Rose-Coloured Love

by Amanda Carpenter

  “Then what is it?” There were implications in what he was saying, she just didn’t know how to read them, unsure of herself and frustrated with it.

  “It’s not logical, that’s what it is!” he snapped, thrusting his hand through his hair. He stood with his weight on one hip, his hand resting on it, and he looked baffled, disgusted with himself.

  Her expression turned wry. She could well understand how he would feel frustration. He was a logical, clear-thinking man. He had to be, in his profession, discerning and shrewd. He couldn’t be liking this at all. “Surely,” she said, much quieter, more reasonable, “surely you’ve been with other women?”

  His glance at her was dry. “What do you think?”

  She looked away at random. “I think that it appears we have a double standard, here. Men can have sex, women can’t. Who, then, do the men have sex with?”

  He exploded, “That isn’t how I feel!”

  She retorted, her words swift on the heel of his, “I think that’s precisely how you feel. It’s just not how you think. The two are not the same.”

  He said as though it were jerked out of him, “Damn you, don’t tell me how I think or feel!”

  Her eyes widened on him, and then blazed molten hot. “Right,” she said, with an audible snap of her teeth. She rocketed off the bench and strode for the house. She never made it. She froze halfway there, putting her foot gently down as she stopped, realisation stunning her rather late. Then she pivoted to stare at Ryan who was grimly watching her leave. His face was brooding, his eyes bleakly grey under frowning brows. She searched his expression, and then slowly, delightedly, grinned. “You’re jealous,” she said, as if in accusation.

  “I got to hand it to you, Devan,” he snapped sarcastically, his hands on his hips. “You are really bright.”

  He hadn’t meant it to be funny but she laughed anyway, her anger evaporating in the summer breeze. He reacted as if whipped, fury darkening in his eyes, and he strode over to yank her into his arms. She met his fierce kiss and matched him, draping her arms around his neck while the fingers of both his hands dug into her waist, making marks. She concentrated on the feel of his mouth, open and hard and still angry, moving wet, while her fingers lightly drew through his silken hair, shaping the back of his head.

  Then her heart began to pound as he took her and deliberately knocked her off balance. She stumbled, her weight going sideways, clinging to him. But he wasn’t stationary. He was moving, too, lowering her to the ground and coming with her, his long legs heavy and tangled with hers as he drove in as deep as either of them could bear with his tongue. His hand came up to mould her breast, and she arched against him, making him groan.

  He dragged his head back and stared down at her blindly. Then he looked around and gave an odd little laugh. “What if your sister drove up? Let’s go inside.”

  She was losing herself in him, and it was a measure of how far gone she really was that she didn’t care. She just looked at him, her body reawakened and eager, and she whispered, “OK.”

  There was exultation at the back of his eyes. He drew away from her and pulled himself to a squatting position as she tremblingly sat, then stood. She turned to him and something white caught her attention. When she looked, she saw one of their paper plates tumbling over and over on the ground, blown by the wind. She sighed, feeling the sexual tension ease somewhat, and then without a word Ryan went to pick up the wandering plate while she went to the picnic bench to pick up the other, along with her dropped, dirty sandwich and her book.

  She had one knee propped on the bench while she reached for the two things on the table, setting the inedible food on the plate, and for a moment she just leaned on her two hands and hung her head. She quickly and intensely wished she hadn’t seen that white flutter, wished that Ryan had chosen to either press their lovemaking outside, regardless of the risk of exposure, or had carried her indoors like he’d carried her last night. But he hadn’t and her physical fervour had cooled, leaving her with doubts, with fears, with the realisation that theirs was a transient relationship. She suddenly couldn’t afford to give any more of herself to what she felt for Ryan.

  She picked up the things and turned back towards the house, mentally squaring her shoulders. She dreaded what was to come, but couldn’t see any other path to take. Ryan was, she saw, already inside and leaning against the doorway with his habitual nonchalance; as she approached the house, she searched his expression through the thin wire mesh. He pushed the screen open for her, and she came inside, tossing the sandwich and the paper plate with a careless flick of the wrist. She looked to the floor, feeling awkward, and said heavily, “I’ve—changed my mind.”

