by Nora Roberts
“Wonderful!” She lowered the camera, so thrilled that she didn’t even realize she’d spoken out loud. “Just wonderful!”
“That’s our girl.”
Distracted, Bryan glanced over to the couple beside her. The woman was her own age, perhaps a year or two older. She was beaming. The man beside her was grinning over a wad of gum.
Perhaps she hadn’t heard properly. They were so young. “She’s your daughter?”
“Our oldest.” The woman slipped a hand into her husband’s. Bryan saw the plain twin wedding bands. “We’ve got three others running around here, but they’re more interested in the concession stand than the game.”
“Not our Carey.” The father looked out to where his daughter took a short lead on third. “She’s all business.”
“I hope you don’t mind my taking her picture.”
“No.” The woman smiled again. “Do you live in town?”
It was a polite way to find out who she was. Bryan hadn’t a doubt the woman knew everyone within ten miles. “No, I’m traveling.” She paused as the next batter blooped to right field and brought Carey home. “Actually, I’m a free-lance photographer on assignment for Life-style. Perhaps you’ve heard of it.”
“Sure.” The man jerked a head at his wife as he kept his eyes on the game. “She picks it up every month.”
Pulling a release form out of her bag, she explained her interest in using Carey’s picture. Though she kept it short and her voice low, word spread throughout the bleachers. Bryan found herself answering questions and dealing with curiosity. In order to handle it all in the simplest fashion, she climbed down from the bleachers, changed to a wide angle lens and took a group shot. Not a bad study, she decided, but she didn’t want to spend the next hour having people pose for her. To give the baseball fans time to shift their attention back to the game, she wandered to the concession stand.
“Any luck?”
She swiveled her head around to see Shade fall into step beside her. “Yeah. You?”
He nodded, then leaned on the counter of the stand. There was no relief from the heat though the sun was lowering. It promised to be as sweltering a night as it had a day. He ordered two large drinks and two hot dogs.
“Know what I’d love?” she asked as she began to bury her hot dog under relish.
“A shovel?”
Ignoring him, she piled on mustard. “A long, cool dip in an enormous pool, followed closely by an iced margarita.”
“For now you’ll have to settle for the driver’s seat of the van. It’s your turn.”
She shrugged. A job was a job. “Did you see the girl who hit the triple?” They walked over the uneven grass toward the van.
“Kid that ran like a bullet?”
“Yes. I sat next to her parents in the stands. They have four kids.”
“So?”
“Four kids,” she repeated. “And I’d swear she wasn’t more than thirty. How do people do it?”
“Ask me later and I’ll show you.”
With a laugh, she jabbed him with her elbow. “That’s not what I meant—though I like the idea. What I mean is, here’s this couple—young, attractive. You could tell they even liked each other.”
“Amazing.”
“Don’t be cynical,” she ordered as she pulled open the door to the van. “A great many couples don’t, especially when they’ve got four kids, a mortgage and ten or twelve years of marriage under their belts.”
“Now who’s being cynical?”
She started to speak and frowned instead. “I guess I am,” she mused as she turned on the engine. “Maybe I’ve picked a world that’s tilted my outlook, but when I see a happily married couple with a track record, I’m impressed.”
“It is impressive.” Carefully, he stored his camera bag under the dash before he sat back. “When it really works.”
“Yeah.”
She fell silent, remembering the jolt of envy and longing she’d felt when she’d framed the Browns in her viewfinder. Now, weeks and miles later, it was another jolt for Bryan to realize she hadn’t brushed off that peculiar feeling. She had managed to put it aside, somewhere to the back of her mind, but it popped out again now as she thought of the couple in the bleachers of a small-town park.
Family, cohesion. Bonding. Did some people just keep promises better than others? she wondered. Or were some people simply unable to blend their lives with someone else’s, make those adjustments, the compromises?
