by Cara Colter
It was up to him to make sure she was not more damaged when she left. And that meant he had to be better at controlling his needs than the other men in her life had been. He had to be better at putting what she needed ahead of what he wanted.
Because what he wanted was to explore every road that kiss could take them down, to climb every mountain it promised, to discover every valley, to let it open the possibility of new worlds.
His voice was too harsh.
“I am not your knight in shining armor. I am not anyone’s knight in shining armor. Do you get that?”
She nodded, but she looked as if she was going to cry again. He left her sitting there, wrapped in the blanket, and he pulled the anchor and turned on his nighttime running lights. He prepared to go.
The water had calmed, and the stars were like jewels shining in a black velvet sky. The light could not even hope to pierce the darkness of his own self-awareness.
When they got to the dock, he moored the boat. In stilted silence she went below and brought up all the groceries she had bought. She passed him up bag after bag of groceries and, finally, two ruined buckets of ice cream. When he offered her his hand to get out of the boat, she refused it and scrambled up on the dock by herself.
Loaded with groceries, he went up the steep steps to the house. She followed him. In the kitchen he set them down.
“I’ll look after them,” she said tightly.
“I think you should check in with the police again,” he said. “Maybe your stalker has been apprehended.”
“I’ll do that,” she said, that same tight note in her voice. But then her forehead wrinkled. “Do you suppose it’s safe to call them from your line?”
Jefferson could not even imagine being this afraid. For a moment, his every defense was undermined. He just wanted to take her into his arms and soothe her, kiss away that furrow from her brow.
Instead, he managed to strip all the emotion from his voice. “I have no doubt your stalker is insanely clever, but I somehow doubt he has managed to tap a police line.”
She nodded. “Yes, of course you are right. I will call them in the morning. If they’ve apprehended him I can go right away.”
He barely knew her! How could he possibly be aching at the emptiness she would leave behind?
“And, regardless, I won’t stay beyond our original agreement, despite your kind offer,” she said, reading between the lines. He would shelter her as long as he had to. “I will get the house ready for the magazine, and then I’ll go. I can’t let this thing go on indefinitely.”
He wanted, again, to sweep her up in his arms, to not let her feel she had to deal with this thing by herself. But what thing couldn’t she let go on indefinitely? Her thing with the stalker or her thing with him? He wanted to finish what they had started.
But wouldn’t that be all about what was good for him? Filling some gaping hole inside him? It wouldn’t be about what was good for her. He was thankful she was putting a time limit on her stay, even though he had foolishly told her she could stay forever.
Forever.
He could imagine forever with a woman like her. He could imagine starlit boat rides and facing storms. He could, all too easily, imagine campfires on the beach. And decorating a nursery.
But again, that was about some need in him that he had managed to outrun for a long time. He did not deserve that life. He had had his chance at forever. He had even vowed it. And he had not lived up to those vows. He had blown it completely.
But for two weeks? What was that in a lifetime? For two weeks, he could be the better man. Even if that meant staying the hell out of her way.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ANGIE WATCHED JEFFERSON stalk away and heard the far-off slam of his office door. She sank into a kitchen chair, stunned by all that had transpired since she had climbed on that boat with him in the pre-storm heat of the afternoon.
She touched her lips, and it was as if she could still feel the electricity of his kiss there. The intensity that had leaped up between them had been just like that storm—just as powerful and just as unpredictable.
She could not believe she was capable of being swept away so completely in such a short time. She had known this man just a little over a full day. It wasn’t rational to feel so strongly about him.
But that was what storms did. They came unexpectedly. They swept in, sucked everything into their vortex and swept back out, leaving a trail of destruction.
Or maybe not always destruction. The storm that had just passed over Kootenay Lake had probably also left life-giving water on the surrounding forests and land.
Still, Jefferson had been right to pull away. Hadn’t he? Despite the sense of intimacy nurtured by being stranded together in the boat, by facing into the teeth of that storm, by sharing buckets of ice cream and the same spoon, they barely knew one another.
On the other hand? So what? What did knowing each other have to do with anything? Angie had been rational her whole life. She had been mapping out carefully the life she wanted since the divorce of her parents when she was a child.
She wanted the sense of safety and security that being part of a family had given her, before the split of her parents. She had determined that solid, unexciting Harry was exactly the kind of man to pin those kinds of hopes and dreams on.
She had known him. She had known he woke up at precisely seven-ten every morning. She had known he would always order grilled cheese at the university cafeteria. She had known he preferred the news over The Big Bang Theory. Angie had thought that what she had shared with Harry was intimacy and that it would lead her directly to the safety she craved. She had thought their entire lives were predictable enough to make her comfortable.
But in that boat, sharing a spoonful of ice cream with a near stranger, she had felt as if she was digging into the tip of the iceberg that was intimacy. She had felt exhilarated by the potential for danger, not afraid of it. In fact, the exhilaration was in part because, for the first time in far too long, she had not been afraid. She had been the opposite of afraid.
