Too Hot To Handle

by Elizabeth Lowell

  She had been born in the city, but she had been born for the land.

  With that understanding something eased inside her, dimming some of the pain that had paralyzed her. When she left in the morning, it wouldn’t be to go back to the narrow world she no longer wanted. She would go and find a new world full of mountains and silence and tender grass swaying in the wind. There would be a place for her in that world—cook or waitress, cashier or baby-sitter, it didn’t matter. There would be a way for her to eat and sleep and wake up surrounded by mountains and seasons. Part of her, at least, would have finally come home. As for the rest, it would either heal or she would adjust to living with pain. That, too, she had learned in the past.

  But tonight, for a short time, for the last time, she would know again the beauty of being a leaf turning on a silver wind.

  * * *

  “This just isn’t your night, boss,” Dutch said, raking in a modest mound of chips. “Never knew you to try to fill an inside straight like that.”

  Reever grimaced. He hadn’t meant to do anything so stupid, but since he had heard the lodge’s screen door squeak open and shut, he hadn’t been able to keep even part of his mind on the cards. He kept wondering what Tory was doing out in the night, if she was crying or simply walking.

  If the light had come back into her eyes or if she still looked far too old to be so young.

  Twenty-one. How young is that? he asked himself roughly. A hell of a lot older than it ought to be. Being seduced and dumped does that to a girl. What did she ever do to me but be the kind of lover I’ve always wanted and never had?

  For this crime I refuse to touch her?

  For this crime I’m tearing her apart?

  And me, he thought bleakly. I never knew how much it could hurt just to be alive. But then I never knew how much I could want a woman. City girl. Soft and sweet and just passing through the coun­tryside. Too young to know what she really wants. Too young to know what love really is.

  But I know. Love is like the land—enduring. It’s a fire in the soul as well as the body. I know that, but she’s too young to know it, no matter what soft words she says when she comes apart in my arms.

  I wish to Christ I’d never touched you, city girl. Letting go of you is tearing me apart.

  With a soft, vicious curse that made the cowhands look at each other uneasily, he picked up the cards he had been dealt. Faces stared back at him, faces laughing, crying, transformed by passion, pale with the kind of pain that he had never wanted her to feel. Tory’s face repeated endlessly, her voice calling his name in all the shades of longing and love as she gave herself to him without reservation.

  Too damned young.

  Slowly he realized that the men were utterly silent, watching him. He saw the cards crushed within his fist. As he opened his fingers, mutilated cards fell to the tabletop. Without a word he got up and walked out into the night.

  Tory wasn’t in the stable. She wasn’t feeding car­rots to Twinkle Toes or leaning over the stall door talking to Blackjack. She wasn’t standing in the small meadow behind the lodge. She wasn’t any­where in sight.

  Without breaking stride, he took one of the three paths down to the lake. He carried no flashlight because he needed none. In the full moonlight it was bright enough to read print. The path went through a stand of pines and from there down the gentle slope to the lake. At one point, just before the de­scent to the shore, another trail snaked off toward the low granite cliffs. He didn’t even look that way. He expected to find Tory along the moon-washed beach, watching tiny wavelets come apart.

  There was no one along the shore.

  He felt a disappointment that was just short of pain. He searched the rocky beach again, unable to believe that she wasn’t there. He had been so sure he would find her. He walked the shore with long strides, wondering if she might be hidden in the shadow of the cliffs.

  As he reached the middle of the beach, a pale flash of movement caught his eye. He looked up to his right, where a low granite cliff glowed like pewter in the moonlight. When he realized what he was seeing, he froze in disbelief.

  Tory had been sitting so quietly that he had overlooked her. Then she had stood and thrown off her nightshirt. As naked as the moonlight itself, she walked with measured steps away from the edge of the cliff, turned as gracefully as a dancer and walked back toward the brink. With each step she moved faster, gathering herself, her intention clear in the elegant, poised tension of her body.

  No! Stop!

  The desperate cry went no farther than Reever’s mind. It was too late. Tory had reached the brink and sprung up and outward.

  Arms spread wide, body perfectly arched, she floated on the air as if she was truly the swan her dive had been named after. At the last possible instant her arms came together over her head, her body straightened, and she arrowed downward. She entered the midnight lake in a dive so perfectly executed that the water was barely disturbed.

  The breath came out of him in a harsh rush when he saw her surface and swim cleanly toward the beach. Distantly he realized that he was trem­bling. When she rose naked from the lake and walked up the long tongue of granite leading to the shore, she didn’t see him, for her eyes were turned back toward the cliff.