When she looked back, she believed both she and Rob had tried, but in their own ways. There’d been no meeting of the minds, but two separate thought patterns making decisions that never melded with the other’s. Did that mean that a successful marriage depended on the mating of two people who thought along the same lines?
With a sigh, she turned onto the highway that would lead them into Tennessee. If it were true, she decided, she was much better off single. Though she’d met a great many people she liked and could have fun with, she’d never met anyone who thought the way she did. Especially the man seated next to her with his nose already buried in the newspaper. There alone they were radically different.
He’d read that paper and every paper in every town they stopped in from cover to cover, devouring the words. She’d skim the headlines, glance over the style or society pages and go straight for the comics. If she wanted news, she’d rather have it in spurts on the radio or blurbs on televisions. Reading was for relaxation, and relaxation was not an analysis of detente.
Relationships. She thought back on the discussion she’d had with Lee just weeks before. No, she simply wasn’t cut out for relationships on a long-term basis. Shade himself had pointed out that some people just weren’t capable of permanency. She’d agreed, hadn’t she? Why should the truth suddenly depress her?
Whatever her feelings were for Shade, and she’d yet to define them satisfactorily, she wasn’t going to start smelling orange blossoms. Maybe she had a few twinges when she saw couples together who seemed to complete each other rather than compete, but that was only natural. After all, she didn’t want to start making adjustments in her life-style to accommodate someone else at this stage. She was perfectly content the way things were.
If she were in love… Bryan felt the twinge again and ignored it. If she were, it would complicate things. The fact was she was very happy with a successful career, her freedom and an attractive, interesting lover. She’d be crazy if she wasn’t happy. She’d be insane to change one single thing.
“And it doesn’t have anything to do with being afraid,” she said aloud.
“What?”
She turned to Shade and, to his astonishment and hers, blushed. “Nothing,” she muttered. “Thinking out loud.”
He gave her a long quiet look. Her expression came very close to a baffled sort of pout. Giving in to the urge, he leaned over and touched a hand to her cheek. “You’re not eating your hot dog.”
She could have wept. For some absurd reason, she wanted to stop the van, drop her head on the steering wheel and drown herself in hot, violent tears. “Not hungry,” she managed.
“Bryan.” He watched her snatch her sunglasses from the dash and push them on though the sun was riding low. “Are you all right?”
“Fine.” She took a deep breath and kept her eyes straight ahead. “I’m fine.”
No, she wasn’t. Though strain in her voice was rare, he recognized it. Only a few weeks before, he’d have shrugged and turned back to his reading. Deliberately, he dropped the paper on the floor at his feet. “What is it?”
“Nothing.” She cursed herself and turned up the radio. Shade simply switched it off.
“Pull over.”
“What for?”
“Just pull over.”
With more violence than necessary, Bryan swung the van toward the shoulder, slowed and stopped. “We won’t make very good time if we stop ten minutes after we start.”
“We won’t be making any time at all until you tell me wh
at’s wrong.”
“Nothing’s wrong!” Then she gritted her teeth and sat back. It wasn’t any use saying nothing was wrong if you snarled at the same time. “I don’t know,” she evaded. “I’m edgy, that’s all.”
“You?”
She turned on him with a vengeance. “I’ve a right to foul moods, Colby. You don’t have a patent on them.”
“You certainly have,” he said mildly. “Since it’s the first one I’ve witnessed, I’m interested.”
“Don’t be so damn patronizing.”
“Wanna fight?”
She stared through the windshield. “Maybe.”
“Okay.” Willing to oblige, he made himself comfortable. “About anything in particular?”
She swung her head around, ready to pounce on anything. “Do you have to bury your face in a paper every time I get behind the wheel?”
He smiled maddeningly. “Yes, dear.” A low sound came from her throat as she stared through the windshield again. “Never mind.”
“I could point out that you have a habit of falling asleep when you sit in this seat.”
“I said never mind.” She reached for the key. “Just never mind. You make me sound like a fool.”