She had been fearless.
And she knew that feeling of being fearless was not going to go willingly back into its box.
She glanced at a clock. It was really too late to do anything and yet she felt too energized by her encounter with Jefferson to go to sleep. She unpacked the groceries and put them away, smiled at the video of Wreck and Me. If she left it out for him to find, would he watch it?
Still filled with a restless kind of energy once the groceries were stowed, Angie decided to make some blueberry muffins.
“If he gets nothing else from my stay here, he will be able to see there is life beyond bean burritos,” she muttered to herself.
* * *
Three days later, Jefferson felt like a prisoner in his own house, marking x’s on his wall. He was well aware that in the course of human history, three days was a very short time.
But in the context of having Angie aka Brook Nelson under the same roof as him, it was a torturous eternity. In his efforts to avoid her, she had driven him underground. He’d always enjoyed working at night; now it felt compulsory.
But despite seeing her only occasionally—her crazy hair hidden under a babushka obviously of her own invention, her legs looking long and coltish in shorts and skirts, T-shirts clinging to her, the sweat beading on her neck, the cobwebs sticking to the rubber gloves she always wore—there was no pretending she was not here. Even though she seemed to be avoiding him just as scrupulously as he was avoiding her, the house smelled different since she had arrived.
If it was just the smell of cleaning supplies and fresh air, it would not have been so disturbing. But no... Her scent—faintly spicy, clean, feminine—clung like a faint vapor in every room she had been in. Which, as far as he could tell, was all of them, except
this room and his bedroom.
Also disturbing was the noise. If it was just the noise of the vacuum cleaner and the dishwasher and the washing machine and dryer, it probably would not have been so disturbing. But, though she was probably not aware of it, the more involved she got in some task, the louder she hummed.
Christmas tunes, of all things. “Jingle Bells” and “Here Comes Santa Claus” and “Silent Night.” On more than one occasion she had burst into bloody song and it had stuck in his head—Here comes Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus, right down Santa Claus lane—long after she had moved out of hearing.
The problem was she sounded so happy that he could not bring himself to tell her to stop. Even though he was avoiding her with all his might, on those occasions when he could not avoid bumping into her, Jefferson could see the tension she had arrived with had eased from her.
She was still easily startled—he’d come up behind her one day while she was vacuuming, and his eardrums were still ringing from the scream—but was losing that terrified, hunted look he’d first glimpsed on her first day when the pinecone had dropped on her car.
It was not just that the house was undergoing a transformation, which it surely was. Dust was disappearing. Cobwebs were being banished. Floors were emerging from under a layer of grime. Windows were, one by one, beginning to shine.
The biggest transformation was in his kitchen. The day’s mail was neatly sorted. Every surface was gleaming. Every dish he left there in the dark of night was swept away. The fridge had real cream in it for his coffee, and milk for the selection of cereals that had appeared. There were single-serving containers of yogurt, and lettuce and tomatoes. There was a selection of drinks. There was fresh fruit in a bowl on the counter.
Best of all—or perhaps worst of all, depending how you looked at it—were the meals that she left for him. Though the heat was climbing into the nineties and was over one hundred again, once, every day she had the oven on for something.
The rich smells tantalized him even before he took his nocturnal journey down to the kitchen to see what she had done. Muffins. Fresh bread. Cookies. Last night, she had left him a roast chicken dinner.
Tonight she had left a steak, and a tinfoil-wrapped potato with careful instructions how to grill it.
He set down her note, aware he felt like a wild animal being lured in by the promise of food. His anticipation for what she would make for him grew every day.
If she wanted to discuss things with him she left him a note. He was uncomfortably aware that he was looking forward to the notes as much as the food. He looked around for today’s and found it next to the stack of other ones.
He went through the old ones, aware he was smiling. Hers...
Have you got a ladder I could use outside?
His...
DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES GET ON A LADDER.
Would tomorrow be a good day to put the furniture out on the deck for an airing?
DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES TRY TO MOVE THAT FURNITURE BY YOURSELF.
I have a system figured out.
NO.
Tonight, he read her response to that, aware he was looking forward to it.
I’m going to put the couches on dishcloths, like coasters, and slide them across the floor. Must you write in all caps like that? It’s disconcerting.
NO, YOU AREN’T, he scrawled with great enjoyment. AND YES, I MUST WRITE IN ALL CAPS. I FAILED PENMANSHIP IN SCHOOL.
He hesitated. Too much information? Stop analyzing everything. Admitting he’d failed penmanship in school was not the same as admitting he’d had a terrible row with his wife, and she had gone out into a storm...
He shook that thought off. A gentleman would offer to help Angie move the furniture.
But no, the two weeks minus the time elapsed would be so much easier to get through if he stayed on his path of avoidance. It was good, anyway. He was way ahead of schedule on the Portland project.
