by Nora Roberts
“I know what messed things up. There’s no use dwelling on it. After you admit you’ve made a mistake, you’ve got to go on.”
“I know.” She pushed at her sunglasses. “I just sometimes wonder why some people can be so happy together, and others so miserable.”
“Some people don’t belong with each other.”
“And yet it often seems like they do before they walk up the aisle.”
“Marriage doesn’t work for certain kinds of people.”
Like us? Bryan wondered. After all, they’d both failed at it. Perhaps he was right, and it was as simple as that. “I made a mess out of mine,” she commented.
“All by yourself?”
“Seems that way.”
“Then you screwed up and married Mr. Perfect.”
“Well, I…” She glanced over and saw him looking at her, one brow raised and a bland look of anticipation on his face. She’d forgotten he could make her laugh as well as ache. “Mr. Nearly Perfect anyway.”
She grinned. “I’d have been smarter to look for someone with flaws.”
After lighting a cigarette, he rested his feet on the dash as Bryan was prone to do. “Why didn’t you?”
“I was too young to realize flaws were easier to deal with. And I loved him.” She hadn’t realized it would be so painless to say it, to put it in the past tense. “I really did,” she murmured. “In a naive, rose-tinted way. At the time I didn’t realize I’d have to make a choice between his conception of marriage and my work.”
He understood exactly. His wife hadn’t been cruel, she hadn’t been vindictive. She’d simply wanted things he couldn’t give. “So you married Mr. Nearly Perfect and I married Ms. Socially Ambitious. I wanted to take important pictures, and she wanted to join the country club. Nothing wrong with either goal—they just don’t mesh.”
“But sometimes don’t you regret that you couldn’t make it fit?”
“Yeah.” It came out unexpectedly, surprising him a great deal more than it surprised her. He hadn’t realized he had regrets. He hadn’t allowed himself to. “You’re getting low on gas,” he said abruptly. “We’ll stop in the next town and fill up.”
Bryan had heard of one-horse towns, but nothing fitted the phrase more perfectly than the huddle of houses just over the Oklahoma-Texas border. Everything seemed to be dusty and faded by the heat. Even the buildings looked tired. Perhaps the state was enriched by oil and growth, but this little corner had slept through it.
As a matter of habit, Bryan took her camera as she stepped from the van to stretch her legs. As she walked around the side of the van, the skinny young attendant goggled at her. Shade saw the boy gape and Bryan smile before he walked into the little fan-cooled store behind the pumps.
Bryan found a small, fenced yard just across the street. A woman in a cotton housedress and a faded apron watered the one colorful spot—a splash of pansies along the edge of the house. The grass was yellow, burned by the sun, but the flowers were lush and thriving. Perhaps they were all the woman needed to keep her content. The fence needed painting badly and the screen door to the house had several small holes, but the flowers were a bright, cheerful slash. The woman smiled as she watered them.
Grateful she’d picked up the camera she’d loaded with color film, Bryan tried several angles. She wanted to catch the tired, sun-faded wood of the house and the parched lawn, both a contrast to that bouquet of hope.
Dissatisfied, she shifted again. The light was good, the colors perfect, but the picture was wrong. Why? Stepping back, she took it all in again and asked herself the all-important question. What do I feel?
Then she had it. The woman wasn’t necessary, just the illusion of her. Her hand holding the watering can, no more. She could be any woman, anywhere, who needed flowers to complete her home. It was the flowers and the hope they symbolized that were important, and that was what Bryan finally recorded.
Shade came out of the store with a paper bag. He saw Bryan across the street experimenting with angles. Content to wait, he set the bag in the van, drawing out the first cold can before he turned to pay the attendant for the gas. The attendant, Shade noticed, who was so busy watching Bryan he could hardly screw on the gas cap.
“Nice van,” he commented, but Shade didn’t think he’d even looked at it.
