Keepsake for Eagle Cove

by M. L. Buchman

  He didn’t shush her.

  He didn’t promise it would be alright.

  He did nothing but hold her tightly and let her cry. When her tears had turned the plaster dust of his shirt back into muddy plaster, she finally found the ability to rein herself back in before the plaster reset and they became a permanent casting themselves. Her fingers hurt as she unclenched them from their tight fists, and finally patted Devin on the chest in thanks.

  That had been her undoing before. After that amazing kiss, she had rested her hand on his chest. It wasn’t the strong pecs that had captured her attention, but rather the way he felt. As if her hand had simply belonged on his chest. A warmth. A connection. Like no other she’d ever experienced. And she felt it this time too as she spread her fingers over his shirt.

  “Sorry I scared you so badly,” he whispered again.

  “Not your fault,” she managed, and brushed at where she’d been weeping against him. Her efforts did nothing but stir the soggy plaster patch into an even less artistic form than her nose imprint. “Don’t take the blame for my past.”

  And without needing explanation, without asking what about her past, he simply hugged her hard against him again, dried blood on her clothes and all.

  That’s when the laugh started. Small at first, it built inside her until it burst forth, almost as wild and hysterical as the weeping had been. Her sides, already sore, were soon in agony.

  Where Devin had unexpectedly accepted her weeping, he pulled back from her laughter.

  “What’s so blasted funny?”

  “I—” she gasped again, trying to find the air to speak. “I was telling Tall Guy—”

  “Tall Guy?”

  “My dog. I was telling him…that there was no way…I could make myself…less attractive to my own species.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “That was before I got covered in goat blood,” Tiffany brushed at her tears. “I’m such a mess in so many ways.” She found a clean spot on her sleeve and used it to wipe her face and nose clean. “Run, Devin. Take my advice and run while you still have the chance.”

  “Could do that,” he rubbed a hand down her back.

  She suddenly really wanted him to stay.

  “But I only just got here.”

  And this time she was able to join in his laugh without lapsing back into man-repelling hysteria.

  Then she looked down at their feet, dangling together in the grave, and remembered she had a friend to bury and a newborn kid to nurse.

  “It seemed too impersonal to use the Bobcat to dig it, but I’m being silly. I’ll go get it.”

  Devin stopped her, picked up the four-foot steel breaker bar, and pounded and levered at the hard soil until the hole was deep enough. She knelt at the edge, scooping out shovelfuls of what he broke free.

  Devin was utterly exhausted by the time they finished digging the grave in the hard soil.

  The goat looked so small when they put it down in the grave. Once the body was covered, they backfilled it together. Rather than morose words or a dirge, she offered up a song by Little Big Town about all being in the band together. All the while tears trickled quietly down her face. He’d done his best with the harmony line.

  “She always liked that song,” she managed on a hard swallow.

  Then she’d introduced him to Tall Guy on the way back across the property—by far the biggest dog Devin had ever seen. It was hard to tell if he would have survived the encounter if not for Tiffany’s chaperonage. The dog clearly felt that Devin was suspect and kept a careful eye on him as he was introduced to the goats.

  If the goat in the grave had looked small, the newborn kid looked microscopic. It weighed only three pounds and was the size of a Chihuahua, a small one. When Devin went to lift it, Tall Guy unleashed a deep, earth-rumbling snarl. Tiffany merely patted the beast on the head and collected the tiny newborn herself. They took it back to her yurt with them as the sun was sliding down to the horizon.

  The yurt was a revelation. Funky and remote farm had nothing to do with the way Tiffany Mills lived. A large bank of solar cells covered the south slope beside the structure.

  The yurt’s outer material was a thick, rubberized cloth, and the windows and doors, as real as any he’d install on a normal house, were well finished with wood trim. Once inside, Devin had to stop and stare as Tiffany carried the goat to a small framed-in pen close beside the propane stove. The floor was polished oak, lustrous and rich in grain. A full kitchen and bath had been installed along one wall and sported the finest fittings: a Five Star gas range and oven, a small fridge, and granite counters on cherrywood cabinets. A large oak dining table stood close by the windows and was covered by a puzzle still mostly in a thousand pieces. The bed was covered with an heirloom quality quilt—at least he assumed it was because he’d never seen one look so sharp.

