Too Hot To Handle

by Elizabeth Lowell

  9

  For the hundredth time Tory relived the long, silent ride back to the ranch. Reever had been achingly tender with her, treating her she was made of the most fragile china. He had said nothing, done nothing to indicate that he had heard her help­less admission of love. But he had heard. She was sure of it.

  He hadn’t touched her since then.

  Five days.

  Each day longer than the one before, shorter than the one to follow. It wasn’t a return to the harshness of the time before they had become lovers. Reever continued to treat Tory with a gen­tleness that made her throat close around silent screams—because beneath that unfailing kindness she sensed him sliding away from her, retreating, easing apart from her so very carefully, not wanting to cause her any more pain.

  He did not love her.

  With each breath she took, that terrible certainty turned in her soul like a razor. She didn’t even know if he desired her physically any more. He was so kind to her. Too kind. When he looked at her—if he looked at her at all—there was none of the leashed passion that once had turned his eyes to a smoky crystal blaze. There was only the kind of sor­row that made the razor of loss turn more deeply in her, her life bleeding away secretly, tears wept in darkness, unseen, unheard, untouched, unknown.

  “Hi, Tory,” Dutch said, shutting the lodge’s kitchen door behind him and looking hopefully to­ward the huge, shining stove. “What’s cooking?”

  She blinked and looked down at her hands. She was cutting beef into cubes. That meant stew. Had she made stew last night or the night before? She couldn’t remember. She hadn’t even known what she was cooking until she looked down and saw the red chunks waiting to go into the seasoned flour.

  “It looks like stew from here,” she said.

  “Great,” Dutch said enthusiastically. “We haven’t had that for a week. Lots of gravy, okay?”

  “Swimming in it,” she promised, and felt like she should make a note in the spilled flour on the counter before she forgot.

  She was living on automatic pilot. It had to stop. She had never been like this before, no matter how crushing a loss had seemed to her at the time.

  Why won’t Reever even talk to me? Why does he slide like water through my fingers every time I try to speak to him alone?

  It would be different tonight. If there was no other way, she would wait until he went to bed, and then she would corner him in his bedroom. She would—

  “Watch it!” Dutch said.

  Even as he spoke, the knife that she was using slipped, drawing a red line over her finger. Without making a sound, she put down the knife, turned and went to the sink. Numbly she held her finger under the cold water streaming out of the faucet.

  “Is it bad?” he asked anxiously, hovering over her.

  “Is what bad?” Reever asked from the doorway.

  Her heart turned over just at the sound of his voice. Her breath stopped, then came in harshly.

  “She cut her finger,” Dutch said.

  “Let me see.”

  She shook her head, keeping her back turned to Reever, feeling hot and cold and dizzy, and her body shivered like a crystal glass struck by a careless hand.

  She was afraid.

  If he touched her, she would fall apart. She loved him. He had wanted her with a passion that had set them both afire. But now he didn’t want her. She had waited, hoping with each hour, each minute, each second, that he would come to her.

  He had not.

  The longer she stayed close to him, the more unbearable her loss became. She was tearing herself apart, teetering on the instant of shattering.

  The wild seething of her emotions shocked her. In that moment she knew that she wouldn’t cor­ner Reever tonight or any other night. There was no reason to, except to hurt herself even more by re­fusing to accept the reality of her relationship with him. He had nothing to say to her that he hadn’t already said—she had all the qualifications to be his lover and none of the ones to be his beloved. He had told her so the first day.

  She just hadn’t believed him then. She didn’t want to believe him now.

  How can I love so deeply and not have it returned, even a little?

  Dizzy, feeling the world slipping away from her grasp, she fought for self-control.

  “Dutch, check on Blackjack, will you?” Reever said carefully, seeing the color drain completely from Tory’s face. “I think his right foreleg might be swollen.”

  Dutch had just seen Blackjack, and the horse had never looked better. A glance at Reever’s bleak eyes froze Dutch’s protest in his throat. He turned and went out the back door without a word.

