by Rhavensfyre
With the iffy internet connection they had been having Allyse decided to keep the skype chat on her phone. It felt weird crawling into the guest bed after sleeping across the hall the last few nights. The whole room felt cold and sterile, not at all as inviting as Dani’s room. “Spoiled already, hmm?” she asked herself, shaking her head at how swiftly she had made herself comfortable in another woman’s bed. She shook her head again, this time trying to shake thoughts away that were entirely too inappropriate to dwell on before she talked to her girls. As it was, the two of them were sure to hit her with twenty questions again, and she wondered if her real reason for using the phone was the smaller screen. Perhaps they wouldn’t notice if she fibbed a bit here and there. Kat was way too interested in her mother’s love life and was way too close to that age where girls were perpetually fascinated with romance in general. She would rather face a hostile board room than think about what the next few years had in store. All that teenage angst and melodrama was sure to inspire more than a little anxiety.
With all of the pillows crammed behind her so she could sit up she sent out a chat request and waited, a huge smile plastered on her face that was reserved just for her girls. That smile slipped off her face faster than an avalanche when a familiar but unwelcome face filled the screen.
“Richard, why are you answering the girl’s phone?” Allyse asked, more than a little alarmed. She sat straight up in bed and swung her feet around. “Are they okay, what’s happened?”
“Jeez, Allyse, calm down. Don’t get your knickers all in a bunch. Nothing’s happened. I just need to talk to you for a minute,” Richard said, managing to sound bored and offended at the same time. Allyse was sure her ex-husband’s frown was directed more at her ‘hysterics’ than any guilt on his part for scaring the crap out of her.
“Then talk,” Allyse said, launching off the bed and pacing the small confines of the rug. One armed wrapped around her middle and the other holding the phone, it was all she could do to hold herself in check. As sure as she knew what day of the week it was, she knew Richard was about to say something she didn’t want to hear. It had nothing to do with him being a jackass to her, but more about him being an ass in general, she just had the misfortune of marrying him before finding that out. Or finding about other things, she thought ruefully, having to remind herself that she wouldn’t have Stephanie or Kat if her life hadn’t played out the way it had. Her girls were the only reason she even attempted to be civil to the man.
So, she let him talk while she paced, and then she stopped dead in the middle of the room and stared at his smug image smiling at her with his straight white teeth and fake tan her money probably paid for and waited to see what she would do.
“Are the girls there with you?” she asked, trying to catch any telltale background noise.
“No. They’re in the front room playing video games.”
“Good,” Allyse said. She didn’t need them to hear this. “You’re an ass, you know that? You fought like hell to get visitation rights during the divorce and then had to add summer vacation on top of that, just to spite me. Now you’re going to pull this?”
“Hey, I don’t think you have any room to talk, considering you’re the one out in Pennsylvania shacked up with some farm girl.”
“What did you say?” Allyse hissed. She had been irritated before, but it was an old and tired irritated she was used to, now she was fuming. She didn’t even have to ask how he knew. The girls wouldn’t have known any better, and Richard was an expert at deciphering half-truths and missing data. Hell, he had elevated it to an art form in both his professional and personal life.
“You heard me,” Richard said, practically preening for the camera. “Just let me know what you want to do, and I’ll make the arrangements. Other than that I think we’re done here. Have a nice night, Allyse. Say hello to your girlfriend for me.”
The screen blurred out of focus, then refocused on two smiling faces that pushed at each other to claim more screen space than her sister. Pushing down her anger, Allyse smiled and greeted her little monkeys like they deserved. Keeping in mind Richard’s little temper tantrum, she tried to keep the conversation directed on what they’d been up to, rather than satisfy their curiosity about the farm and what she’d been up to with Dani. I so need to sit down and have a long talk with them, sooner rather than later. Especially now.
***
It was almost dark when Dani walked out of her workshop and headed back to the house. She had been worried that the one desk she wanted to send out on the next shipment would need another coat of lacquer but the last coat she had applied had dried nicely. That made her happy. The desk was gorgeous, one of those old, heavily carved cherry wood affairs that had belonged to a county judge. It was meant to impress anyone standing on the receiving end of the monstrosity and now it would have that chance again rather than moldering away in an old storeroom. Out of all the pieces she wanted to show Erick—that was the one she was most proud of. She was sure he would find it a good home, if he could resist not wanting to keep it for himself. It was a close enough match to the desk she had found for Allyse that he might be tempted.
Allyse was still upstairs. She could hear her voice, just barely, stopping and starting as if she was listening and responding to another person. Still on Skype, then, Dani thought, wandering through the living room. She didn’t feel like turning on the TV and getting on the computer to finish up some work didn’t appeal to her either. Neither of them had eaten dinner yet, but she couldn’t decide what to fix so after sticking her head in the freezer twice she gave up and sat down at her desk again. Drumming her fingers on the smooth surface and trying very hard to ignore her tennis ball, she caught sight of a sketchpad she hadn’t seen since before Jay died.
