by Ali M. Cross
“Shh, shh.” He pulled her to his chest and stroked her hair. He knew the moment she finally came to, when she turned her face into his neck and took a long, steadying breath.
“Nix?” she murmured against his skin. A wave of molten honey ran through his veins at the sound of her voice so near to his ear, the feel of her breath against his skin. He was keenly aware of her body pressed to his, of her hands, no longer fighting against him, but clutching his shirt, holding him close.
“I’m here.” He’d prayed for her while she slept. Prayed she hadn’t hit her head so hard she’d been injured. He hadn’t known whether to call 911 or not, but there hadn’t been any blood so he’d brought her into the house, lain her down with an ice pack and, not knowing what else to do, prayed. Prayed for her wellbeing, for her safety, for her peace.
But now, with Fiona in his arms, drawing comfort from him even while he drew comfort from her, he prayed a different prayer. If he could, he would keep this woman. Keep her close and love her always. I promise I’d give her whatever freedom she needed, he prayed. But even as he thought it he knew he’d never truly be able to give her the freedom she sought. Because as long as she craved the stage, Variety would never be enough. Riding Sailor wouldn’t be enough. He wouldn’t be enough.
If only they’d met at different times in their lives—but no, he realized that wouldn’t have worked, either. Maybe they were never meant to be.
“What happened?” Fiona pulled back from him, letting a skiff of cool air pass between them. He felt it pierce into his very soul. Fiona would never be his.
He stood and offered her a glass of water, then placed himself in the chair on the other side of the coffee table. She had to twist to see him, but he couldn’t be near her right now. Couldn’t be near her anymore. She’d never be happy here with him, and the sooner he realized that, the better for both of them.
“You fell and hit your head,” he told her. “Do you remember anything?” He didn’t know how to bring up the things she’d said while she was unconscious. Or the way she’d fought him.
She pulled the blanket up to her chin and lay back down. “No,” she said. “I don’t remember anything.”
Nix waited, spoke to her, but she didn’t answer. After long moments of silence, he checked on her—she appeared to be asleep, but he was fairly certain she was faking it.
When Lindsay returned a short while later, her arms full of groceries, he helped her unload while he told her what happened. Well, told her about the fall, nothing else. Then he made his goodbyes and went to his truck, thought better of it, and returned to the house. He knocked on the door and when Lindsay came to it he stepped back, until she joined him on the porch.
“Listen,” he said, running a hand through his hair. “This isn’t my place at all, but…I’m guessing Fiona hasn’t said anything to you about why she’s really here?”
Color rose to Lindsay’s cheeks. Was she angry? “No,” she said carefully. “Has she told you?”
Good, he thought. Maybe this will help them—and help Fiona, especially.
“No, she hasn’t said anything, except…I kind of guessed and she confirmed it. She didn’t tell me anything about it, but she did confirm it.”
“What did you guess?” Lindsay came closer to him, desperate love shining in her eyes. Fiona had no idea what she had here, he thought. How loved she is.
Nix gave his head a little shake. “There’s something a lot more serious than some overworked vocal cords going on here,” he said. “Fiona was attacked, Lindsay.”
“Attacked?” Lindsay’s hands flew to her throat, her voice rising in concern.
Nix put his hands on her arms, hoping to calm and quiet her. He didn’t want Fiona to hear them talking about her or she’d never trust either of them.
“She won’t talk about it but she said some things in her sleep while I was watching over her. Will you talk to her? See if you can get her to open up?”
Lindsay threw her hands up and whirled away, pacing to the railing. “I’ve tried,” she said. “Fiona hates to be pushed—I never know how to get her to talk to me. She’s always kept me at arms’ length—at least she has since she was a little girl. Before that…well, before that I’d been everything to her. I don’t know what happened or what changed, but she put up a wall I’ve never been able to get past.”
Nix put his hand on Lindsay’s back and looked down at her until she raised her gaze to meet his. “Try again.” He held her gaze until she straightened and nodded. There was steel in these MacDonald women and he admired it so much.