  Chapter Nine

  What brought Devan’s head snapping up was Ryan’s expressionless, “I know.” When she stared at him, all she saw was remoteness. Tightly remote, with nothing of the frustration and puzzlement she had expected, nothing but that repelling façade.

  She said, as if goaded, “I’m not playing a game with you. I’m sorry.”

  He shrugged uncaringly, and without a word walked out of the house. She stood as though she were the one let down, and when she heard his car start to quiet life, followed quickly by the crunch of gravel as he backed out of the driveway, her face crumpled into unexplainable tears. She bent her head and put a hand over her eyes.

  She was looking quite normal and composed when Helen and the children came home, and the house was filled again with cheerfulness. But the afternoon drifted by, agonisingly slow for her. She busied herself with cleaning the first floor bathroom, an unthinking job. Her ears were tuned to any noise from the front garden, and she knew that what she was really doing was killing time while she waited for Ryan to come back. Then she went to her room and slowly made her bed, though she considered it now to be something of a waste of time since it would be occupied again before long. Occupied by whom?

  She balled her hands into tight fists, gripping the blankets in a bone-white clench. She didn’t want to sleep alone, God help her. But, after this afternoon, she seriously doubted that Ryan would consider staying with her. That was supposed to be for the best. Why couldn’t she feel that?

  As the afternoon slipped to early evening, she went downstairs and listlessly began to help Helen prepare supper. She found herself getting agitated, uptight, hot and worried. Why wasn’t he returning? He had left, just like that; no warning, just like—Lee.

  She sank into a chair slowly, while Helen, humming, worked over the stove. Devan’s expression was calm, her eyes desperate. He wouldn’t, he couldn’t, just leave. He had things in the house. Didn’t he? He knew what Lee had done to her and, while their relationship was not quite as involved, while the situation was not quite the same, he wouldn’t be so terrible as to just leave.

  She leaped to her feet and raced through the house, unaware that Helen had turned to stare at her in puzzlement. Something, there had to be something of his in the house—he hadn’t even been wearing his shoes—there. She slowed, then stopped, and very nearly began to cry again as she saw his suitcase, tucked tidily into a corner of the guest bedroom. Tidily, as Ryan did everything, put away from sight, and his shoes were tucked beside it.

  She was behaving stupidly and she knew it. Then anger stormed through her. He hadn’t worn his damned shoes, was actually driving barefoot. The idiotic man! Devan realised how disproportionate and silly her anger was over something so utterly trivial, and she sagged weakly against the end of his bed in reaction. Why the hell should she care if he possibly got a ticket? Chances were that nothing would come of it, providing he wasn’t in an accident. She tensed again. An accident. It was possible; he had been gone so long. She balled her hands into fists and put them over her eyes. What was wrong with her? Why was she acting so ridiculously?

  The unmistakable sounds of someone’s arrival had her stumbling off the bed and dashing for her bedroom window. She looked outside and saw Ryan uncurling from the driver’s seat of his car, his hair tan
gled from the wind, his expression no less remote than it had been when he had left. He somehow managed to escape looking comical without his shoes. She suddenly didn’t want him catching her hanging out of her window, so she hurried for the kitchen, taking the stairs two at a time, and feverishly dragged dishes and cutlery from the cupboard to set the table. This time she saw Helen’s blank stare, and knew she was acting quite oddly, but ignored the look anyway.

  The screen door banged as he silently walked in just the same way he had left, and she stopped in the middle of the floor, her hands full of plates and cutlery, her eyes full of uncertainty. He glanced at her once and then away, and he cut through the kitchen as though heading for another room.

  “Hi,” said Helen cheerfully.

  Ryan looked at her older sister, and his face softened into a smile. Devan suddenly wanted to slap the pair of them. “Hi, yourself,” he said. “When’s supper?”

  “In about half an hour, I should think,” said Helen, looking around at the mess she was making. “By the way, I want to thank you again for helping with the grocery bill. It wasn’t at all necessary, I assure you—”

  “Nonsense,” he said warmly. “I was an uninvited guest. The least I could do was to pay for my food.”