  “Let me see it.”

  His tone was gentle, coaxing, re­strained...and somehow as distant as the moon.

  “There’s no need,” she said, her voice thin. “It’s just a scratch.”

  He didn’t bother to argue. He simply took her hand from the stream of water and watched crimson blood well instantly from the cut. He also watched her helpless response to his touch, the shiver she couldn’t control, and he heard the soft sound of her breath breaking. His eyes closed.

  “Tory,” he said achingly. “I didn’t want it to be like this.”

  “Like what?” she asked faintly.

  “You loving me.”

  “And you not loving me.” Her eyes darkened as she looked out the kitchen window at the supple pines and the lake shimmering beneath the sun. “I believe you,” she whispered. “I’ll buy that bus ticket out of here, the one you’ve been telling me to get since the first time you saw me. You’re free, Reever. Go find the perfect woman of your dreams. I’ll go find the perfect platform, the perfect pool, the perfect dive, and then I’ll step off into the air and float forever....”

  As the last word died away, she shivered violently.

  “But thank you,” she added, her voice thinned almost to breaking. “You made it so very good for me. When you held me, it was more beautiful than anything I’d ever dreamed.”

  She pulled her trembling hand from his grasp, ignoring the line of scarlet sliding down her finger. The cut was only superficial. The rest of her wounding was not.

  “I should have driven you into town that first day,” he said, his voice suddenly harsh, as if he had never held her, never felt her come apart in his arms. His eyes were dark, nearly wild, savage. “I didn’t want your virginity. I didn’t want the guilt of taking a young girl without words of love. But you burned like a fire in me all the way to my soul. So I seduced a city girl who was only marking time until she could go back to the bright lights. That’s what you were doing at the Sundance, isn’t it, city girl? Marking time until your knee healed, until you could make that perfect dive. God, I wish I’d never touched you.”

  The little color that had been left in Tory’s world faded away. “My fault,” she said, her voice so frail that it was almost like silence. “I can’t say you didn’t warn me. I know that I’m a long way from the woman of your dreams. You told me often enough. I just didn’t listen very well.”

  In the sudden, taut silence the sound of cowboy boots stamping off mud on the flagstone walkway beyond the kitchen was as loud as an exchange of gunshots. Jed’s voice rose over the noise, as did Mil­ler’s. Both of them were speculating on whether any of Tory’s cookies were available for starving cow­hands.

  “Tell them the cookies are in the blue jar,” she said, her voice breaking as she slipped past him.

  When Tory finally came back to the kitchen, the room was empty of cookies, cowhands, and Reever. The remaining meat was cubed and neatly stacked to one side of the cutting board. She didn’t have to be told that Reever had taken care of it for her. With trembling hands she dredged the big cubes in the seasoned flour, browned them and set them aside to simmer slowly while she made four cherry pies.

  She tried not to think, not to f
eel, but it was impossible. By the time dinner was ready, it was all she could do to force herself to sit at the table with Reever only inches away.

  God, I wish I’d never touched you.

  But he had. Nothing could change that. All that remained was for her to find a way to survive lov­ing a man who didn’t love her in return, not even a little.

  “Tory, are you on some kind of damn fool diet?” Dutch asked.

  “What?” she asked, startled out of her thoughts.

  “You’re not eating enough to keep a kitten alive,” he said gruffly. “You haven’t for five days. I just wondered if you was on some damn fool diet. None of my business, of course, but you sure don’t need to get any skinnier.”

  Tory looked down at the stew she had been push­ing from one side of her plate to the other, and at the biscuit she had shredded without eating. It had been the same for every meal since Reever had taken her to the small meadow and made love to her until the truth poured out of her in husky, heedless cries.

  “I—I ate too many cookies earlier,” she lied. “Ruined my appetite.”

  Dutch gave her a skeptical look but said nothing more.