“Thanks.” He allowed his own gaze to follow the boy’s until it rested on Bryan’s. He had to smile. She was a very distracting sight in the swatch of material she called shorts. Those legs, he mused. They seemed to start at the waist and just kept going. Now he knew just how sensitive they could be—on the inside of the knee, just above the ankle, on the warm, smooth skin high on the thigh.
“You and your wife going far?”
“Hmm?” Shade lost track of the attendant as he became just as fascinated by Bryan.
“You and the missus,” the boy repeated, sighing a little as he counted out Shade’s change. “Going far?”
“Dallas,” he murmured. “She’s not…” He started to correct the boy’s mistake about their relationship, then found himself stopping. The missus. It was a quaint word and somehow appealing. It hardly mattered if a boy in a border town thought Bryan belonged to him. “Thanks,” he said absently and, stuffing the change in his pocket, walked to her.
“Good timing,” she told him as she crossed toward him. They met in the middle of the road.
“Find something?”
“Flowers.” She smiled, forgetting the unmerciful sun. If she breathed deeply enough, she could just smell them over the dust. “Flowers where they didn’t belong. I think it’s…” She felt the rest of the words slide back down her throat as he reached out and touched her hair.
He never touched her, not in the most casual of ways. Unless they were making love, and then it was never casual. There was never any easy brush of hands, no gentle squeeze. Nothing. Until now in the center of the road between a parched yard and a grimy gas station.
“You’re beautiful. Sometimes it stuns me.”
What could she say? He never spoke soft words. Now they flowed over her as his fingers trailed to her cheek. His eyes were so dark. She had no idea what he saw when he looked at her, what he felt. She’d never have asked. Perhaps for the first time, he was giving her the opportunity, but she couldn’t speak, only stare.
He might have told her that he saw honesty, kindness, strength. He might have told her he felt needs that were growing far beyond the borders he’d set up between him and the rest of the world. If she’d asked, he might have told her that she was making a difference in his life he hadn’t foreseen but could no longer prevent.
For the first time he bent toward her and kissed her with an uncharacteristic gentleness. The moment demanded it though he wasn’t sure why. The sun was hot and hard, the road dusty, and the smell of gasoline was strong. But the moment demanded tenderness from him. He gave it, surprised that it was in him to offer.
“I’ll drive,” he murmured as he slipped her hand into his. “It’s a long way to Dallas.”
His feelings had changed. Not for the city they drove into, but for the woman beside him. Dallas had changed since he’d lived there, but Shade knew from experience that it seemed to change constantly. Even though he’d only lived there briefly, it had seemed as though a new building would grow up overnight. Hotels, office buildings popped up wherever they could find room, and there seemed to be an endless supply of room in Dallas. The architecture leaned toward the futuristic—glass, spirals, pinnacles. But you never had to look far to find that unique southwestern flavor. Men wore cowboy hats as easily as they wore three-piece suits.
They’d agreed on a midtown hotel because it was within walking distance of the darkroom they’d rented for two days. While one worked in the field, the other would have use of the equipment to develop and print. Then they’d switch.
Bryan looked up at the hotel with something like reverence as they pulled up in front of it. Hot running water, feather pillows. Room service. Stepping out, she began
to unload her share of the luggage and gear.
“I can’t wait,” she said as she hauled out another case and felt sweat bead down her back. “I’m going to wallow in the bathtub. I might even sleep there.”
Shade pulled out his tripod, then hers. “Do you want your own?”
“My own?” She swung the first camera bag strap over her shoulder.
“Tub.”
She looked up and met his calm, questioning glance. He wouldn’t assume, she realized, that they’d share a hotel room as they shared the van. They might be lovers, but the lack of strings was still very, very clear. Yes, they’d agreed there’d be no promises but maybe it was time she took the first step. Tilting her head, she smiled.
“That depends.”
“On?”
“Whether you agree to wash my back.”
He gave her one of his rare, spontaneous smiles as he lifted the rest of the luggage. “Sounds reasonable.”
Fifteen minutes later, Bryan dropped her cases inside their hotel room. With equal negligence, she tossed down her shoes. She didn’t bother to go to the window and check out the view. There’d be time for that later. There was one vital aspect of the room that demanded immediate attention. She flopped lengthwise on the bed.