He went out to the deck and lit the barbecue as per her instructions. He stood there for a moment, taking in the dark surface of the lake, the lights across the way, the night sounds. It occurred to him it had been a long time since he had felt something like this: just simple enjoyment.
It occurred to him, even though she wasn’t beside him, that she was here. In his house. And somehow, it was changing everything. He wished she was down here with him.
He forced himself to suck it up. To repeat his mantra. Two weeks. Two weeks. Two weeks.
* * *
Angelica surveyed the kitchen with satisfaction. The early-morning light poured through the windows. Jefferson had eaten his steak dinner and gobbled up the cookies she had made yesterday.
She looked for his note, read it and smiled. He’d failed penmanship? Really, it was hard to imagine him failing anything. She put that note with the others, aware she was collecting them.
She went over to the grinder, and put in coffee beans. In a few minutes fresh coffee was dripping into the pot. She savored the smell of it and the light and the birdsong—and Jefferson’s note. She felt so supremely rested. She felt alive and happy.
The phone rang, as she poured herself that first cup of coffee, and she felt herself tensing. Jefferson’s house phone rarely rang. For too long, the phone ringing in her life had meant the sound of breathing on the other end. Or a hang-up. Or a sobbing explanation. Or a begging plea.
She reminded herself she was fearless now and, coffee in one hand, she picked up the phone without checking the call display.
“Stone House,” she said cheerfully.
A moment later the cup, filled with coffee fell from her hand and shattered on the floor. She stared at the mess, put the phone receiver back in its cradle. She wondered, dazedly, if proclaiming herself fearless had been like a challenge to the gods.
Jefferson appeared at the kitchen door. “I heard a crash.” He took in the smashed coffee cup. “Thank God,” he said. “I thought you’d finally managed to fall off a ladder.”
She shook her head mutely.
He crossed the room in a single stride and gazed down at her.
“What is it?”
“The police just called,” she managed to croak. “The Calgary police. I took your advice and called them after...”
That magical night shimmered, momentarily, between them, like a mirage.
And that’s what it was, she told herself. A mirage. Real life was different. “Angie?” He took her shoulders and gave her a gentle shake. She looked up into his eyes, and tried to feel the sense of safety she had felt that night, and really ever since. But maybe that had been part of the mirage, feeling safe in an unsafe world.
“Tell me what’s happened,” he ordered her.
“You know that girl Winston told me he had been dating? The one who supposedly dumped him at the same time Harry dumped me?”
He cocked his head at her, frowning, still holding her shoulders, thank God, anchoring her to his kitchen and him and not allowing her to fly toward her fear.
“She’s missing. The police suspect foul play. And they suspect Winston is connected to it, and no, they have not located him yet.”
He said a word under his breath that should have appalled her. Instead, for a reason she couldn’t decipher immediately, it made her feel reassured, but still she trembled. She could feel panic quaking within her, just below the surface.
“I feel I need to do something,” she said. “But I don’t know what it is. Scream? Cry? Lock myself in the bathroom? Run away?”
“You aren’t doing any of that.” He pulled her in close to him and held her tight.
In the circle of Jefferson’s arms, she could feel the trembling begin to subside. “I’m not?” she whispered.
“You aren’t going to scream, or cry. You aren’t going to lock yourself i
n the bathroom, and you most certainly are not going to run away.”
She sighed against him. She wasn’t so sure she wasn’t going to cry. “I—I—I guess you’re stuck with me for a little while longer, then.”
He put her away from him, at arm’s length.
“Well,” he said, all business, “let’s make the most of it, shall we? Did you want to move furniture today?”
She stared at him, stunned by his sudden change in demeanor. “What?”
“Look, I’m not letting you move it by yourself. The last thing I need is a Workers’ Compensation claim. And I happen to have a clear day as far as my schedule goes.”
Her mouth worked soundlessly. Suddenly, she knew exactly what he was doing. Somehow he knew if he left her alone or even let her make her own decisions, they would all be bad ones. He could probably tell she was a hair away from dissolving into hysterics. Somehow he knew he had to get her focused on something else.
“You should have something to eat. I can recommend the chocolate chip cookies,” he said it as if it was an ordinary day.
“Chocolate chip cookies are not breakfast!”
A tiny smile played along his lips, satisfied. He had managed to distract her, and he was pleased about it.
“I had them. I seem to be okay,” he said. He held one out to her, wafted it underneath her nose.
She grabbed it from him and took a bite. Surprisingly, it felt as if it might not be such a bad breakfast, after all. She gobbled down three of them. Surprisingly, it felt as if the knots of anxiety in her stomach were eased. By the cookies, or by him, she couldn’t quite be certain.
While she ate cookies, he went and surveyed the living room.
“I have a plan,” Jefferson announced. “I have a furniture dolly out in the shed. I think it might work better than the dishrag system you outlined.”
She was ashamed of it, but she could not even let him out of her sight when he went to get the dolly.