“You won’t lose. The last thing I want to do is hurt you.” Travis framed Cat’s face with his hands. He closed his eyes against the confusion and fear he saw in hers. “Don’t look at me like a cat with her paw in a trap. Trust me.”
“But you don’t trust me.”
His eyes snapped open. A trick of light made them nearly black.
“I was twenty when I married Tina,” he said in an empty voice. “She was eighteen, pregnant, and very much in love with me, she said. I thought I was in love with her. I knew I wanted the child she carried. Two weeks after our marriage she had an abortion.”
Cat stiffened, but Travis didn’t notice. This time he was the one gripped by the freezing violence of the past.
“She told me it was a miscarriage. I believed her. Later, I found out the truth. Thank God the second baby she got rid of wasn’t mine.”
Travis’s hands flexed, pulling Cat’s hair almost painfully. He didn’t notice. Nor did she. Both were caught in the past. His past.
“I paid her off. One million dollars. Being shed of that creature was one of the few things money could buy that was worth having.” His eyes focused on Cat again. His voice was harsh. “What about him? Do you still love him?”
She couldn’t speak. She was stunned by the brutality of his wife’s betrayal.
Cat had accused Travis of not trusting her, and he had told her something she was certain he told very few people. Now he was asking the same honesty of her.
She didn’t want to talk about Billy. But then, Travis hadn’t wanted to talk about his past failure.
For a long moment Cat studied Travis’s face, weighing her instinct to trust him against the lessons of a past that had almost destroyed her. If she was wrong about Travis, if he was more boy than man, trusting him would be the worst mistake she could make. She would lose more than she could regain by a midnight swim, more than she could regain at all.
She would lose herself.
Closing her eyes, Cat tried to shut out the familiar stranger who stood so close to her. Maybe if she couldn’t see him, she wouldn’t soar or drown in his compelling eyes, eyes that offered her the sensual release and the freedom of a great black ship skimming the edge of creation.
“I married Billy when I was nineteen,” Cat said. The words were rough, forced past her unwillingness to remember, memories choking her. “My father had just died. My mother had all she could do to take care of my younger brother and sister. I needed love. I thought Billy loved me.”
Remembering, Cat shuddered and tried to speak. No words came. She couldn’t speak about exactly what had happened. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
“I was very, very wrong,” she whispered. “Money had spoiled Billy. He didn’t know the difference between a woman and a whore.”
Cat closed her eyes, knowing she owed Travis more but unable even to form the thoughts that would lead to words. She had spent seven years trying to forget her husband’s degrading demands the night he learned she was sterile.
I’m going to teach you, bitch. Whore’s tricks. Not the kind of thing a man wants the mother of his sons to know, but you’re never going to be a mommy, so what the hell does it matter?
“No, I don’t love him,” Cat said thinly. “Most of the time I don’t even hate him.”
Travis kissed her eyelids, then rocked her against his chest, comforting both of them. Slowly her arms went around his waist. They stood together in a closeness that demanded nothing, gave everything. A man and a woman holding each other, creating warmth where before there had been only chill, a simple moment of peace where there had been only pain.
Finally Travis tilted Cat’s face up to his and looked at her, just looked at her. Then he brushed his fingertips over her cheek, released her, and walked out of her kitchen into the night.
Cat was too shaken to protest his leaving. Like him, she needed to find out again where self ended and other began, because for a single, shattering instant there had been no difference.
It was an instant neither one of them had been prepared for.
FIVE
THE NEXT morning, dawn came to the sea like a magenta dream. Cat stood by the kitchen’s bay window, a cup of tea steaming in her hand. She was staring at the water beyond the rocks that lined the little cove. When she saw a dark, powerful shape cut across the shimmering swells, she put down her tea, grabbed her camera gear, and ran out on the deck.
Through the zoom lens she could see Travis almost as clearly as if he were across the room. But even with autofocus, keeping him in sight wasn’t a sure thing. The big lens saw only a narrow slice of reality and had a very shallow depth of field. She had to hold utterly still in order not to jiggle the lens and lose her subject completely.
