His tone was surprised and accusatory. “Oh yeah? What kind of plans?”
“Just plans. What time should I have Mark ready?”
“What?”
“Tomorrow. What time do you want to pick him up?”
“Oh. Five or six, I guess. Does that sound okay to you?”
“Fine. He’ll be ready. Goodbye, Mike.”
Lots of people have jackasses for ex-husbands, she told herself as she hung up the phone. That’s why they’re ex. Just because yours is a jackass’s jackass doesn’t make you the world’s biggest fool.
But the sunny mood with which she had started out had dimmed considerably by the time she joined Mark and Quinn in the kitchen.
Quinn was leaning against the counter, a glass of lemonade in his hand, the open cookie jar at his elbow. He looked good in her kitchen—in jeans that stretched nicely over his hips and a cotton shirt worn open over a dark T-shirt, and with the sun from the window backlighting his finger-combed hair and painting bright planes and soft shadows across his face. She stood and watched him unobserved for a moment, appreciating the ease of his stance, the column of his throat as he lifted his glass to drink, the sound of his soft laughter as he and Mark shared a joke. Why, she thought a little wistfully, couldn’t I have married a man like that?
She stepped forward quickly, before she was tempted to indulge in further pointless daydreams, and asked “Ready to go?”
Quinn emptied his glass and reached for another handful of cookies. “Provisions,” he assured her with a wink. Houston couldn’t help smiling. His sweet tooth exceeded even Mark’s.
They set off across the backyard, Mark in the lead with a big stick “to scare snakes,” as he put it. The two adults soon lagged more than a few steps behind, perhaps lulled by the heat of the sun and the lazy crackling of insects, or perhaps slowed by the weight of their own thoughts.
After a time Quinn asked, “Hard day?”
Houston hadn’t meant to let Mike’s phone call affect her mood, but obviously it had, and Quinn had picked up on it. She gave a dismissing lift of her shoulders. “Two more weeks until summer vacation. The kids are wild. No one really wants to be in school anymore, particularly not the teacher.”
“If I had you for a teacher,” Quinn said gallantly, “I’m sure I would never want to leave school.”
She chuckled, carefully skirting a thorny vine that crept over the edge of the path. “If I had you for a student, I probably wouldn’t last a week.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment to my quick wit and demanding intelligence. Still,” he added thoughtfully, “it must be difficult trying to coordinate a curriculum for several dozen children at a time, all with different skills and learning abilities, all at different developmental levels…. It’s a wonder anyone ever learned anything.”
Houston shot him a quick glance, but had long since given up expecting him to explain those kind of off-the-wall statements. “You sound as though you have a better plan.”
He looked for a moment as though he might tell her what it was, then changed his mind. He merely replied, “I’m sure someone will come up with one sooner or later.”
“I don’t suppose anyone ever mentioned to you that you have a…unique way of looking at things.”
He laughed. “That’s my job, isn’t it? To put things into perspective.”
“I’ve never been quite sure what your job is.”
“It’s not to pry or interfere in your private affairs,” he answered, deftly changing the subject while appearing to do nothing of the sort. “I know that. But I wonder if there’s not something else on your mind besides a classroom full of unruly students.”
Again she shrugged. “Ex-husband problems.”
“Mark’s father?”
“Yes. Sometimes I wonder how anyone so utterly worthless could have had any part in creating someone as perfect as Mark.”
“He is an outstanding young man,” agreed Quinn.
They shared a moment watching Mark, who was breaking a path before them in the high grass with his stick. Small though he was, there was confidence in his stride and a squareness to his shoulders that brought a proud mother’s smile to Houston’s lips.
“Have you ever been married, Quinn?”
“Marriage,” he murmured. “An intriguing concept steeped in history and tradition. Sometimes I wish…but no, to answer your question, I’ve never been married. What’s it like?”
“Marriage?” She was a little taken aback by the question. “Well, it’s not easy to say. I don’t believe I’ve ever really thought about it in that way before—what it’s like.”
She hesitated, wanting to give a good answer. As a teacher she was called upon every day to answer all sorts of strange questions, but this one came closer to stumping her than anything had in a long time.
“I guess—ideally, I suppose it’s the most perfect union any two people can know. It’s the closest anyone can come to actually being part of another person, do you know?” And then she shrugged self-consciously. “At least that’s what I always thought it was supposed to be. When it works, it’s the most wonderful thing in the world. When it doesn’t, it’s the biggest disappointment you’ll ever know.”
Their steps had slowed as they walked, and Quinn was listening intently, a small frown of concentration on his face as she spoke. Now he stopped and looked at her and said quietly, “I’m sorry you were disappointed, Houston.”
She turned to him with a flip dismissive reply on her lips, but it died unspoken when she met his eyes. There was tenderness there, and a glimpse of understanding that touched Houston’s heart. She was not certain she had ever shared so much of herself with any man; she had not intended to do so with this one.
She didn’t know quite how to respond, and she looked away uncertainly. “We’d better hurry, or Mark’s going to leave us behind.”
“He’s lucky,” Quinn said after a moment, “to have all this open space to roam around in. Not many boys do these days, do they?”