“Heaven,” she decided and closed her eyes on a sigh. “Absolute heaven.”
“Something wrong with your bunk in the van?”
Shade stacked his gear in a corner before pulling open the drapes.
“Not a thing. But there’s a world of difference between bunk and bed.” Rolling onto her back, she stretched across the spread diagonally. “See? It’s just not possible to do this on a bunk.”
He gave her a mild look as he opened his suitcase. “You won’t be able to do that on a bed either when you’re sharing it with me.”
True enough, she thought as she watched him methodically unpack. She gave her own suitcase an absent glance. It could wait. With the same enthusiasm as she’d had when she’d plopped down, Bryan sprang up. “Hot bath,” she said and disappeared into the bathroom.
Shade dropped his shaving kit onto the dresser as he heard the water begin to run. He stopped for a moment, listening. Already, Bryan was beginning to hum. The combination of sounds was oddly intimate—a woman’s low voice, the splash of water. Strange that something so simple could make him burn.
Perhaps it’d been a mistake to take only one room in the hotel. It wasn’t quite like sharing the van in a campground. Here, they’d had a choice, a chance for privacy and distance. Before the day was over, he mused, her things would be spread around the room, tossed here, flung there. It wasn’t like him to freely invite disorder. And yet he had.
Glancing up, he saw himself in the mirror, a dark man with a lean body and a lean face. Eyes a bit too hard, mouth a bit too sensitive. He was too used to his own reflection to wonder what Bryan saw when she looked at him. He saw a man who looked a bit weary and needed a shave. And he didn’t want to wonder, though he stared at himself as an artist stares at his subject, if he saw a man who’d already taken one irrevocable step toward change.
Shade looked at his face reflected against the hotel room behind him. Just inside the door were Bryan’s cases and the shoes she’d carried into the room. Fleetingly, he wondered if he took his camera and set the shot to take in his reflection, and that of the room and cases behind, just what kind of picture he’d have. He wondered if he’d be able to understand it. Shaking off the mood, he crossed the room and walked into the bath.
Her head moved, but that was all. Though her breath caught when he strolled into the room, Bryan kept her body still and submerged. This kind of intimacy was new and left her vulnerable. Foolishly, she wished she’d poured in a layer of bubbles so that she’d have some mystique.
Shade leaned against the sink and watched her. If she had plans to wash, she was taking her time about it. The little cake of soap sat wrapped in its dish while she lay naked in the tub. It struck him that it was the first time he’d seen her, really seen her in the light. Her body was one long, alluring line. The room was small and steamy. He wanted her. Shade wondered if a man could die from wanting.
“How’s the water?” he asked her.
“Hot.” Bryan told herself to relax, be natural. The water that had soothed her now began to arouse.
“Good.” Calmly, he began to strip.
Bryan opened her mouth, but shut it again. She’d never seen him undress. Always they’d held to their own unspoken, strict code of ethics. When they camped, each of them changed in the showers. Since they’d become lovers, they’d fallen into a sense of urgency at the end of the day, undressing themselves and each other in the dark van while they made love. Now for the first time she could watch her lover casually reveal his body to her.
She knew how it looked. Her hands had shown her. But it was a far different experience to see the slopes, the contours. Athletic, she thought, in the way of a runner or a hurdler. She supposed it was apt enough. Shade would always expect the next hurdle and be prepared to leap over it.
He left his clothes on the sink but made no comment when he had to step over hers where she’d dropped them.
“You said something about washing your back,” he commented as he eased in behind her. Then he swore lightly at the temperature of the water. “You like to take off a couple layers of skin when you bathe?”
She laughed, relaxed and shifted to accommodate him. When his body rubbed and slid against hers, she decided there was something to be said for small tubs. Content, she snuggled back against him, a move that at first surprised him, then pleased.
“We’re both a little long,” she said as she adjusted her legs. “But it helps that we’re on the slim side.”
