Chapter 12
When Kali awoke, she was alone in bed and couldn’t hear anything to indicate that Travis was in the cabin. She immediately panicked. Grabbing her robe off the floor, she put it on and ran into the living room, then the kitchen, only to find those rooms empty also. The roar of the motorcycle outside alerted her to Travis’s whereabouts. Not caring that she was barefoot, she ran outside to find him straddling his bike, revving the engine. Judging by the bags loaded on the back, he was in the midst of leaving—and without a word to her.
“Travis!” she cried out, running toward him. “You were going to leave without saying goodbye, weren’t you? Why?”
He took his time removing his helmet. The lover of all those beautiful nights was gone. His harsh countenance and cold eyes left her feeling as if she were looking at a stranger. She didn’t know this man.
“I figured it would be better if I took off so we wouldn’t have to worry about unnecessary goodbyes.”
Kali blanched at his very cold and very blunt words. “I thought that after everything …” She gestured helplessly.
“Everything?” Travis refused to look at it the same way. “You were the one who decided we would just have a fling until I went back to California.”
“You’re asking the impossible from me!”
“Am I? Believe me, if I could work from here, I would, but we both know that’s just as impossible as your idea that you can’t come to California. Instead, you prefer to hide away here in your own little self-erected castle of safety. For a while I thought I had breached your defenses enough that you would brave anything. I should have known better. You’re still afraid to come back to the real world. Fine. I don’t like what you’re doing with your life, Kali. I know I have no choice, and I won’t put up with it.” He slipped his helmet back on and turned back to the handlebars. “Goodbye, Kali, it’s been an education.”
She stepped back as he slipped the bike into gear and rolled down the hill. When he reached the highway, he roared off without a wave or a backward glance.
Kali remained standing there for more than ten minutes, disregarding the chilly morning air. She couldn’t believe Travis would leave her so callously. No, it had to be some kind of sick joke he was playing
on her, and soon she would see him driving up the hill. But twenty minutes later he still hadn’t returned. He was gone for good. She moved slowly into the house and poured herself a much-needed cup of coffee to warm her chilled body. Too bad it wouldn’t have any effect on her chilled heart.
Kali didn’t do very much that day. She felt as numb as she had after Cheryl’s kidnapping. She was barely able to function. She built a fire in the fireplace and curled up in a corner of the couch, watching the flames dance. How many times had they made love in front of a roaring fire? Travis had even carried her up to the loft one night, insisting they make love in the bed in which he had slept alone so many nights and in which he’d dreamed about making love to her. The entire cabin was filled with memories; new ones that she wouldn’t be allowed to forget easily.
Kali left the cabin early the next morning and arrived at J. C.‘s store before it opened. That didn’t deter her from pounding on his back door.
“All right, all right, dammit, can’t a man eat his breakfast in peace?” he grumbled, opening the door. His frown disappeared when he saw his visitor, swollen red eyes and all. “Come on in,” he said in a rumbling voice, stepping back.
“He stopped by here before he left, didn’t he?” Kali demanded, walking into the small kitchen.
“Yeah, he did. You don’t mind if I get back to my breakfast, do you?” He sat down at the square Formica table in the middle of the kitchen. “There’s some coffee left, and juice in the refrigerator.”
She shook her head. Placing her hands on the table, Kali leaned toward him. “Well?”
J. C. sighed. It didn’t look like he would be able to
finish his breakfast after all. He set his fork and knife down on the edge of his plate and looked up. “He stopped by, made a few phone calls, and bought some beef jerky and some cans of soda.” He stared at her with those sharp eyes of his. “He also told me to look after you.”
“Anything else?”
J. C.‘s silence was answer enough. Her shoulders drooped.
“You’ve really done it this time, my girl,” he told her in his usual blunt manner. “You had the perfect man for you in the palm of your hand, and you let him get away. Never knew you could act so stupid.”
“He wanted me to pose for his new book,” she threw back.
J. C. didn’t say anything, but the expression on his face told her what he thought about that. “So he bedded you and stuck around for so long just so you’d pose for him. Seems he would have lit out sooner if you weren’t going to do what he wanted. I’m sure there’s plenty of women in L.A. who’d pose for his book and wouldn’t give him no back talk, neither.”
Kali’s eyes blazed at the idea of Travis making love to another woman.
“You’re not being fair.”
J. C. stood up and carried his plates over to the sink. “No, Kali, you’re the one who isn’t fair. That man loved you, pure and simple. It was pretty obvious yesterday when he asked me to look after you. You’ve been hidin’ yourself out here for too long. In the beginning it was all right, because you were hurtin’ and needed to heal. The time for that healin’ is over. It’s time for you to go back and deal with what happened there.”
“Back to what?” she demanded shrilly, slicing the air with her hand. “There’s nothing there for me. All I had out there was pain. Why should I go back to a place that only hurt me?”
“Because there’s a good man out there who will take away the pain and give you more love than you know what to do with if you’ll only let him,” J. C. said gently.
Tears welled up in her eyes. “I do love him, J. C. I love him so much, but I’m also afraid I’ll end up hurt again.”
He looked exasperated. “What else is it going to take for you to wake up and see you don’t belong here anymore?”
“Don’t belong,” she murmured, shaking her head. “This has always been my home.”
“No, lovey, your real home is where your man is, and right now your man is on his way back to California. I suggest you go back to the cabin and think long and hard about it.”
