”
“Are the two houses connected somehow?”
“They were once, by a corridor. Not anymore. They’re completely separate,” he stated. Something grim in his tone made me study his profile closely.
“Your father-in-law… I mean your former one, Elizabeth’s father,” I said. “You don’t like him much, do you?”
“I’ve never known anyone who does.”
That gave me pause for a few seconds. Even Elizabeth hadn’t liked her own father?
“He was a physician, wasn’t he? Before he became the governor of Nevada?”
“Before he was forced to resign as governor because of a scandal of his own making? Yes. That’s right. He was a neurologist, actually. Brilliant man. What he did with that genius was the stuff of horror stories, in my opinion.”
“What do you mean, the stuff of—”
“Can we not talk about Noah Madaster right now, just when we’re arriving at our new home?” Evan interrupted. He glanced sideways and saw my open-mouthed surprise at his sharpness.
“Sorry,” he muttered. “Madaster is a topic from my past. Talking about him always sets me on edge.”
Obviously.
“We don’t have to talk about him if you don’t want to.”
He gave me a quick, grateful glance and pointed out the window.
“This is one of the only stretches of shore on the eastern side that has sugar pines. That’s one there. See how giant the cones are?” he said, pointing at a suspended pair of cones that must have been a foot long each. Warmth had crept into his voice, despite the earlier edge to his tone.
“You really love it here, don’t you?”
He gripped the wheel tighter. “It’s a wonder. But I suppose part of me does, yes.”
He loved the place, despite the fact that he snarled even at the mention of Noah Madaster’s name… despite the fact that he’d lived with and lost Elizabeth here.
An invisible hand seemed to squeeze at my heart.
We broke the tree line. Light poured into the car windows, lighting a fuse of excitement inside me. At our elevation, we were above the main part of the mansion, but only just. I stared over four steep gables and two tall turrets of what looked like one sprawling stone house. Because of several giant pines, I couldn’t see the gap between the properties. Tahoe glowed like sun-shot turquoise glass on the horizon.
Evan glanced over at me, and I realized I’d gasped. I suppose it only made sense that a fairy-tale castle existed in the magic forest alongside the enchanted lake.
“Welcome to Les Jumeaux,” he said.
A moving van would be arriving the next day with select pieces of furniture from Evan’s homes in San Francisco and Tiburon, along with some of my completed paintings. But we still were pretty loaded down with what we’d brought in the car as we approached Les Jumeaux that late afternoon. Evan carried our luggage, and I hauled several blank canvases and art supplies. We walked up stone steps to a small porch. Evan unlocked a pair of enormous carved wooden doors.
The silence hung thick as I followed him into a vaulted entryway, and then into a two-story high great room. I stared wide-eyed at what must have been a twenty-foot-tall row of gigantic windows overlooking the incandescent lake. Overflowing bookshelves lined each side of the massive room.
It was decorated in a style I’d never seen firsthand, but associated with grand hunting lodges or mountain retreats for the wealthy. I had the impression of being in a giant stone and wood cave and peering out into a world of light and color. That hushed sense of charged expectation prevailed.
“It’s like it was waiting for us,” I whispered.
Evan’s d
eep laughter broke the trance. I realized how stupid I’d sounded. I smiled at the soft light in his eyes, so rarely seen. He parked the suitcases and came to me. He methodically unburdened me of my art supplies one by one, setting them on a nearby table.
Then he took me into his arms.
We stared out the floor-to-ceiling windows onto the cerulean blue waters, our fronts pressed together. That fullness in my chest that I associated exclusively with Evan’s embraces expanded in me, exponentially bigger this time as we stood together in what was to be our new home.
Our home.
Will I ever wrap my head around all this?
“I want you to be happy here, Anna,” he murmured, nuzzling the top of my head with his chin.
“If I were any happier, I’d burst,” I said before I pressed my face to his chest and inhaled the subtle scent of wood, spice, and citrus: the singular smell of him. I could substitute the scent of him for a meal.