He put his hand over hers before she could turn the key. “You sound foolish skirting around whatever’s bothering you.” He wanted to reach her. Without being aware when, he’d passed the point where he could tell himself not to get involved and follow the advice. Whether he wanted it or not, whether she accepted it or not, he was involved. Slowly, he lifted her hand to his lips. “Bryan, I care.”
She sat there stunned that a simple statement could spin through her with such force. /care. He’d used the same phrase when he’d spoken about the woman who’d caused his nightmare. Along with the pleasure his words brought her came an inescapable sense of responsibility. He wouldn’t allow himself to care indiscriminately. Glancing up, she met his eyes, patient, puzzled, as they studied her face.
“I care too,” she said quietly. She twined her fingers with his, only briefly, but it unsettled them both.
Shade took the next step carefully, not certain of her, or himself. “Is that what’s bothering you?”
She let out a long breath, as wary as he now. “Some. I’m not used to it… not like this.”
“Neither am I.”
She nodded, watching the cars breeze by. “I guess we’d both better take it easy then.”
“Sounds logical.” And next to impossible, he thought. Right now he wanted to gather her close, forget where they were. Just hold her, he realized. It was all he wanted to do. With an effort, he drew back. “No complications?”
She managed to smile. Rule number one was the most important, after all. “No complications,” she agreed. Again she reached for the key. “Read your paper, Colby,” she said lightly. “I’ll drive until dark.”
Chapter 10
They took a slice out of Tennessee—Nashville, Chattanooga, caught the eastern corner of Arkansas—mountains and legends, and headed up through Twain’s Missouri to Kentucky. There they found tobacco leaves, mountain laurel, Fort Knox and Mammoth Cave, but when Bryan thought of Kentucky, she thought of horses. Kentucky was sleek, glossy Thoroughbreds grazing on rich grass. It made her think of long-legged foals running in wide pastures and wide-chested colts pounding the track at Churchill Downs. As they crossed the state toward Louisville, she saw much more. Tidy suburban homes bordered the larger cities and smaller towns as they did in every state across the country. Farms spread acre after acre—tobacco, horses, grain. Cities rose with their busy office buildings and harried streets. So much was the same as it had been to the west and to the south and yet so much was different.
“Daniel Boone and the Cherokees,” Bryan murmured as they traveled down another long, monotonous highway.
“What?” Slade glanced up from the map he’d been checking. When Bryan was driving, it didn’t hurt to keep an eye on the navigation.
“Daniel Boone and the Cherokees,” Bryan repeated. She increased the speed to pass a camper loaded down with bikes on the back bumper and fishing poles on the front. And where were they going? she wondered. Where had they come from? “I was thinking maybe it’s the history of a place that makes it different from another. Maybe it’s the climate, the topography.”
Shade glanced back down at the map, idly figuring the time and mileage. He didn’t give the camper rolling along behind them more than a passing thought. “Yes.”
Bryan shot him an exasperated smile. One and one always added up to two for Shade. “But people are basically the same, don’t you think? I imagine if you took a cross section of the country and polled, you’d find out that most people want the same things. A roof over their heads, a good job, a couple weeks off a year to play.”
“Flowers in the garden?”
“All right, yes.” She gave a careless little shrug and refused to believe it sounded foolish. “I think most peoples’ wants are fairly simple. Italian shoes and a trip to Barbados might add in, but it’s the basic things that touch everyone. Healthy children, a nest egg, a steak on the grill.”
“You’ve a way of simplifying things, Bryan.”
“Maybe, but I don’t see any reason to complicate them.”
Interested, he set down the map and turned to her. Perhaps he’d avoided digging too deeply into her, leery of what he might find. But now, behind his sunglasses, his eyes were direct. So was his question. “What do you want?”
“I…” She faltered a moment, frowning as she took the van around a long curve. “I don’t know what you mean.”
He thought she did, but they always seemed to end up fencing. “A roof over your head, a good job? Are those the most important things to you?”