He leaned down and kissed Lindsay on the cheek, then strode toward his truck. Fiona needed her family. He only prayed she’d finally let them in.
Back at his place, he settled in front of his computer with a bottle of Coke. He thought about Fiona in his arms, about Sailor pressing her head against his chest, and felt immensely alone. “Pops,” he called to the dog snoring in his bed by the couch. You’re on your own kid, he imagined the dog saying, because he didn’t even twitch at the sound of his master’s voice.
Thankfully the computer woke up and Nix soon became distracted. He had to figure out what had happened to Fiona—if not for her sake, then for his.
FIONA THOUGHT NIX WOULD NEVER LEAVE, AND THEN she had to pretend to be asleep for a little while longer to make it look legit to Lindsay. Finally she stretched and made a show of waking up. Predictably, Lindsay was at her side in seconds flat.
“Hey, you okay? Nix said you took quite the fall. Let me have a look.” Fiona dutifully leaned forward so Lindsay could gently probe the lump on the back of her head. “Lump’s not too bad. Nix did a good job getting you to lie down on an ice pack.” She slipped the melted pack out from beneath Fiona’s head and set it on the coffee table. “What happened?
Fiona struggled into a sitting position. She had a killer headache, but she didn’t want Lindsay to think it was any worse than it was, so she worked to hide it. “I don’t know. Slipped, is all. I think I stepped into a divot or something. No big deal.”
“It is a big deal!” Lindsay exclaimed. “You fell and hit your head and lost consciousness for heaven’s sake. We’d probably better take you in to the clinic for a checkup. You could have a concussion.”
“It’s fine, really. I’m positive I don’t have a concussion or anything, so there’s no reason to go.” To prove her point, she stood and folded the blanket. “Hey, guess what I did today?”
Lindsay frowned at her, but said, “What?” anyway.
“I rode Sailor. Like, really rode her. I don’t think I’ve ever ridden any horse so fast. And I didn’t have stirrups.”
“What? You could have gotten yourself killed! Are you trying to get yourself killed? I mean, the fall—did you really just fall? And riding Sailor bareback—”
“It wasn’t bareback.”
“That’s almost worse! I know how hard it is to control a horse without stirrups but up on a saddle. Your legs must be killing you. But I’m afraid you’re killing you. Did New York do this to you? You’ve never been reckless before.”
Fiona set the blanket over the back of the couch, picked up the glass of water and used ice pack and walked back into the kitchen. She had no words for Lindsay. She definitely didn’t want to talk about New York, but that seemed to be all Lindsay wanted to talk about. About how bad New York was for her and how good the ranch was.
Predictably, Lindsay said, “You know, since you didn’t fall off, and Nix only comes to ride here once or twice a week, that horse could use some riding. Some training. You’d have time between the lessons Jack left you with. Think you’ll be around long enough to help with that?”
Fiona needed to get back to her room, to privacy and a world she was far more comfortable with than this ranch, this state. This family. She turned a bright, cheerful smile to Lindsay and said, “Maybe. I’ll think about it.” Then left her sister and headed for the stairs, feeling satisfied at yet another successful block of Lindsay’s curio
sity.
“Wait.” Lindsay’s voice was loud and authoritative, making Fiona turn around before she could stop herself. Lindsay never talked to her like that. She’d been treating Fiona with kid gloves for as long as she could remember. “We need to talk.”
“I need to go lie down—” Fiona started, but Lindsay was shaking her head as she moved back into the living room from the kitchen.
“You can lie down after. We need to talk. Now.”
“I don’t think—”
“Look, Fi. I know something’s going on with you—and not just the stupid little bit you’ve deigned to tell me. I know you like your distance, your privacy—whatever—but I’m done with it. I’m your sister. You’re family, darn it. I deserve truth from you. I demand it. Now.”
Fiona had taken a step toward her sister during her little tirade, and now she stopped, unable to hide a smile. “Well that was a little dramatic.”
Lindsay collapsed onto the couch. “You’re not the only one who can be dramatic when the times call for it.”