  He walked away. Suddenly Devan was desperate to keep him from leaving, and she bolted for the dining room. “Ryan—” she started, catching him as he was just starting up the stairs. He stopped dead. She realised she was still holding the dishes, and she looked at them a little blankly. Then she walked over to the dining table and set them all down carefully. She took the forks and lined them up, and then took the spoons and did the same with them. He slowly walked back to her. “This morning,” she said, her low voice coming a little strangled, “I realised that Lee had to have been wrong about something, at least, in what he told me. I gave far more to the relationship than he gave me credit for.” She was busy looking at the knives she was lining up, so she didn’t see Ryan silently tense as he stared at her, as if he expected to be struck. She whispered, “I’m afraid of giving that much of myself again, and being hurt.”

  Long, long seconds ticking by. She shifted the forks, and put them in alternate positions with the spoons. “I—see,” said Ryan from behind her finally, and her fingers jerked, sending the cutlery scattering. Then he said stiltedly, “You’re referring to this afternoon, I take it.”

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, dismally. She didn’t know what she meant when she said it.

  He then asked her, with an obvious note of caution in his voice and in his choice of words, “You feel that you’re in danger of getting too deeply involved with me?”

  She bit at her lips and trembled. She couldn’t give a verbal reply, couldn’t even move; for she felt as if she was pinned and exposed under a bright harsh light, naked to the open air and pitiless eyes.

  He walked over to her and stopped just at her side. After a moment he let one of his hands rest heavily on her shoulder, and he sucked in his breath when he felt how she shook. “Devan,” he said, sounding not at all like himself. “I’m going back to New York at the end of the week, instead of staying the second.” She couldn’t have expected anything different, and she closed her eyes in desolation. But then he was whispering, “Would you come back with me?”

  She stopped breathing, unable to believe that she had heard him right. Then her head jerked up and she was staring at him with huge, dilated eyes, dark in a white face. He looked very rigid, his expression held very sternly, his mouth compressed into a hard, white line. She opened and closed her own mouth like an idiot, and then managed to stammer, “Wha—what did you say?” Anger ran swiftly over his face, and she blurted out, “Just—let me hear it, all right?”

  “I want you to come back with me,” he said tonelessly, his hand falling away from her shoulder. She looked at the table and the scattered cutlery, and automatically reached for the spoons. “Why?” she asked, feeling stupid with the confusion teeming in her. He made an impatient movement. “I mean, what would you be expecting from me? What can I hope to get from you? Ryan, I—I’m not sure I want to live in New York again.”

  He walked over to the wail and looked over a framed picture with great concentration. “I don’t want anything from you that you aren’t prepared to give. I want you to come and stay with me at my apartment. On a trial basis, if you’d like. No strings, nor commitments. I’d like us to have the chance to get to know each other better, in an everyday, long-term setting.”

  His shoulders were held square, and she walked almost reluctantly over to him to place her hand between his shoulder blades. She could feel the muscles bunched into rock hardness, and she absently began to smooth at them with her fingers. Underneath the shock of his unexpected offer, a secret, deep-lying exultation began to swell. She dampened it down severely. “I don’t know what to say,” she whispered, and his head went back as he stared at the ceiling.

  “Just say yes or no.” His voice was in stern control, almost indifferent.

  She felt hot with a sudden panic. “Right now? Can’t I think about it, just a little bit?”

  He then turned to look at her, and his voice grew gentle as he said, “That’s why I’m staying until the end of the week.”

  Helen said brightly from the doorway of the kitchen, “What a good idea!” Both Ryan and Devan swivelled to stare at her blankly. Helen looked up from staring at the dining room table. “I think we should have started eating in here when Ryan arrived. There’s much more room on this table.”

  The tense, awkward moment was broken. Devan turned her gaze to the table then, too, and she had to shake her head and laugh at the crazy pattern of cutlery. She went to flick on the dining room light, and set the table right.