“You belong out there.” I felt him tilt his head in the direction of the lake.
“In the water, I suppose.”
“No. In the light.” He kissed my head and took my hand in his. “Come on. You haven’t seen anything yet. I’m going to show you the grounds… and the most perfect place.”
“Perfect for what?” I asked suggestively, following him down a shadowed hallway.
He arched his brows, catching my playful sexual innuendo. “Almost anyplace is perfect for that, when it comes to you. But I meant your painting.”
“But what about the rest of the house?” I asked, craning my head over my shoulder and taking in the beamed ceilings, huge wrought iron chandeliers, and a Y-shaped, dramatic mahogany staircase in the distance.
“There’ll be plenty of time to see the house later. Let’s go out on the grounds while the light is still good,” Evan insisted.
At Les Jumeaux, it was hard to tell where the stony landscape of Tahoe ended and the bridges, folly towers, fountains, and walls of the grounds began. It was like the house itself had sprung up from the craggy mountainside. Even the peaceful waters of the beach enclosure had been fabricated, I realized. A rocky jetty had been built to create a small harbor, protecting the calm blue and green waters of the private beach from rough waves. Evan told me that Cornish stonemasons and miners had been imported by some ancestor of Elizabeth’s back in the early 1900s to build the home and handcraft the beach, fanciful gardens, paths, and elaborate fountains.
“There are floats and kayaks in storage over there, if you should ever want them for the beach,” Evan said, waving in the direction of a distant boathouse built from the same gray stone as Les Jumeaux. “The enclosure is perfect for swimming. It’s shallow, and always stays calm. Come on. I want to show you something you’ll like.”
We left the house and grounds behind us. Evan led me up a mountain trail surrounded by towering pines. Suddenly, we stood at a rocky promontory about twenty feet wide, the tropical-like, brilliantly blue water shimmering some eighty feet below us.
“Do you like it?” Evan asked, eagerness in his quiet voice. “Do you think it’d be a good spot to paint?”
“Absolutely,” I breathed, spellbound by the magic of the place.
“The new easel and chair I got you will come with the other things tomorrow. I also got you a waterproof locker where you can store your supplies, so you don’t have to haul things back and forth. I’ll bring everything up here as soon as they arrive.”
“You spoil me,” I murmured, completely distracted. Overwhelmed, I dropped his hand. Slowly, I spun around in a full circle. From here, every landscape was available to me: the lake, the mountains, the highest gables and turrets of Les Jumeaux soaring side by side with the huge pines. Beauty poured into me. I couldn’t drink it in fast enough. The quality of light was unlike anything I’d ever seen.
“It’s like it’s alive, the light,” I whispered, my voice sounding hollow with awe.
Evan reached for my hand. He bent his arm, drawing me close. I bumped against him, our bodies pressing tightly together.
“So you really do like it?”
“It’s not like anyplace I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s like something out of a fairytale.” I peered up at his sunlit face. My throat felt very tight with emotion. “You were right, to want to come. It’s amazing.”
A small smile flickered across his mouth. His head dipped. I opened my eyelids a dazed moment later, the intense sunlight and his kiss leaving me disoriented.
“You’re like something out of a fairy tale,” he said.
I smiled, squinting more because the light from the setting sun was fierce. He moved me, adjusting where I stood so that his head blocked out the reddish-gold ball descending over the mountains.
“Such a gentleman,” I murmured.
He gave a swift glance behind me, toward Les Jumeaux. He pulled me higher in his arms and leaned down to kiss me… to devour me.
“Let’s go back,” he said a moment later, nuzzling my nose with his and nipping at my parted lips.
“Let’s hurry,” I agreed breathlessly.
He laughed, seeming pleased by my haste. Hand in hand, we raced down the trail.
The heavy curtains were drawn in the bedroom suite to which he led me. He pulled me into his arms the second after he shut the door. I loved his single-minded intensity, his heat. For a moment, I let it overwhelm me as we clawed at each other’s clothes and staggered deeper into the room, neither one of us willing to fully take our mouths or hands off each other. But then I stumbled slightly a few feet from the bed. He caught me. I laughed, startled, panting to catch my breath. He smiled.