  “I checked on your garden today,” Jed said, reaching for another biscuit. “The drip that Reever set up in the furrows is keeping everything green, but I think the beans need some more of that fancy fertilizer. Want me to pick up a bag when I go into town for supplies tomorrow?”

  “That would be very…” Tory cleared her throat. “Could I go in with you?” she asked. “I have to…do something.”

  For an instant Jed looked surprised, then he grinned. “Sure thing. Too bad I’m not twenty-one yet. I’d buy you your first legal drink.”

  She sensed Reever’s sudden, intent scrutiny.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Don’t you turn twenty-one tomorrow?” Jed continued, oblivious to Reever’s narrowed, icy eyes. “Or is that next month?”

  “Is tomorrow the thirtieth?” Tory asked.

  “As ever was,” Jed said, heaping butter on the biscuit.

  “Oh,” she said, swallowing. “Yes. My birth­day.”

  “Wear your best jeans,” Jed said. “I’ll spring for lunch.” He winked at the other men. “You see, I’ve got this thing for older women.”

  Reever’s fork rang heavily against his dinner plate.

  Tory carefully did not look at him. She looked only at the steaming, fragrant, beautifully prepared and utterly unappealing dinner that she was system­atically rearranging on her plate. Around her the hands argued about the best way to celebrate her birthday. She ignored them because it would have been too painful to speak, to tell them that their ar­gument was academic.

  Whenever they celebrated her birthday, the guest of honor would be absent.

  “But don’t worry, boys,” Jed continued blithely, “I’ll get Tory back in time to cook dinner, birthday or no birthday. Otherwise, you’d all skin me alive.”

  This time it was Tory’s fork that rang loudly against her plate. She wasn’t going to come back. She couldn’t bear being on the Sundance any longer, so close to the man she loved, yet so very far away from being loved in return.

  With a brilliant, false smile she stood up.

  “There’s some pie in the oven,” she announced, withdrawing quickly from the dining area.

  “Tory?” Dutch called.

  She answered without looking back. “Just leave the dishes on the table. I’ll take care of them when I’ve finished my knee exercises.”

  Reever’s chair scraped loudly against the un­glazed tile floor as he pushed back with a force just short of violence.

  “Boss?” Jed asked, looking surprised.

  “I’m going to check on Blackjack,” snarled Reever.

  Dutch, who knew that there wasn’t anything wrong with Reever’s favorite horse, wisely kept his mouth shut.

  Tory went to her room and did her exercises, try­ing very hard not to think of Reever as she braced herself awkwardly on the wall, bumping her knee or her foot with every motion. The knee, at least, seemed better. It was neither tender nor swollen, and it had been a long time since she had limped at all.

  In that way, the Sundance had been just what the doctor had ordered.

  As soon as the exercises were finished, she pulled out her duffel bag and began cramming clothes into it, wondering why she felt so lost. For the first time in months she knew exactly where she was going—back to Southern California and the swim club, back to the diving that she loved and the competition that she had come to realize she didn’t like at all. But competition was part of the only world that remained to her. Diving.

  Going back. Going away from the man she loved, the man who did not love her.

  Halfway through the packing, she found herself standing motionless, staring out the window as the moon rose, full and round and silver, brilliant with promises that would never be kept.

  Don’t be ridiculous, she told herself. It’s the same moon that I’ll see tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. Same world. Same everything. Except Reever and the Sundance. They’ll be gone.

  Tomor­row and tomorrow and tomorrow.

  Abruptly she turned away from the window. She realized that the lodge was utterly quiet. Making no noise, she walked out into the lodge’s main room, which gave her a view of the dining area. The men had long since eaten dinner and gone to the half-finished cottages where they slept.

  Reever was no­where in sight.

  Quickly she cleaned up the kitchen and returned to her room. She knew that she didn’t need to fear running into him. He would be with the men as he had been for the past five nights, playing poker and swapping lies until he thought she was asleep. Only then would he come quietly into the lodge, walking in his stocking feet past her door, taking the bedroom at the end of the hall, as far away from her as he could get without causing a stir by sleeping out with the hands.