Normally, standing still wasn’t a problem for Cat. But this morning her heart was beating so quickly that she finally had to fasten the camera onto a tripod. Then she stared through the lens with the pleasure of a miser counting gold.
Travis’s arms and legs moved rhythmically, tirelessly, propelling him through a dawn world where shades of magenta gathered and ran and glimmered with each shift of his body on the sea.
Watching him, Cat could believe that yesterday had been real, that this man had kissed her, held her, then gently let her go. Caught in the shimmering, ecstatic light of dawn, she could believe anything, even that she had met Travis yesterday and known him forever.
The phone rang from somewhere in the house. She ignored the sound. The answering machine would get it.
Intently Cat followed Travis with the lens, tracking him as she triggered the motor drive. It beat as quickly as her heart, attempting to capture the man and the moment. Even knowing that such a photo was probably impossible, she still had to try. She wanted an image of Travis as he appeared to her: half shadow, half dawn, a power and mystery and fascination to equal the radiant sea.
And like the sea, he could change between heartbeats—gentle, savage, serene, turbulent—shaking the certainties of anyone who dared his depths.
The phone rang for the seventh time. Apparently the answering machine was on strike.
Reluctantly Cat put away her dreams and ran inside. Rodney Harrington, her green angel from New York, was the only person who would call her at this hour and keep ringing until he got through. It had been on Harrington’s yacht that she had cooked her way to California from the Virgin Islands. He was also her agent, the man who had nagged and flattered her into a career as a photographer at a time when she had no self-confidence and less self-respect.
“Hello,” she said breathlessly.
“Morning, Cochran. Catch you sleeping for once?”
“Not this year, angel. Maybe in January. I was taking pictures out on the back deck.”
Harrington sighed. “Swear to God, you work too hard.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“You’re sexy.”
Cat laughed out loud. Harrington was the only man she had ever met who could say such things, mean them, and never crowd the No Trespassing signs she had set out against the male world after her disastrous marriage.
“Well,” Harrington said smugly, “you told me to tell you something you didn’t know. How are you coming with Ashcroft?”
Cat was glad her green angel couldn’t see her expression. She reminded herself that the trendy poet’s book would be an oversize, beautifully made, very expensive, top-quality color production. In short, a photographer’s dream. She was grateful to Harrington for getting her the assignment.
But she wished that Ashcroft wasn’t so single-minded about getting into her jeans.
“Did he call you?” she asked.
“Was he supposed to?”
“The last time I told Ashcroft to put his hands in his pockets instead of mine, he told me if I didn’t play, he’d get another photographer.”
“Oh, that.” Harrington sighed. “Yes, he mentioned that.”
“And?”
Cat’s hand tightened on the phone wh
ile she waited for the answer. She needed the work, needed the money for her mother’s living expenses and the twins’ tuition, but she definitely didn’t need the hassle.
“I told him you had herpes,” Harrington said casually.
There was a stunned silence. Then Cat choked on laughter.
“Don’t know that it will do you much good,” he admitted when she stopped laughing. “Ashcroft said that was okay, he had it too.”
She groaned. “Thanks a lot, angel.”
“Yeah. Ready for the good news?”
“Should I sit down?” she asked dryly.
“T. H. Danvers.” Harrington spoke as though the words meant something fabulous.
“Huh?”
“You do remember that book we talked about? T. H. Danvers, the ship designer? The man whose hull designs win every race they’re entered in? It’s gotten so bad that the handicappers are talking about making entirely new categories for Danvers hulls.”
“Is that good?”
“No. It’s flat incredible. He’s revolutionized hull dynamics. Swear to God, he’s a genius, and the most private man since Howard Hughes. Danvers is also a friend of mine. I’ve been after him to do a book for years, but he never stayed in one place for more than a few weeks at a time. He’s on your coast now, and has found something interesting enough to make him change his plans. He’s going to stick around for a few more weeks. Then he’ll probably—”
“Wait. Back up. A few weeks? You expect me to do the art for a whole book in a few weeks?”