  “I still haven’t finished the stitching,” she indicated a corner that had simple grid rows of wide stitches rather than the elaborate pattern that covered the rest of the quilt.

  A large cat lay on the other corner.

  “Fitzinger is indeed orca-colored.”

  “And blobbish,” Tiffany agreed as she pet him. “He’s angry because it’s past dinnertime.” She rushed into the kitchen and quickly set a bowl of food on the floor.

  Devin had the distinct impression that the cat scowled at him before deigning to go and eat. He wondered just who was the master of the yurt after all.

  Devin brushed the cat hair off the quilt and almost blurted out, “You did this?” Tiffany seemed to always make him want to restate the obvious. Instead he managed, “It’s already gorgeous.”

  “Thanks,” Tiffany was making up a baby bottle for the goat. “You first.”

  “Me first what?”

  “Shower. Just shake out your clothes, though. I don’t think I have anything that would fit you and my only dryer is the wind.”

  Devin would actually take that as a good sign. No men here. No men leaving clothes behind. Cad! But the appellation didn’t stick as he soaped and scrubbed. It went right down the drain with the plaster dust and old sweat. Something inside him was more than just charmed by a woman who sang a country rock song over a goat’s grave.

  The soap stung his face, but soon he was as clean as he was going to get without fresh clothes. He’d spotted the rainwater catchment tanks outside. Unsure if she also had a well, he finished quickly to save water.

  Not wanting to beat his mucky clothes clean in her immaculate bathroom, he wrapped a towel around his hips and carried the dirty clothes out onto the deck. He was thankful that Tiffany was too intent on feeding the little goat to notice that her towels weren’t exactly thick enough to hide his body’s reaction to wandering mostly naked through her home.

  By the time he was dressed and ready to go back inside, the light was failing. The entire horizon was dark with thick clouds, but they looked to be far out to sea. The dome of the sky was a deep blue he’d never seen in Chicago. Mesmerized, he watched the last of the color bleed out of the sky.

  He decided that this was a good place to be as he could hear the shower start again. Imagining Tiffany so nearby, naked and covered in soap was a dangerous image. Yet she’d invited him here. And while her thinking might be occasionally straightforward, he’d learned over dinner that a very sharp mind lurked behind that reserved, shy facade that she presented to most people. In fact, Greg had stumbled to a halt as he came up behind Tiffany to serve her while she and Devin were talking about how To Kill a Mockingbird could be adapted to modern issues. He’d looked down at the back of Tiffany’s head wide-eyed, like staring at a lion’s (or rather a lioness’) lioness) as the cage door at the zoo as it accidently swung open. He had silently delivered her food and rushed away for the safety of his kitchen.

  As the meal progressed, Devin had become fascinated by his dinner companion. She was cloistered only in how she lived. Her comments were sharp, perceptive, and deeply observant of the world around her. Th
ough they had stuck mostly to books and movies, her interpretations of thematic congruencies and dissonances (her words) revealed a deeply thoughtful and caring woman.

  “Planet light, planet bright,” Tiffany whispered as she stepped up beside him on the darkened yurt deck. “First planet I see tonight.” He hadn’t even heard the shower turn off.

  “Where…oh!” Even as he turned his head toward her he spotted the elusive point of light just emerging from the fading brightness of the day. “Which one is it?”

  “Venus. Goddess of love and beauty. The Romans also heaped fertility, sex, prosperity, desire, and victory onto her shoulders, which has always struck me as a little bit excessive. If you’re going to go with a pantheon rather than a single god, it feels like you’re cutting out a lot of potential good jobs for women by giving so many of them to just one. And can you imagine what her in-basket must have looked like back in the day?”