Two months before she might’ve shrugged and agreed. Her job came first and gave her whatever she needed. That was the way she’d planned it, the way she’d wanted it. She wasn’t sure any longer. Since she’d left L.A., she’d seen too much, felt too much. “I have those things,” she said evasively. “Of course I want them.”
“And?”
Uncomfortable, she shifted. She hadn’t meant to have her idle speculation turned back on her. “I wouldn’t turn down a trip to Barbados.”
He didn’t smile as she’d hoped he would, but continued to watch her from behind the protection of tinted glasses. “You’re still simplifying.”
“I’m a simple person.”
Her hands were light and competent on the wheel, her hair scooped back in its habitual braid. She wore no makeup, a pair of faded cut-offs and a T-shirt two sizes too large for her. “No,” he decided after a moment, “you’re not. You only pretend to be.”
Abruptly wary, she shook her head. Since her outburst in Mississippi, Bryan had managed to keep herself level, and to keep herself, she admitted, from thinking too deeply. “You’re a complicated person, Shade, and you see complications where there aren’t any.”
She wished she could see his eyes. She wished she could see the thoughts behind them.
“I know what I see when I look at you, and it isn’t simple.”
She shrugged carelessly, but her body had begun to tense. “I’m easily read.”
He corrected her with a short, concise word calmly spoken. Bryan blinked once, then gave her attention to the road. “Well, I’m certainly not full of mysteries.”
Wasn’t she? Shade watched the thin gold loops sway at her ears. “I wonder what you’re thinking when you lie beside me after we’ve made love—in those minutes after passion and before sleep. I often wonder.”
She wondered, too. “After we’ve made love,” she said in a tolerably steady voice, “I have a hard time thinking at all.” This time he did smile. “You’re always soft and sleepy,” he murmured, making her tremble. “And I wonder what you might say, what I might hear if you spoke your thoughts aloud.”
That I might be falling in love with you. That every day we have together takes us a day closer to the end. That I can�
�t imagine what my life will be like when I don’t have you there to touch, to talk to. Those were her thoughts, but she said nothing.
She had her secrets, Shade thought. Just as he did. “One day, before we’re finished, you’ll tell me.”
He was easing her into a corner; Bryan felt it but she didn’t know why. “Haven’t I told you enough already?”
“No.” Giving in to the urge that came over him more and more often, he touched her cheek. “Not nearly.”
She tried to smile, but she had to clear her throat to speak. “This is a dangerous conversation to have when I’m driving on an interstate at sixty miles an hour.”
“It’s a dangerous conversation in any case.” Slowly, he drew his hand away. “I want you, Bryan. I can’t look at you and not want you.”
She fell silent, not because he was saying things she didn’t want to hear, but because she no longer knew how to deal with them, and with him. If she spoke, she might say too much and break whatever bond had begun to form. She couldn’t tell him so, but it was a bond she wanted.
He waited for her to speak, needing her to say something after he’d all but crossed over the line they’d drawn in the beginning. Risk. He’d taken one. Couldn’t she see it? Needs. He needed her. Couldn’t she feel it? But she remained silent, and the step forward became a step back.
“Your exit’s coming up,” he told her. Picking up the map, he folded it carefully. Bryan switched lanes, slowed down and left the highway.
Kentucky had made her think of horses; horses led them to Louisville, and Louisville to Churchill Downs. The Derby was long over, but there were races and there were crowds. If they were going to include in their glimpse of summer those who spent an afternoon watching races and betting, where else would they go?
The moment Bryan saw it she thought of a dozen angles. There were cathedral-like domes and clean white buildings that gave a quiet elegance to the frenzy. The track was the focal point, a long oval of packed dirt. Stands rose around it. Bryan walked about, wondering just what kind of person would come there, or to any track, to plop down two dollars—or two hundred—on a race that would take only minutes. Again, she saw the variety.