“You can do it. You’re good, Cochran. Very, very good.”
“Angel, you’re sounding as otherworldly as my mother. I’m up to my lips in work. The next few months are going to be brutal.”
“I know you’re busy,” he said soothingly. “Hell, I got most of the assignments for you, but this Danvers thing is too good to pass up. You simply have to do it.”
“What, precisely, am I supposed to do?”
“Shoot images for a book called The Danvers Touch.”
“Keep talking.”
“Danvers thinks the book is going to be about designing hulls and sails, particularly the Danvers racing hull. Well, that’s part of it. But it’s also going to be about the man. I want people to see him as the complex artist he is. I want them to read the book, look at your images, and know what it’s like to design and sail a Danvers hull.”
“Swear to God,” Cat said sardonically, using Harrington’s favorite phrase, “that shouldn’t take more than a day or two.”
He laughed. “The money’s not bad. Fifteen thousand up front, all expenses paid, fifteen thousand when your images pass muster, and an extra fifteen grand if the work is really good.”
She closed her eyes. That much money would make the difference between sinking and treading water if Ashcroft dumped her overboard on some pretext or another.
The money would allow her to pay enough on the twins’ school loans to keep the creditors quiet for another six months.
She would be able to pay the rent and still buy an occasional bottle of wine.
She couldn’t buy the forty-thousand-dollar digital camera setup she needed, but she might be able to make a down payment on enough computer equipment to enter the twenty-first century the only way a photographer could expect to survive—electronically.
“You’re awfully quiet,” Harrington said.
“I’m thinking.”
“Think out loud.”
“I’m about finished with Ashcroft’s art. He hasn’t seen any of it yet, but it’s good. That show you set up in L.A. for late November is crowding me a bit. I haven’t picked out more than three of the thirty images they want, much less done anything about the printing, matting, and framing.”
She winced at the thought of the money involved in taking images from slides, blowing them up, and framing them suitably for an upscale gallery. She should have put off the show until March, but galleries like Swift and Sons only asked an artist to participate once. If the artist couldn’t be bothered, neither could the gallery.
“Do all the framing stuff when it’s too dark to take pictures,” Harrington advised. “If it gets tight, I’ll find someone to do it for you. If it gets down to the short strokes, I’ll do it myself.”
“Ummm.”
“Yeah, I know. If you can’t do it yourself, you damn well won’t let anyone else do it. Independent as a hog on ice.”
“Your midwestern roots are showing.”
“Soybean money is as good as other kinds and better than most. Take Energistics, for instance.”
“I’d love to. Have they sent my check yet?”
Harrington sighed. “Sorry, Cochran. I’ve camped on their accounting department for the last nine business days, and all they give me is some lame variation of ‘Your check is in the mail.’ ”
Cat swore under her breath. She had spent six weeks on the Energistics assignment, gone all over hell and back shooting art for a massive, full-color report on energy systems of the twenty-first century. They had loved her work, praised her endlessly to Harrington, and had yet to pay a single cent of the fifty thousand dollars they owed her.
They hadn’t even gotten around to reimbursing her for the three thousand dollars of her own money that had gone toward renting a helicopter, not to mention several thousand dollars worth of film and development.
Yet no matter how Harrington threatened or pleaded, the Big Check from Energistics eluded Cat.
“Why is it that I’m expected to pay my bills on time and the rest of the world isn’t?” she asked.
“Just lucky, I guess,” Harrington said sardonically.
“Yeah. How soon would I get money from the Danvers book?”
“As soon as you sign the contract.”
“Translation: as soon as you can pry money out of the publisher after I’ve signed the contract. Anywhere from three to six months, usually.”
Harrington laughed. “Not this time, Cochran. The publisher is a friend of mine.”
“I’d feel better if your friend was the accountant.”