  They sat down to eat, and supper passed by easily enough. If Devan was a bit pale and preoccupied, nobody, except perhaps Ryan, really noticed, what with the children’s chatter, and Ryan keeping the conversational ball rolling with Helen. Afterwards Devan refused all help in cleaning up, and shooed everyone into the living room before stacking the dishes and carrying them into the kitchen.

  When she was finished, she wandered towards the front of the house and leaned against the back of the armchair Helen was curled up in. At her feet, Janie and Gary were playing a game. Ryan was comfortably installed on the couch, his feet propped up on one arm. He turned his head and met her eyes for a long, wordless moment.

  “Helen,” he then said casually, “I’d better let you know. I’ve decided not to stay the second week.”

  Her sister was obviously surprised, and a little distressed. “Really? Good heavens, what a shame! I was so looking forward to it. Are you sure you won’t change your mind?”

  “Quite sure,” he said quietly, his gaze holding Devan’s. Janie and Gary totally ignored them. Helen, noting the direction of his gaze, slowly turned her head to look thoughtfully at Devan, also. “I think,” he continued, “that you deserve to understand the situation, as you’ve been so patient and hospitable these last few days. I’ve asked Devan to come back with me.”

  That caught the children’s attention. Helen looked back at Ryan, her head swivelling like an owl’s, and there was a long moment of digestive silence. “For good?” she asked, quite carefully. “And what did Devan say?”

  “Damn it, don’t talk about me as though I’m not here,” she said, irritably. Her sister turned back round, her questioning gaze full on her, and Devan snapped, “I haven’t given him an answer, yet.”

  Then Janie spoke up, her freckles standing out against her pale skin, “Aunt Devan, you can’t go back to New York. You said you’d live with us!”

  She closed her eyes for a moment at the pain in her niece’s voice. Then she said, as gently as possible, “But I never said I’d live here for ever. Besides, I haven’t made up my mind yet.”

  “Just tell him no!” Janie’s eyes shone, overbright. Even Gary, who was generally imperturbable, looked somewhat stricken. Devan had to put her face down in he
r hand as she leaned against the chair, her heart welling with a strange emotion, close to grief. She had honestly not expected this kind of response.

  She whispered, “I can’t do that, sweetheart.” She thought she heard Ryan sigh.

  Janie looked down at the cards she was holding, and she threw them to the floor. “I don’t want to play any more,” she said, muffled, and she scrambled to her feet to run upstairs. Gary, his game ruined, turned to glare at Ryan as though it were all his fault. Devan pushed herself away from the armchair, intending to go upstairs to talk with Janie, but Helen forestalled her.

  “Let me do it,” her sister said softly.

  “I didn’t know she would take it this way,” she said wretchedly.

  “I know. It’ll be all right. She’s just had a shock, that’s all,” said Helen soothingly. She had just enough time to notice that her sister didn’t look at all surprised, and she wondered at that. “Just let me talk to her tonight.”

  “OK.”

  “Come on, Gary,” Helen said then. “Let’s go. It’s bathtime, anyway.” To everyone’s surprise, he didn’t even argue; he just shuffled his cards together, climbed to his feet, and stumped up the stairs behind his mother, with his head down.

  As soon as they were gone, Devan rounded on a very thoughtful-looking Ryan who was sitting up now, his elbows resting on his knees, instead of sprawling at his ease. “Why the hell did you have to say anything?”

  He stared at the carpet in front of him, and his mouth twisted. “Because they deserve to know what is going on between you and me. And if, by any chance, you should decide to come back with me, it would be extremely unfair of you to just up and leave one day.” She whitened as if he’d struck her, and he said gently, “I have it on good authority that they would feel betrayed.”

  She said through stiff lips, “You’re right. I’m sorry for snapping at you.”

  One side of his twisted mouth rose lopsidedly in an unamused smile. “I don’t suppose you’ve had time to make up your mind, have you?” She made her way around the side of the chair and sat down heavily as she shook her head. “No, I didn’t think so.” He regarded her as she stared glumly ahead of her with unfocused eyes. Then he asked, “Might I ask you a question, and then I’ll never bring it up again?”