“And the times call for it?” Fiona asked with some reservation.
Lindsay gazed evenly at her sister, then nodded. “They do.”
Fiona took a deep breath. She honestly didn’t know why she’d fought so hard to keep the attack a secret—it was no big deal, really. And it wasn’t like it made her weak or anything. At least she didn’t think so. She just…
She wanted her family to think she was capable of taking care of herself. That she wasn’t a baby, wasn’t a burden on anyone. She never wanted to be a burden to them.
For some reason an image of Sailor, her head pressed firmly against Nix’s chest, popped into her mind. There’d been so much vulnerability there in that moment. So much strength. Could she be as strong as Sailor and let Lindsay take care of her, the way she had let Nix?
Her feet moved forward, and she said, “Okay.”
How could Nix think about being Christ-like when all he wanted to do was charter a plane to take him directly to Jeanine Nowak’s street, find her and her boyfriend and punch him in the face? He’d like to do more, but he figured a twenty-five-year prison sentence for attempted murder wasn’t the best life choice. Even working through the sacred music at the church hadn’t brought him the peace he’d been searching for.
He’d spent the rest of the afternoon poring over news articles and piecing together the facts about what really brought Fiona home. She’d said Nate while she was dreaming. Specifically, she’d said, “Nate! No! Get off me!” It wasn’t too hard to figure out that she’d remembered—or at least her subconscious remembered—who had attacked her.
After figuring out there were no Nates or Nathans in the cast of Lakmé, and only one Nathan working in the stage crew—and he was a seventy-five-year-old artist as willowy as his paintbrushes—he’d moved on to other possibilities. His attention kept getting drawn back to Jeanine, Fiona’s understudy. She was an attractive woman, tall and curvy with jet black hair cut into a short bob. She wore a knowing smile in every picture he found; a smile that seemed practiced and perfected as it was always exactly the same. How would a woman so carefully put together feel when a younger singer was elevated above her? What might she do? Nix was no stranger to the egos of the stage. To musicians who’d stop at nothing to get their time in the spotlight.
So he’d started looking into Jeanine—and it wasn’t long before he discovered she had a live-in boyfriend of many years named Nate. Nate had been a professional wrestler before he became a bodyguard at a swanky nightclub in downtown New York. A man like that could easily overcome Fiona. And Jeanine had everything to gain.
He spent a long time looking at a picture of her from a recent art scene article in the New York Times. It was a piece on the new Lakmé production, hailing the artfulness of the producer’s vision. It showed Jeanine, dressed in a short skirt and very high heels, her long, sexy legs dressed in fishnet stockings, hailing a cab on a New York street while an older woman tried to hold her back. Nix had to admit, it was a great take on the opera. Not that he knew that much about it, but he’d read a lot since meeting Fiona and as far as he could tell there weren’t a lot of unique interpretations of this Delibes’s opera out there. He figured this one, providing Jeanine sang it well, would be a win for both the company and Jeanine.
And it made his blood run cold.
He slammed the lid down hard on the laptop and didn’t allow himself to cringe at the damage that he might have done. He wanted so much more than that. He wanted to feel Nate’s nose crush beneath his fists.
Exhausted from her talk with Lindsay, Fiona lay back on her bed and stared at the ceiling. They hadn’t talked long, as Fiona didn’t remember much of what had actually happened to her, but there had been a lot of crying and hugging. All of it had added up to a very emotionally draining day with so many highs and lows. Finally, Lindsay had hugged Fiona tight and said, “Why don’t you go take a nap. I’ll have one of the boys call you down for dinner when it’s ready.”
Fiona had been grateful for the release, but now she lay there, numb. She tried to think about all she’d thought and felt today—with Nix, with Sailor, the burst of memory when she’d hit her head and panicked, with Lindsay. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so much, and she didn’t know what to do with it all.
A ding from her laptop had her reaching over and plucking it from the nightstand. She’d be glad for a little distraction, though she couldn’t think of who would be emailing her.