“What’s this doing out?” Dani flipped the pad open. The familiar broad strokes and flourishes were Erick’s, at least for the first few pages. She recognized them from when she used to watch him, sketching out slim, exaggerated body forms with wild hair and even wilder outfits. She would laugh and tell him they looked silly, and he would shush her and tell her they were fashionable and therefore not meant to be practical. As a child prone to tearing any article of clothing not meant for hard labor and proud of every scrape and dirt stain, this made little sense to her, but she still found it fascinating to watch the pencil scratch across the white paper. About ten drawings in the style and designs changed drastically. Bold, elegant sweeps of a pencil that must have screamed under the heavier hand, the men and women posing in each sketch looked more human not only in their more realistic proportions but also in their facial features. Intense, with more detail to the eyes and lips than she had seen in Erick’s drawings, they stared out at her from the pages as if daring her not to notice they were more than just the clothing drawn on their bodies. A few looked like they were preparing to speak. She turned the page and stared, then put the pad down.
“Oh, wow.” This was the pad Allyse had taken with her out to the arena the other day. She was so distracted she hadn’t even noticed what Allyse had held up, assuming it was some kind of work she wasn’t supposed to be doing. She turned the pages, one after another, and it was all the same. Allyse had been drawing her. She had captured her sleeping in the apple grove, her hat drawn down over her face and her hands resting on her stomach, then again when she was in the barn with one of the horses. The last few sketches were from her training session, the horse drawn with lines that blurred its haunches as it turned and slid to a stop. She ran her fingers along the moving lines, noticing the details Allyse had added, then bent down to get a closer look. That’s not what I was wearing that day. Allyse had drawn her in full show get-up, vest and all. It was cut to her figure and looked amazing. Not like some of the stuff I’ve had to wear, she thought, remembering one time she twisted and the cheap stitching ripped. It actually looked like it would move with her, accommodating muscles most women who slung hay bales on a daily basis had, not the scrawny little girls the clot
hing companies seemed to cater to.
The last drawing made her gasp, and she almost dropped the sketch pad. Half-finished and different from all the rest, Allyse had been working on a portrait so realistic it felt odd looking down at her own eyes staring back at her.
“Dani?”
The voice startled her enough to make her jump, sending her heart thumping guiltily. She managed to awkwardly shuffle the pages back a few drawings before Allyse walked in, but there was no way to hide that she had been snooping.
“Hey there, everything okay with the girls?” Dani couldn’t say why but she could tell something was off. Allyse was usually in a good mood after chatting with her daughters.
“We need to talk.”
“Okay?”
“I have to go back to New York after this weekend.”
“What? Why?”
“My ex-husband has decided he is done being a father for the summer and he is sending Kat and Stephanie back early.”
“Okay. But why do you have to leave?”
“Um, because someone has to be there to pick them up and take care of them.”
“No I mean is there any reason they can’t just come here instead? That way you don’t have to cut your vacation short.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.” Allyse sat back to think for a second. It would be perfect. All her favorite people in one spot. “Just let me ask. Are you sure? They can be very rambunctious.”
“They’re fine coming here. What little girl wouldn’t want to spend time on a ranch with a bunch of horses? But since we’re asking questions, let me ask you something. Are you okay with them knowing about us? Were you serious about me eventually meeting them?”
“Yes and yes.” Allyse spoke with conviction. She was absolutely sure she wanted her girls to meet Dani. “I think they will be fine with it. They’ve known about me for a while. I told them right away, so if I ever started dating someone it wouldn’t be a surprise.”
“Okay. If you say so.”
“I do say so. Dani Saxon, you stubborn woman,” Allyse said, shaking her head. Dani was stubborn, too, and still hiding something. There was fear in her eyes when she had looked at her. Fear and a shadow of loneliness that even their time together hadn’t been able to erase. “What’s going on inside that head of yours? Don’t you want them to come?”
“Of course I do! I just…well, I guess I didn’t think about everything when I said yes. Will you have to move back into your room?”
“Sweetheart, look at me.” Allyse directed Dani’s face to meet her gaze with just a touch of her fingertips. It was important that Dani knew she was completely serious about this. “My girls are going to be thrilled. I know them. They will be happy that I am happy, and they will be ecstatic that I am with you. Trust me.”
“Okay, I will. Then it’s settled?”
“Yes. Although you might have to try and be a little quieter from now on.” Allyse laughed, then grabbed at Dani’s arm when a huge monkey wrench in her plans presented itself. “Wait. Where will they stay?” The farmhouse had to have more bedrooms, didn’t it? The place seemed huge from the outside. There was also the little house just outside the kitchen, but that idea didn’t sit well with her. Call her old fashioned, but she liked to have her girls a little closer than that.
“Oh, that’s easy. In my old room. Come on, I’ll show you.” Dani led Allyse back through the living room and down the hall, stopping at a door next to the staircase. After opening the door, Dani stepped aside so Allyse could see past her.