  “Ugly,” Devin agreed, growing more aware of Tiffany’s closeness by the second. It was as if she radiated warmth enough to push back the cooling evening. Perhaps a goddess power of her own.

  “No, beautiful. She’s the goddess of beauty after all, so of course her in-basket would be beautiful…just crammed very full.”

  He laughed because of course she was right. He was beginning to have trouble breathing with Tiffany standing so close beside him on the deck.

  “Would you—” “I should—”

  “You first.” “No, you.”

  When Tiffany didn’t continue, Devin finally spoke. “I should get back. It’s getting late.” Actually it was getting dark and he wondered what evil beasts lurked in the night forest and how he’d find his way through. “What were you going to say?”

  “I was going to ask if you’d like some tea or maybe a hot cocoa.”

  “I’m not so sure that’s smart,” Devin turned slowly to face her shadowy outline, “because that would mean keeping my hands off you for even longer than I already have.”

  There was a long silence. Then he heard a fast flutter of wings overhead.

  He ducked when he saw an outline against the sky like no bird he’d ever seen before.

  “It’s a little brown. I have a colony of those bats living on the north edge of the property; they like the stream there.”

  “You have a colony of bats? Are they dangerous?”

  “Only to bugs.”

  “Oh.” And the silence returned. He should go. He should do the decent thing and start down the steps in front of him. He should—

  Then Tiffany stepped into his arms. As fierce as her final hug had been down in the lighthouse meadow, this time it was as soft as her hair. Her kiss wasn’t wild or frantic, instead it was lush. A warm, soft, thorough kiss.

  “I’m getting you dirty,” though he didn’t know why he cared. He could smell her clean freshness and knew that he didn’t offer the same, not in his construction clothes.

  In answer she tugged at the hem of his t-shirt. Before he could protest, she’d yanked it up far enough that he had no choice but to let her take it off the rest of the way.

  A shiver slid over his skin, whether due to the night air or in anticipation of holding her just that much closer, he wasn’t sure.

  “Well, if one of us is going to be half undressed,” he began unbuttoning the front of her flannel shirt and she didn’t stop him. He wished there was enough light to see. He’d imagined what she would look like: strong yet soft, curved but trim with hard work. She always wore loose clothes that, combined with her long hair, kept her form hidden from view. But when he had opened the last button and could slide his hands about her waist, he decided that his imagination was completely lacking in…imagination.

  Her skin was so soft and smooth against his palms that he might be holding water. As he pulled her in by sliding his hands up her back, he could feel the muscles ripple beneath her narrow shoulders. And this time when their chests pressed together there was no mere impression of curves. Tiffany wasn’t powerfully curved, but neither was she delicately slender—a man who had the good fortune to hold her knew that a woman was pressed against his chest. He levered the shirt off her shoulders and she put her arms back to let it slip away into the darkness.

  Unable to resist, he scooped his hands into her hair and then fluttered it outward in a long billow through his fingers. She wrapped her arms around his neck and giggled as he played with it. It was an utterly ridiculous length for someone who lived and worked on a farm and he loved every last inch of it.

  He scooped again, this time flipping it up and over both of them so that they were hidden beneath the sliding tresses. This time when he kissed her, beneath the canopy of her hair, the fierce power was back. The fire reached down and grabbed him hard and he pulled her to him as tightly as he could.

  Tiffany could feel the crazy need taking her over again, just like the first time she’d kissed Devin. She considered pulling back—shutting it down, or at least tempering her emotions enough that he wouldn’t think she was a lunatic. But he made her feel that way and she had promised herself long ago that feelings were not a game; if she felt them, she’d show them.

  Her mother manipulated them like weapons until Tiffany doubted that she would know a true feeling unless it introduced itself with an exceptional stock portfolio. And if her ancestors Lillian and Pearl had managed to speak their true feelings so long ago, perhaps all of their lives would have been different.