  Without hesitating, she climbed the trail to the top again.

  He could have called out, could have stopped her, but he was frozen in the moment when she had dived into the lake with a grace and beauty that had literally taken his breath. He had not known that such a dive was possible.

  Again she walked to the edge of the cliff, turned, paced several steps away, then turned, long legs eating up the distance to the brink. Her legs flexed and she arched up and out again. Her body bent at the hips, and she fell, turning and gleaming in the moonlight, describing a whole, incredibly slow cir­cle that ended just in time for her to arrow cleanly into the water once more. Instants later she surfaced and swam for the ghostly tongue of granite.

  He watched her leave the lake and climb the cliff trail again. She was like a condensation of moonlight, silent, shimmering with liquid silver, her feminine curves and hollows caressed by velvet touches of night. If he hadn’t seen the dark, wet marks of her passage over the granite tongue, he would have thought he was dreaming.

  Again the steps, the turn, the gathering speed, the leap into darkness. This time her arms came against her body at shoulder and hip, and she spun quickly, a gleaming whirlwind that became a woman only at the last possible instant, parting black waters with clean silence. Soon she was on the cliff again, leap­ing, soaring, spinning, falling, and then again and yet again, each dive more complex, more difficult, more beautiful than the one before.

  He watched without moving, transfixed by her skill. He had never known that the human body could be so elegant—or so ruthlessly disci­plined in the search for perfection. He had never even imagined that such perfection was possible. Yet even as he silently celebrated Tory’s extraordi­nary grace, he felt part of himself sliding down into a grim blackness that knew no end.

  He had been so wrong.

  No matter what her age, Victoria Wells was not a young girl. Not in any way that counted. She knew what was real and what was not, what was enduring and what was transient. That knowledge was shouted from every elegant movement, every difficult dive. He was watching the culmination of years of enor­mous discipline and effort. Few adults were capable of that kind of sustained sacrifice for a distant goal.

  Yet Tory had been, even as a child. The truth of it was written in every beautiful line of her body turning and falling so perfectly through the night.

  Another truth was written, too.

  As Reever stood and watched helplessly, he realized that he had come out tonight to find Tory, to hold her, to make love to her until pain was no longer possible.

  Instead he had lost her, and pain was all that was possible.

/>   You never had her, cowboy, he told himself bleakly. Look at her. You’ve never seen her equal. No one has.

  You might have made her sweet body sing, but you never could have competed with a life­time of work and dreams. You finally found your woman—and it’s too damned late. She has another life, other dreams. She’s earned every one of them, too.

  All I can do is say goodbye.

  He lost count of the dives and the passage of time. He stood motionless, caught in a terrible net of beauty and despair until she stumbled slightly as she came out of the water, breaking his bit­tersweet enchantment. He walked out of the shad­ows and lifted her into his arms. Her skin was wet, cool, as pale as moonlight. She was shivering.

  He held her and looked down at her face and knew that he had lost more than he could name.

  “I just—” Tory’s voice fragmented when she looked up into Reever’s empty, tarnished eyes. “I just wanted to say goodbye,” she whispered, almost frightened by the silence and the bleak emotions she sensed beneath his dark surface.

  His only answer was to hold her closer as he turned and walked back to the lodge, carrying her as if she weighed no more than his own shadow.

  She watched him silently, feeling caught within a dream. The sadness etched into his face made tears run like moonlight down her cheeks. Only the warmth of his big body seeping into hers, driving away the lake’s midnight chill, made her believe that the moment was real, that she wouldn’t awaken and find herself alone, crying for him.

  Without a word he carried her through the lodge to his own room. Moonlight poured in a silver torrent through the windows, transforming every­thing it touched. She trembled he lowered her to the bed.

  “R-Reever?”

  “Hush.” His mouth brushed darkly, warmly, over hers. “Let me say goodbye, too.”

  The words sliced into her like black crystal knives, but she did not cry out her protest. She loved him too much to turn away from him, from her impossible dream. Silently she watched him undress, loving him with every breath, every look. When he came down onto the bed beside her and gathered her against his warm body, tears welled from her eyes at the beauty of being held by him again.

  Reever buried his face against Tory’s neck, his arms locked powerfully, immovably around her, wanting to absorb her through his skin into his soul. Tremors went through him.

  As she felt the searing heat of tears sliding down her skin, Tory knew that it wasn’t desire that was shaking Reever’s powerful body. With a soundless cry she held him, sharing his pain without understanding its source.