I found myself glancing warily around the large, shadowed room.
“What are you looking for, Anna?” he asked after a moment.
I blinked, glancing up at something I’d heard in his tone. His smile was gone. He’d seen something on my face. Or caught my mood.
“Nothing. I was just curious. It’s dark in here. Is this… is this our bedroom?”
“Yes.” He dropped his hands and moved back slightly, beginning to unbutton his shirt.
I shivered at the loss of his heat. The air suddenly felt cool. The sun must have finished its descent behind the mountains. The light peeking from behind the curtains had turned a lurid scarlet. He removed his shirt, a band of red illuminating the otherwise gray shadows of his powerful body.
“But there are nine other bedrooms here. You can choose another one, if you like,” he said.
“No,” I said breathlessly. “I’m sure it’s wonderful.” I stepped forward, my hand extended to touch the temptation of his naked chest, eager to cast off the sudden shadows. He caught my wrist.
“This wasn’t Elizabeth’s and my room, Anna.”
I stared up at him, my mouth hanging open. “How—”
“Of course you’d wonder about that. I may be insensitive, but I’m not that dense. I hired a cleaning service to come in a few days ago and get the house ready for us. I asked them to fix this room up. It’s nice, and it faces the lake. Turn on the light.” I saw him nod in the direction of a lamp. “Go on. Look it over.”
“No. I’m sure it’s beautiful. It doesn’t matter,” I whispered, moving into his arms, ashamed of my insecurity. I kissed his chest. He put his hand at the back of my head. I became more feverish, my mouth moving lower on his body, so eager to forget my flash of uncertainty.
A moment later, he groaned gruffly and urged me to straighten. He lifted me into his arms and laid me down on the bed. He removed his remaining clothes. I started to frantically strip, but he spoke tersely.
“I’ll undress you.”
He sat at the edge of the bed.
He took off my clothes, his manner deliberate, but strained, as if he were unwrapping a present that he was determined to savor instead of devour in a rush. My desire grew so sharp, I broke out in sweat in
the ensuing silence.
By the time he entered me minutes later, I was already near the breaking point. I stared up at his shadowed form as he came down over me, gasping when he filled me.
“Any time you find yourself doubting, remember me saying this: I’m only thinking of you when we touch,” he said next to my upturned lips. His body tensed and flexed under my anxious fingers. I cried out in pleasure.
“Only you, Anna,” he repeated harshly next to my ear before he began to move in earnest.
Evan got up at around eleven that night and went in search of something for us to eat. He left the lamp on when he walked out the door. I lay in the giant bed, the thick, soft comforter pulled up to my chin. I surveyed the suite, moving just my eyes. It was comfortably anonymous. It might have been the bedroom at a luxurious five-star hotel. I was relieved there were no personal photos, no remnants of Evan’s former life here.
But maybe it wasn’t so impersonal, after all.
“Is that an original Bierstadt?” I murmured when Evan returned carrying a tray. He kicked the door closed with that male grace I loved, never so much as causing a ripple in the wine he carried in two goblets. He glanced over his shoulder to where I pointed at the painting on the wall. But my attention had transferred to the much more interesting natural landscape of his half-nude body.
“Yeah. It used to hang in the great room. I had it moved up here last week.”
“For me?”
“For whom else?” he asked me with a small grin as he set the tray on the bedside table. I couldn’t unglue my eyes from him as he stood there, wearing a pair of pajama bottoms and nothing else. A feeling of self-consciousness overcame me… an uncommon shyness.
“And that,” I whispered, pointing behind me at an exquisite white ceramic, surrealist sculpture of two lovers, their mouths poised to meet in a kiss. “Evan… is that a Tsang?” I asked, referring to the sculptor, Johnson Tsang, whom I admired deeply.
“Yes,” he said matter-of-factly. “It’s my wedding gift to you. Do you like it?”