“That’s what I thought,” Houston agreed. “But Mark doesn’t seem very impressed. He’d rather be inside, figuring things out, than outside roaming the woods. That probably comes from not having anyone to teach him how to appreciate the outdoors.” Again she shrugged. “Or maybe I’m just pushing my own expectations on him. I would have loved to have had a place like this to grow up in.”
“You didn’t?” He seemed surprised. “I would have thought you’d lived here all your life.”
She laughed. “Hardly. No, I come from a somewhat more unconventional background. And that’s why I love this place so much, I guess. Everyone’s a little reactionary when you get right down to it.”
They came to a rusted barbed-wire fence that had been cut at the bottom two strands, forming a break just large enough for a person to carefully crawl through. Mark was waiting impatiently on the other side.
“You guys are really slowpokes,” he said. “And you’ve got longer legs.”
But he thoughtfully held the bottom strand of wire up for his mother to crawl through. Quinn, examining the construction of the fence curiously, helped him. “What is this?” he asked.
Houston looked over her shoulder. “What, barbed wire? You are a city boy, aren’t you?”
“What’s it used for?”
Houston got to her feet and helped Mark hold the wire up for Quinn. “Right now, nothing. It used to be used to keep livestock off the neighbors’ property. Be careful, don’t catch your shirt.”
Quinn slid under the fence with little effort. “Are we trespassing, then?”
He didn’t seem concerned, just curious.
Houston thought about that for a moment. “Probably. Fortunately, no one cares.”
Quinn got to his feet with a little shake of his head, looking around with an odd sort of appreciation in his eyes. “You do live in fascinating times,” he murmured.
Houston had learned to let comments like that pass her by, but Mark was not so to
lerant. He pointed out, “So do you.”
Quinn looked at Mark for a moment, and grinned. “Yes,” he agreed. “I guess I do.”
He placed a hand on Mark’s shoulder, and the two of them walked together the rest of the way.
The pond was not very big, half an acre at most, but it made a charming picture surrounded by cattails and yellow and purple wildflowers. The late-afternoon sun cast a golden sheen across the water, and water bugs skipped like pebbles over the surface, creating ripples wherever they landed.
The ground sloped gently down to the edge of the pond, and Quinn took Houston’s arm as they descended, their shoes slipping slightly on the slick new grass. Mark solved the problem in the way of boys everywhere—by sliding on the seat of his pants, and making it to the bottom in half the time as the adults.
“Hey, Mom,” he called, brushing halfheartedly at the back of his jeans as he stood up. “Where’s the fish food?”
“All the food in the world won’t bring them to the surface if you keep shouting like that,” she told him. She unzipped her fanny pack and brought out a plastic bag of bread crumbs. “Here. Toss these over the water. But you’re going to have to be quieter.”
Mark looked at Quinn. “Do you think that’s true? Can fish hear underwater?”
Quinn agreed. “Evidence would indicate that underwater creatures can pick up vibrations—like voices—from quite a distance away.”
Mark grunted noncommittally and opened the bag.
Houston watched as the two of them moved close to the edge of the lake, sharing the bag of bread crumbs, and once again she felt a little tug at her heart at the picture they made. And, despite her warnings to Mark, she was the one who squealed out loud with delight when the first fish broke the water, followed by another splash and then another. The excitement on Mark’s face was wonderful for her to see as they pointed out to one another the pattern of surfacing fish, comparing sizes and antics, and the pleasure that spread through Houston’s chest was warm and sure.
What she felt was contentment, she realized after a moment, for it was such a rare emotion that she had not recognized it immediately. She knew that she would hold this afternoon—the picture of man and boy, the sound of laughter, the sun on the water—secure in memory for a long, long time.
When the bread crumbs were gone and the fish returned to their natural resting place, Mark announced his intention of searching for water rats and started off around the pond. Houston chided him to be careful, then sat down on the bank to take in the sun.
“What is a water rat, anyway?” she wondered out loud as Quinn sat beside her.
“I’m not really sure,” admitted Quinn. “But if Mark thinks he’s likely to find one, he probably will.”
“As long as he doesn’t bring it home.”
Quinn sat with his forearm resting on one upraised knee, his face turned slightly upward to bask in the sun. He pulled up a stalk of grass and absently twined it around his fingers. “This,” he said in a moment, though almost to himself, “is a perfect day.” And then he turned to her, shadows masking his eyes, though his expression was quiet and sincere. “Thank you for showing it to me.”
“I could say the same to you,” Houston replied a little shyly. “What started out as a really rotten afternoon suddenly got a lot better.”
He smiled at her, and her heart skipped a beat or two. Then he looked away.
After a moment he said, “I knew a man who built a dam once. It was quite a project, hard, hot work dawn to dusk, but I never saw a man enjoy his work so much. When I asked him what kept him so cheerful all day he said, ‘Just the thought of the day I’ll be able to sit back and watch it fill up.’”
Houston grinned. “Sounds like an interesting fellow.”
“He was,” agreed Quinn. And his tone grew more thoughtful. “We spent a whole summer together, working on that dam. Those kinds of conditions let you get to know a man really well.”