  After a long, long time his grip loosened. He kissed her eyelids softly, closing them, know­ing that if he saw her watching him he would forget the promises he had made to himself and beg her to stay with him. He couldn’t live with himself if he did that. She deserved the life she had trained so long to have.

  Reever brushed his lips over her, then dipped his tongue into her mouth for a single instant. The taste of her swept through him violently, almost overwhelming him. He wondered then how he had lived for five days without her... and how he would live for the rest of his days, days without number or end, a hell of his own making.

  “When you told me you were leaving,” he said, kissing the elegant line of her neck and shoulder, her slanting cheekbone and soft lips, “I thought you had just used me to pass the time while your knee healed, and now you couldn’t wait to get back.” His mouth stilled the words he sensed form­ing on her lips. “No, little cat. Let me explain why I was so angry tonight. I don’t want you to leave remembering only my devil temper.”

  His mouth parted her lips for the intimate caress of his tongue. He moved within her warmth slowly, loving and absorbing her until he felt her soften against him. Then her tongue slid hotly over his, seeking to claim him in return. It was gentle agony to end the kiss, to withdraw his mouth by tiny increments until only the tip of his tongue could touch her.

  “I didn’t understand,” he said huskily, kiss­ing the smooth swell of Tory’s breast. “I didn’t re­alize what an incredibly good diver you are, what you must have given up to develop your skill, and how passionately you must have wanted to be an Olympic diver to have achieved so much in so few years.” He shuddered as his mouth tenderly traced the taut peak he had called out of her softness. “I didn’t realize how beautiful the human body could be, either. You taught me that tonight. The memory of your diving will haunt me until I die. So elegant. So perfect.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “You tore out my heart. That was when I knew what I had lost. You. My heart.”

  Her instinctive cry of protest was lost as his hand gently covered her lips.

  “Hush, little one,” he said, trying to control the aching tumble of his words. “It’s not your fault. You gave me only beauty, and I gave you—” His voice broke. For long moments there was only the soft, almost secret sound of his hand smooth­ing over her body. “It doesn’t matter now,” he said finally, his voice controlled again. “I just wanted you to know that I understand why you’re leaving. There’s nothing on the Sundance that can compare to what you’ve achieved. Nothing here can compete with your future as a diver. Not one thing. Certainly not the love of a man like me.”

  She shivered convulsively as she turned her face, eluding the hand that held her silent. “Reever—“ Her breath came in sharply. She was afraid even to hope. “Do you really care for me?”

  His hands clenched on her sweet body before he controlled himself. “You deserve more from life than I can give you. You’ve earned it, and then some. I’m going to see that you get it if I have to tie you on the bus myself. Otherwise, someday you’d hate me. You’d look at me and you’d see the man who stole your dream and called what he was doing love. I couldn’t take that, little cat. Any­thing, even losing you, but not stealing your dreams the same way I stole your innocence.”

  She stared at the bleakness of his eyes and knew that he meant every word.

  “What do you think I was saying goodbye to tonight?” she asked.

  “To the summer,” he said, turning his head from side to side against the softness of her breasts, ca­ressing her as he spoke. “You were saying goodbye to your innocence, to the Sundance. To me.”

  “No.” She caught his face between her hands and tilted it up to her, willed him to listen, to believe. “I was saying goodbye to diving, not to you.”

  A shudder passed over him, but the lines on his face did not lighten.

  “I don’t believe you,” he said gently. “You dove perfectly. Why would you give it up?”

  “Because it’s not worth the risk of crippling my­self. I didn’t believe that a few months ago, but I believe it now. You can throw me off the Sundance, but you can’t change this simple truth—I will never again enter a diving competition. That part of my life is over.” She covered his mouth quickly, as he had once covered hers. “No, let me finish. Diving was my way of finding a home. I don’t need that anymore. I was born for the mountains and the tall grass, the pines and the wind. The Sundance is my home.”

  Reever searched Tory’s face for long moments while the silence stretched until she called his name softly, moving against him as she whispered her love again and again. He shuddered and stilled the aching words with a kiss.

  “You’re wrong,” he said finally, lifting his head until he could see her eyes. “You were born for me, not the Sundance.” Slowly he merged his body with hers, taking her even as he gave him­self completely to her. He brought his lips to hers, worshipped her mouth, and said, “Just as I was born for you. I love you, Tory. I’ve loved you all my life and didn’t even know it.”

  His whispers became hers, two voices joined in promises of love, two people discovering the beauty that would always be within their reach, a lifetime of love unfolding before them.

  THE END

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