“Huh, I always assumed this was a closet or something.” Allyse followed Dani into another hallway very similar to the one upstairs. There were five doors, two to the left and two to the right, and one at the end of the hall.
“Well, there is a closet, but it’s all the way down there.” Dani touched the door on the right before moving across the hall. “This is Erick’s room when he comes to visit, and my old room is right here.”
“What about the other two rooms?”
“I think one used to be a cold room for canned goods, that’s now the bathroom. The other room I retrofitted with all new plumbing, including a new water heater and water softening system to handle the larger bathrooms. These old houses usually only had one bathroom, if you were lucky and didn’t have an outhouse instead. There’s a mudroom off the back of the first room, so there’s a way out to the backyard if they want to play there. I think there’s still a couple of bikes in there from when I was a kid.”
Dani opened the door and walked in, then stood in the middle holding her chin while her eyes darted from one end of the room to the other. Allyse swore she could practically see Dani measuring out the space in her head. Allyse did her own assessment. It was a bit smaller than the rooms upstairs and the closet was on the opposite wall, but other than needing a good dusting it wasn’t bad.
“Why didn’t you give me this room?”
If it was possible, Dani’s eyes would have popped out of her head. “Are you kidding me? A full bed, no view and a tiny bathtub? The upstairs suite is huge compared to this and has an awesome view.”
“And a shared bathroom.”
“Uh, yeah. I had planned on staying down here when you showed up, really I did.”
“But?” Allyse raised an eyebrow and waited for Dani’s confession.
“But Erick said you wouldn’t mind. He said he told you it was set up like a Bed and Breakfast and that you knew you had to share the bathroom,” Dani said, then grudgingly admitted, “and I really didn’t want to give up my bathtub.”
Allyse blessedly turned her attention back on the room before Dani died from embarrassment. “If you give me a couple of days, I can get this place fixed up before they get here.”
“What about Erick’s room?” Allyse asked.
“Erick’s room? He’ll need it when he comes to visit,” Dani said, cocking her head at Allyse. “Just leave it to me. I have just the thing in mind.”
“You don’t have to go all out, Dani. I’m sure the girls will be okay sharing a bed for a couple of weeks.”
“I’m not. I have a huge barn full of furniture, remember? Just leave it to me.”
Chapter Twenty-One
The next two days were a whirlwind of activity that involved hours of cleaning to get ready for the girls to arrive, arranging plane tickets and a few private sessions of nail chewing. Allyse, because she didn’t know how Dani was going to deal with two rambunctious kids, and Dani because she had so much to do before Erick showed up for his once a month visit.
Between the craziness, they spent as much time together as possible. Allyse braved another horseback ride, and although she didn’t make it out of the arena, she did manage to ride her own horse without Dani joining her in the saddle. She was pushing herself on that front and feeling it in her thighs and back. She was eternally grateful for the huge bathtub and nightly soaks that ended in a back rub, and once in a front rub that left them both wishing they had time to sleep in the next morning.
Dani was trying to squeeze in as much work with the horses and general running of the farm as she could in between visits to her workshop and helping Allyse move stuff around in the girl’s new room. Maybe that was why when Saturday morning arrived Allyse snuck out of bed and left Dani sleeping peacefully. Considering everything she was doing for her, it only seemed fair. By the time Dani stumbled downstairs, Allyse had already fed and let the dog out for her morning potty, cleaned the kitchen, and started breakfast. She delayed on the last thing for a while to let Dani sleep in. Her sense of smell and appetite made for a great alarm clock so all she had to do was put coffee on to get Dani moving. The addition of the salty scent of frying bacon should make for a great start of the day, or so she thought.
***
Dani stumbled downstairs expecting to find Erick in the kitchen, but she was disappointed to find Allyse there all by herself. It was his Saturday to show up, and he always arrived early, letting himself in and starting their traditional breakfa
st of eggs, bacon, and of course, lots and lots of coffee. That tradition might have been reduced to every thirty days or so, but it was their tradition and it meant a lot to her.
Oh, well. I guess with Allyse here he doesn’t feel the need to be on time. Dani thought to herself. The good mood she had woken up with started to fizzle before she even had a chance to enjoy it. By the time she made it to the counter, the coffee wasn’t the only thing steaming. She couldn’t believe it. Erick didn’t even bother to tell her he wasn’t going to be late today. Hell, I talk to him almost every night, so what was the excuse?
“Dani, is everything alright?”
“Yeah, I guess so,” Dani grumbled. She was working herself into a funk and she knew it, but that didn’t stop the poisonous direction her thoughts were heading. She was grateful Allyse was here with her, but then she found herself asking for how long. How long would it take for her to get tired of Dani once she returned to the city? Was that why she agreed to have Allyse’s daughters come visit? It gave her more time, time she had expected to have and had lost to what sounded like some bad parenting and bad blood between Allyse and her ex-husband. It made her feel selfish, and she didn’t wear guilt well, the ill-fitting emotion made her defensive and that translated into cranky.