“Accountants don’t have friends. Three weeks after you sign, you’ll get the money. Swear to God.”
Cat closed her eyes. If she didn’t have a sinking feeling about Energistics, she would have tried to delay the Danvers assignment. But she did have a sinking feeling. A bad one.
If Energistics didn’t pay her, the Danvers assignment would be all that stood between her and bankruptcy.
“I’ll take it,” she said grimly.
“I’ll set up a meeting with Danvers tomorrow and call you.”
“I suppose he’s another drooling octopus.”
“Not to worry. He likes ships better than skirts. If he wants a woman, he buys her for a while.”
“Female.”
“What?”
“You buy females, not women.”
Harrington laughed. “Is that how it works? Well, whatever you call them, they’re standing in line for In-the-Wind, Hell-on-Women Danvers.”
Cat shook her head in disgust. “No accounting for tastes.”
“I’ll talk to you soon, Fire-and-Ice. Keep your answering machine on, okay?”
Smiling, Cat hung up, made sure the answering machine was turned on this time, and raced back to the deck.
Travis was no longer in sight. She was tempted to wait on the deck until he reappeared on the return leg of his morning swim, but she didn’t have time.
If she was going to do the Danvers book, she didn’t even have time to sleep.
She set a watch alarm to remind her of her doctor’s appointment in two hours, stuffed the watch in her camera case, and set off for the beach.
* * *
Even with the alarm, Cat was late for her appointment. As she rushed into the doctor’s office, she realized that she was nervous. She was afraid of what the tests she had taken two weeks ago might have uncovered, afraid that her sterility and unpredictable periods were caused by something unthinkable.
Cat knew the way without help. She walked quickly down the narrow hall, through the open door, and into the doctor’s office. She had never met anyone more unlike her name. Dr. Stone was a warm woman in her fifties rather than the cold male gynecologist Cat had expected on her first visit eight months ago.
“Sit down, Catherine,” Dr. Stone said, smiling up from a pile of papers. “All your tests came back negative, which is good news for you and bad news for me.”
“Bad? Why?”
“There’s no obvious organic reason for your menstrual cycle to be as erratic as it has been in the past year, especially in the past few months.”
Cat let out a long sigh. “Thank God. But I’d like to know why my period is so late.”
“You still haven’t gotten it?” Dr. Stone asked, looking at her patient sharply.
“Oh, it came two days after I had the tests.” She smiled wryly. “Scared me into it, I guess.”
Dr. Stone scanned Cat’s file with professional speed. “Your cycle is highly unpredictable. Six weeks, three weeks, seven weeks, sixteen days . . . all over the map. Spotting?”
“Sometimes. No pattern.”
“Of course not. That would be too easy. Cramps?”
“Sometimes. Nothing severe enough to keep me from working.”
“And according to the tests, everything is in the right place, nothing missing and no extras. How do you feel?”
“Tired.”
“Taking the vitamins and iron I prescribed?”
“Religiously. There are days I think that’s all that keeps me going.”
Dr. Stone set aside the file and leaned back in her chair. “Tell me about your days, Catherine.”
“I get up, I work, I go to bed.”
The doctor’s lips curved in something that wasn’t quite a smile. “Take me through an average day.”
“Up an hour before dawn. Exercise if there’s time, shower, breakfast, and out the door. The poet I’m working for has a thing about ‘rosy-fingered dawn.’ ”
“So did Homer.”
“Homer did it better. Blake Ashcroft is a bit soft for my taste.” Cat shrugged. “Anyway, I shoot the Ashcroft assignment for a few hours, then I do a few hours on various business stuff—bookkeeping, query letters, billing, and the like. Then I edit, duplicate, and file slides until the light starts slanting again. Or I go out and argue with the processor who loused up the color on my prints, or with the framer who can’t cut a right angle on the mat, or with accountants who can’t seem to write out checks paying me for work I’ve already done.”
To the Ends of the Earth Page 7