“Keep eating.” He gave in to the urge to kiss the top of her head. “It’s bound to stick sooner or later.”
“Never has.” She ran her hand along his thigh, trailing from the knee. It was a light, casual stroke that made his insides churn. “I like to believe I burn up calories just thinking. But you…”
“Me?”
On a quiet sigh, Bryan closed her eyes. He was so complex, so… driven. How could she explain it? She knew so little of what he’d seen and been through. Just one isolated incident, she thought. Just one scar. She didn’t have to be told there were others.
“You’re very physical,” she said at length. “Even your thought pattern has a kind of physical force to it. You don’t relax. It’s like—” She hesitated for another moment, then plunged. “It’s like you’re a boxer in the ring. Even between rounds you’re tensed and waiting for the bell to ring.”
“That’s life, isn’t it?” But he found himself tracing the line of her neck with his finger. “One long match. A quick breather, then you’re up and dancing.”
“I’ve never looked at it that way. It’s an adventure,” she said slowly. “Sometimes I don’t have the energy for it, so I can sit back and watch everyone else go through the moves. Maybe that’s why I wanted to be a photographer, so I could pull in little pieces of life and keep them. Think of it, Shade.”
Shifting slightly, she turned her head so that she could look at him. “Think of the people we’ve met, the places we’ve been and seen. And we’re only halfway done. Those rodeo cowboys,” she began, eyes brightening. “All they wanted was a plug of tobacco, a bad-tempered horse and a handful of sky. The farmer in Kansas, riding his tractor in the heat of the day, sweating and aching and looking out over acres of his own land. Children playing hopscotch, old men weeding kitchen gardens or playing checkers in the park. That’s what life is. It’s women with babies on their hips, young girls sunning at the beach and kids splashing in little rubber swimming pools in the side yard.” He touched her cheek. “Do you believe that?” Did she? It sounded so simplistic… Idealistic? She wondered. Frowning, she watched the steam rise from the water. “I believe that you have to take what good there is, what beauty there is, and go with it. The rest has to be dealt with, but not every min
ute of every day. That woman today…”
Bryan settled back again, not sure why it was so important for her to tell him. “The one in the house just across from where we stopped for gas. Her yard was burning up in the sun, the paint was peeling on the fence. I saw arthritis in her hands. But she was watering her pansies. Maybe she’s lived in that tiny little house all her life. Maybe she’ll never know what it’s like to sit in a new car and smell the leather or fly first class or shop at Saks. But she was watering her pansies. She’d planted, weeded and tended them because they gave her pleasure. Something of value, one bright foolish spot she can look at, smile at. Maybe it’s enough.”
“Flowers can’t grow everywhere.”
“Yes, they can. You only have to want them to.”
It sounded true when she said it. It sounded like something he’d like to believe. Unconsciously, he rested his cheek against her hair. It was damp from the steam, warm, soft. She made him relax. Just being with her, listening to her, uncurled something in him. But he remembered the rules, those they’d both agreed on. Keep it easy, he reminded himself. Keep it light.
“Do you always have philosophical discussions in the tub?”
Her lips curved. It was so rare and so rewarding to hear that touch of humor in his voice. “I figure if you’re going to have one, you might as well be comfortable. Now, about my back…”
Shade picked up the soap and unwrapped it. “Do you want the first shift in the darkroom tomorrow?”
“Mmm.” She leaned forward, stretching as he rubbed the dampened soap over her back. Tomorrow was too far away to worry about. “Okay.”
“You can have it from eight to twelve.”
She started to object to the early hour, then subsided. Some things didn’t change. “What’re you…” The question trailed off into a sigh as he skimmed the soap around her waist and up to her throat. “I like being pampered.”
Her voice was sleepy, but he traced a soapy finger over her nipple and felt the quick shudder. He ran the soap over her in steady circles, lower, still lower, until all thought of relaxation was over. Abruptly, she twisted until he was trapped beneath her, her mouth fixed on his. Her hands raced over him, taking him to the edge before he had a chance to brace himself.