  But she was never asleep when Reever came walking softly past her door. She was lying awake, afraid to breathe, praying with every bit of her strength that he would open the door and come to her, whispering words of love.

  It hadn’t happened.

  And it wouldn’t happen tonight.

  He didn’t love her. He didn’t even want her anymore. Hanging around the ranch and hoping that he would change his mind was destroying her, and she knew it.

  You’ve lost him, she told herself fiercely. Accept it like you’ve accepted other losses. Accept it and get on with your life.

  It was late when she finished the last of her packing and crawled into bed. The, suddenly, she knew that she couldn’t go through it again. She couldn’t lie awake until she heard Reever climb the lodge’s front steps. She couldn’t wait with her breath held and her body trembling while he ghosted toward her room. She couldn’t bear to know again the terrible emptiness that came when he passed by her door as if she had never been born.

  Suddenly she couldn’t stand being inside her room a moment longer. Throwing aside the sheet, she walked barefoot through the lodge. The screen door squeaked loudly in the absolute silence of the night, startling her for a moment before she shut the door and left the lodge behind.

  The path to the lake was a pale ribbon unwinding beneath a moon whose bril­liance pressed sharp shadows from the trees. The air was warm, silky, so clear that the night was like an immense, transparent black bell whose ringing was expressed in the shattered brilliance of stars. The cliffs rose in tones of gleaming pewter at the margin of the lake.

  She climbed the familiar trail easily, quickly, for she had come there many times and sat on the lowest cliff, looking down into the lake’s thousand shades of blue. Tonight there was no breeze to disturb the pristine mystery of the lake’s surface. It was like the night itself, deep, mo­tionless, unknowable. It lay at her feet in a black­-and-silver stillness that was uncanny. T
he moon’s trail on the water was utterly sharp and so brilliant that it was painful to look upon for more than an instant.

  Sitting at the edge of the cliff’s granite platform, she looked down into the darkness and moonlight pooled beneath her feet. Shapes seemed to condense on the lake’s surface as though on a shimmering black screen, shadows thrown by her mind as she thought about her life on the eve of her twenty-first birthday. Her years had been shaped by her yearn­ings to make a place for herself in the world, but to do that, it had been necessary to please men who couldn’t be pleased. First her father, then her step­father, then a succession of coaches.

  And finally Ethan Reever.

  Ultimately she had failed in all cases, especially and most painfully with Reever.

  Now she was going to buy a ticket back to a world that she no longer wanted, a world that might ruin her knee beyond recovery. Although she had exercised faithfully, sometimes painfully, every night in her room, the certainty had slowly grown in her that her right knee would never again be as strong as her left. Under most circumstances the dif­ference wouldn’t have been noticeable. Under the relentless stresses of world-class competition, it might be the margin between success and a crippling failure.

  Narrow. Unnatural. Short-lived. Olympics.

  Get out and look at the world.

  Fragments of the doctor’s unwanted advice seemed to condense out of the night around her. She shivered and wrapped her arms around her knees, but it was her thoughts that chilled her, not the mild midnight air. The swim club had become home to her because she had no other and because she loved diving more than she had ever loved any­thing in her life.

  Until Ethan Reever.

  And the land.

  She had discovered that she loved the land, too, a love that had been eclipsed by her unexpected passion for a man. She loved being able to walk out into the night and to hear nothing but the sound of her own footsteps, her own breath, her own heartbeat. She loved standing on earth that had known the weight of millions of seasons and very few men. From the instant she had stepped down off the bus and seen distant, indigo mountains rising above a fertile land, something in her had uncurled from a tiny, hard seed and had begun to put down deep roots in the earth. Even now she could sense herself reaching toward the mountains, unfolding, growing, absorbing the beauty and the silence and the fragrant air.