Of course, it wasn’t someone emailing her. It was a notification of a new message on the Met’s private message board. She probably shouldn’t still be on there, but no one had removed her and, at least for now, it made her feel a little less disconnected from the world she’d fought so hard for.
She scrolled through rehearsal, practice rooms, and carpool schedules and general discussions about the music, libretto or production. She hadn’t been on the board since just before she left New York but hadn’t done much commenting. After the first couple days of regrets for her accident, all anyone wanted to talk about was Jeanine, Jeanine, Jeanine.
Thinking about her brought on a sense of unease that was more than just anger and defeat at having lost her spot to her understudy. Her mind skittered past thoughts of her friend, of the attack, of a connection Fiona’s mind didn’t want to make. Jeanine had been as close to a friend as Fiona ever had since leaving River Mile. Of course she was jealous of Fiona and wished she’d gotten the part of Lakmé—every soprano there wanted the part. But just as sure as Fiona was that every female singer wished she could have the lead, she knew she’d been the best choice. It was a simple fact. Her voice was better suited to the story, to the music and libretto, to the producer’s vision. Fact. She thought, after the initial jealousy, that Jeanine understood that. If it was a different role, a better role for Jeanine, Fiona expected she’d take the back seat. It was just business. That’s all.
But was she wrong?
Her fall this afternoon had left her feeling off about everything. About Jeanine and the attack and the Met. Try as she might though, she couldn’t dredge up the image of the man she’d seen that night while at the same time couldn’t shake the feeling that she knew him.
She clicked on the photos tab and her heart withered at the sight of all the production photos. The interpretation of the show had changed a little bit—changed to accommodate Jeanine’s more modern vocal style and appearance. Instead of a true representation of the original opera, the company had taken a progressive approach, setting it in downtown New York. The pictures of the set were cool, and Fiona could see how the story could be told there—and better picture Jeanine in the role than in the traditional pastoral Indian setting. But it made her feel even more distant from that world, from the people she’d considered her friends.
One picture made her suddenly cold and she sucked in a breath. It was a snapshot from the cast party at the end of summer. Families had been invited to tour backstage while appeti
zers and wine were served on stage. At some point, everyone had posed for a group portrait. Looking at that photo now, goosebumps rose on her arms and her throat tightened. Her vision blurred and grew dark around the edges, but still she couldn’t look away from Jeanine and her Plus One. Her boyfriend, Nate.
FIONA WOKE THE NEXT MORNING TO THE SOUND OF voices outside her bedroom window. It looked out over the courtyard where seven horses stood, their leads roped around the porch railing. She recognized Jack’s horse, Goliath, and remembered the big party excursion they’d talked about was heading out this morning. She’d expected to be a part of the pack up, but Lindsay hadn’t woken her.
She leaned against the window frame and watched as six people carried packs to their horses where Jack instructed them in how to attach the saddle bags, then their bedrolls, to the horses’ saddles. She found herself laughing as pack after pack dropped to the ground as the newcomers struggled to get them secured. Each of the horses, experienced pack and trail horses, looked back at their would-be rider as if saying, “Seriously? I’m gonna be stuck with you for the next five days?”
Goliath, meanwhile, watched on with an attitude of superiority. He was Jack’s horse and so never had to put up with inexperienced riders.
Dogs barked and danced among the people who laughed and made fun of each other’s fumbles. Lindsay entered the scene then, stepping up to help the older woman—the mom of the group, Fiona guessed—to finish securing her gear. The woman fist pumped the air and Fiona could hear her calling out some sort of challenge to her husband and children.
Fiona had a sudden desire to be joining them—and she’d never enjoyed excursions before. But at that moment she wished to be a part of something like that—a family, laughter, community.
As she watched Jack give Lindsay a hug, she realized she had all that, if she wanted it. It was right here.
She watched a little while longer while each of the riders were helped onto their mounts, knowing full well that they’d be expert at all of this by the time they returned on Saturday. She had chores to get to today; the dogs Jack had left behind would be waiting for their breakfast and morning exercise. Gavin had also asked her to clean the tack and there’d be a couple cabins to clean up and a lesson or two later on.