  And Devin made her feel her emotions—and though they were mostly unfamiliar, they were powerfully wonderful ones. His rough hands on her skin made her so aware of being alive. His strong chest pressed against hers was creating a feedback system of hyperawareness. And his obvious joy while playing with her hair kept making her want to laugh. She’d thought a hundred times about hacking it off. There was no longer any need to hide from aggressors, not in Eagle Cove, especially not in the deep woods on a hidden farm. It was also a reminder of her taking control of her past. Now it was a question of taking control of her present.

  But Devin’s combing fingers brushed all of those memories away except for Lillian’s joy at a man brushing her hair through his hands. Lillian’s—

  No. Not Lillian’s.

  Tiffany’s joy.

  She needed.

  That became the overriding sensation. She needed Devin. He made her feel; it had been so long since she’d felt. Not just physical sensation but also deep in her chest. It was a crazy mix. Today had held grief, near hysteria, joy, and now…need.

  When she started to remove his jeans, he laid a hand over hers.

  “I brought no protection.”

  “I did,” she owned precisely one box that she replaced on the expiration date each year, but had never opened. Not once, until she’d come out of the shower to see Devin standing barefoot on her deck, silhouetted against the sunset. Then she knew why she’d kept buying them. This time she wouldn’t be throwing them out on their expiration date.

  Unable to wait, unable to delay her need, she pulled him down onto the deck until he was lying atop her.

  “I’ve never made love out of doors,” he whispered to her.

  Neither had she. Sex was hidden. Dirty deeds in dark corners. In college and grad school, the few times she had allowed it to occur, it had always been in her own bed. She’d never gone to a boy’s room; only in a place that was hers, where she felt safe.

  She focused past Devin at the now dark sky and could only gasp in wonder. Behind him, like a perfect tapestry, the stars were slowly filling the sky.

  “What?” He froze and asked as if he was afraid he’d hurt her.

  “Let’s trade places and you’ll see.”

  Instead of some awkward maneuvering, he used his strength to roll them over.

  “I don’t—Oh!” His gasp of wonder took her by surprise. She hadn’t really expected him to understand the magic of the vast openness. It was just the two of them beneath the whole sweep of the sky. But he did. He understood.

  “Now
,” she managed past a tight throat.

  He didn’t keep her waiting.

  The first words afterward were supposed to be special, but she didn’t know what they were. They should be momentous to mark such an incredible.

  “Your skin is all goosebumps,” Devin whispered as he rubbed his hands over her back and held her tight against him.

  “You’re so romantic,” she teased him. Then she blinked at herself in surprise. She’d teased him. It was a skill she didn’t know she possessed. A skill she’d lacked before this moment.

  “How about this?” he lifted her off him, stood, then he swept her up into his arms and carried her into the yurt like some movie heroine, which definitely improved his rating on the romantic scale. The small heat lamp over the sleeping kid in its pen filled the interior of the yurt with a soft red glow. Devin carried her to the bed and together they slid under the covers. He then improved his rating even more by not disturbing Fitz, who lay curled up on his pillow. Instead, Devin shared her pillow and pulled her tightly against him until she had no choice but to rest her head on his shoulder and wrap her arm about his wonderful chest.

  “I guess I was never the most romantic guy, but I can work on that.”

  She breathed him in until she was almost dizzy with him. “This works great for me just as we are.”

  “Me too,” he sighed. And between one moment and the next, fell asleep.

  “How stereotypical,” she whispered but couldn’t help smiling. There was a man in her bed, something that hadn’t happened in a long time. A man that she wanted there more than any other before. He’d said he had to go back to Chicago at some time, but he was here now and she decided that was all that counted.

  Devin woke to a soft bleating sound and wondered where he was. A strange ceiling of upward-sloping 2x4s arranged like slices of a pie.

  Another bleat.

  Alone in a large bed with—he slid a hand out—a warm spot close beside him. Somewhere in the night Fitz had relinquished the second pillow to Devin.

  A whispered, “Hush you. It’s almost warm,” brought Devin the rest of the way awake. The newborn kid was on its feet in the little pen with its nose pressed hard against the screen; Fitz was curled up just outside the pen but still in the wash of the heat lamp, revealing exactly where his true loyalties lay.