“Did he ever get to see it fill up?”
A shadow crossed Quinn’s face; he looked at the blade of grass in his fingers without seeing it. “I don’t know.”
“Didn’t he finish the dam?”
“I suppose so. But I had to move on.”
In real time, the summer spent working with Sam on his project had been a mere five years ago; in the time of this century it had been over sixty. He had made three trips back to the same place, the same time, pushing the very limits of technology and his own endurance. That was before he had his own rules for emotional survival; that was when he had discovered the necessity for them.
Never grow too attached. Never grow too comfortable. He did not belong here. He was not a part of this.
He wondered what Sam, with his homespun philosophy and easy humor, would think of those rules. He wondered what Sam would say about Quinn’s problem now, stranded in time with no way back.
But he knew. He could almost see Sam’s slow grin, hear his lazy drawl. “Problem? What problem? Stranded in paradise with a beautiful woman? My friend, you’ve got to learn to start appreciating the moment.”
Quinn looked at Houston. Her head was tilted back to the sun, her elbows supporting her weight. The thrust of her breasts beneath the soft cotton T-shirt was firm and round, a portrait of sensual allure that made Quinn’s throat grow tight with need. The gentle dip of her waist, the flatness of her abdomen beneath the faded denim, the shape of her thigh… There was a great deal about the moment to appreciate.
As though sensing his gaze, Houston looked at him. He knew his thoughts were in his eyes and they brought color to her cheeks. The safe thing to do would be to look away; instead Quinn smiled at her.
He said, “Houston. That’s an unusual name.”
She seemed prettily confused, relieved yet surprised by the neutral change of subject. “My parents are unusual people.”
“It’s the name of a city, isn’t it?”
Again she seemed surprised. “You’ve never heard of—?” And then she shrugged, apparently deciding he was teasing her. “It’s the city where I was conceived, thus the name. Some sense of humor, huh?”
“I think it’s charming.”
“I think it’s weird.”
He laughed and she smiled up at him. Sunlight sparked in her eyes and washed her skin with clarity. The day was bright and full of promise and she was only an arm’s length away.
And suddenly she was not. In a single unplanned movement he drew her into his arms and she seemed to melt there, a rush of softness and sensation, and he covered her mouth with his.
She tasted of honey and sunshine, velvet and heat. His pulses roared. She filled his senses, flowing within him like a meandering river, tumbling through his cells like a rushing waterfall, exploding inside his head with a rainbow of light. He heard her small surprised catch of breath, felt her sink against him, the weight of a soft round breast against his chest, the press of her knee on his inner thigh. His hands moved over her back, gathering her to him, and he felt the fine electric quiver in her muscles at his touch. She parted her lips beneath his and he tasted the inside of her mouth, devouring her, drunk on her, consumed by her.
And when she pulled away, breathless and flushed, with eyes as big as the sky, he had the oddest sensation—as though, in the few moments they had been together, less than a minute, really, something had changed for all time.
She inched away a little, casting an anxious glance over her shoulder toward Mark who, on the other side of the pond, was too absorbed in a trench he was digging at the edge of the water to have noticed what was transpiring between the adults. She looked self-conscious and unsure, dazed and excited. Her hands were unsteady. So were his.
“It’s getting late,” she said. “We should probably start back.”
He didn’t know what to say to her. He wasn’t sure he would ever know what to say to her again.
After a moment he nodded, and extended a hand to help her up. “Yes,” he said. “It’s getting late.”
&nbs
p; Chapter Five
“It’s amazing,” Houston said. “I mean, we’ve only known him a week, but what a difference he’s made. If someone had told me, I wouldn’t have believed it.”
“What I can’t believe,” Millie returned, “what I still can’t believe, is that you, Ms. Ultra-Conservative, would pick up a perfect stranger off the street, take him home and rent him your spare room.”
“It’s not a spare room, it’s a garage.”
Millie arched an eyebrow at her. “A significant difference, I’m sure.”
“Besides, he’s not a complete stranger, at least not in the sense you mean. It’s hard to explain.”
“Obviously.”
But Millie was right, and Houston was as baffled by her own behavior as was her friend. What baffled her more was that it had worked out so well. More than well. Almost too perfectly.
She was on a free period, and had started out correcting papers in the teachers’ lounge. Then Millie had dropped by with a box of doughnuts still warm from the bakery and the papers went back into their folder, to await her attention at another spare moment.
“Well, don’t you agree?” insisted Houston. “Can’t you see the change in Mark? He’s much more outgoing and interested in things around him, and he doesn’t spend nearly as much time by himself. Why, only yesterday he led us on an expedition down to the old pond, and you know how he feels about the outdoors.”
She tried to keep her tone casual, but even talking about yesterday made her pulse flutter like a schoolgirl’s, and she was sure something must have shown in her face. For that reason she deliberately did not meet Millie’s eyes, afraid that her friend, who could read her so easily, would see the whole story there. And Houston wasn’t even sure what the whole story was.
“Oh, sure,” Millie agreed. “Mark has seemed quite a bit more enthusiastic these past few days. Even Karen noticed it.”
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