Kali nodded and slowly walked outside to her jeep. How could she not belong here? She’d grown up here. All during the drive back to the cabin she thought over what J. C. had said. Had all she done here was hide from real life? Yes, she had come here to heal her wounds and get her life back together, and since there was no pressure and she’d had enough money for personal expenses, she saw no need even to think about returning to L.A.—or going anywhere else, for that matter. Her agent already knew she had no desire to continue her modeling career. It didn’t fulfill her anymore. She didn’t like to think about the days ahead without Travis, but was she truly brave enough to go back? No matter what,
she couldn’t make the decision just because of Travis; it had to be for her too.
Travis had been back to work for almost a week, and his employees were beginning to wish he had stayed away longer. While he wasn’t known for having a bad temper, his moods had been erratic since his return, and only Jenny was brave enough to go up against him.
“Travis, you’re well on your way to being voted the most unpopular man in this galaxy.” She cornered him one morning before he had a chance to escape into the studio.
He grimaced. “I guess I haven’t been Mr. Congeniality, have I?”
“You got it—
Travis ran his fingers through his already tousled hair. “Okay, I’D work on being nicer, I promise.”
Jenny watched him move restlessly around his office.
“You love her, don’t you?”
He dropped wearily into his desk chair. “I love that woman so much, it hurts,” he admitted. “Trouble is, she doesn’t love me enough.”
“That’s where ‘she doesn’t love me enough’ comes in.” He sighed. “Kali doesn’t want to come back to L.A.—ever.”
Jenny’s lips pursed in a silent oh. “She still hurts that much?”
He shrugged. “She thinks so. I could be wrong, but
I think she’s afraid that if she comes back, all the pain from her divorce and her daughter’s kidnapping will surface again. She has private detectives working to find the girl, but nothing has surfaced so far.”
“And that’s why you hired some people of your own?” Jenny asked, then went on, clarifying. “The statement came a few days before you got back. It wasn’t difficult to figure out why you did it.”
He pounded the desktop with his fist. “Dammit, why can’t she allow herself to feel something real? Why does she have to be so afraid of getting hurt again?” He groaned with the defeat he had felt from the moment he had left Kali’s mountain cabin, and cursed himself roundly for not just hoisting her on the back of his bike and kidnapping her.
Jenny looked at the raw emotion scoring Travis’s face and knew just how deeply he cared for Kali. She only wished there was something she could do other than offer advice, and prayed Kali felt as deeply for Travis as he did for her. Yet if she did, why wouldn’t she come out here to be with him? Surely she couldn’t be hurting as badly as she had in the beginning.
“She may come to realize it when you aren’t around,” she offered quietly. “As long as you were there, she could believe you’d never leave her. Now that you aren’t there, she might come to see how important you are to her.”
The stark hope in his eyes was enough to make her cry. “I’d like to think that, Jenny. I really would.”
She smiled. “Now, I know you’ve got it bad. You haven’t called me hoss once since you’ve been back.” She held up a hand in warning. “Of course, I’m not complaining, mind you.”
Travis sighed. “Okay, I’ve been a first-class bastard. I do promise to shape up, hoss,” he added with a trace of his old wicked grin.
Jenny rolled her eyes. “I will probably come to regret our little chat.” She strolled out of the office, throwing over her shoulder, “Besides, Deke expects you to shoot those pictures of him this weekend, and you’re going to need to eat your Wheaties to keep up with him.”
Travis’s reply to that was short and to the point. He stared down at the paperwork littering his desk, determined to push Kali out of his mind, however temporarily, and get some work accomplished.
Later that evening he worked in his darkroom, processing the photographs he had taken during his ride eastward and the ones he’d taken of Kali that fateful night.
As each print sat in the developing tray he watched the paper darken and each delicate feature take shape. He had been right, and Kali wrong. The lighting wasn’t what he would have used, her lack of makeup discernible, and the first pictures showed her display of temper, but soon the play of emotions on her face revealed sorrow, desire, and love, all rolled up in one beautiful package.
When he was finished, he studied each glossy photo carefully. Memories flooded back in a painful rush as he recalled each time they argued and each time they made love. Just remembering sent his blood rushing to his head. In a fit of temper he had even called an ex-lover of his, determined to put Kali Hughes behind him once and for all. He had wined and dined the woman and escorted her back to her apartment with every intention of spending the
night. Instead, he drank a glass of brandy, kissed her, and said good night. He couldn’t dredge up the slightest desire for the lovely woman with her perfectly coiffed hair, French perfume, and designer dress when all he wanted was a woman wearing inexpensive clothing and only the hint of a lemony soap added to her own natural fragrance. He was determined never to go through that hell again.
Travis left the darkroom with the collection of photographs of Kali in his hand. The negatives were locked away in a cabinet so no one could inadvertently find them and perhaps find a use for them. While he trusted his employees, there was still the cleaning crew and temporary help that came and went in the studio, and he wasn’t about to allow anything to hurt Kali.
It had already been a hellish two weeks, and he wasn’t looking forward to the rest of his life. Maybe he should just give her some time and then find a way to take another one or two weeks off and go back there to try to persuade her again to come back with him. Meanwhile, if he had any of the smarts he was supposed to have been born with, he’d get to work on his next book and allow that to fill his otherwise empty hours.
Kali was unhappy. Anyone who saw her shadowed eyes and pale face knew that, especially J. C. He talked to her until he was blue in the face, but he still didn’t get anywhere. She still refused to relinquish her fear of going back to LA.
“Then be prepared to live out your life a lonely, embittered woman,” he told her bluntly during his latest lecture. “Because there’s no guarantee you’ll ever get Cheryl back; not if Harold has anything to say about it. You had a man who loved you and would have done anything for you, and you threw him away. I wonder how you’re going to feel when you read about his marriage and later the birth of his kids; kids that should have been yours. You just remember that and I hope you can live with it.”
Kali was horrified that he would talk to her in such a cruel manner and ran out of the store without saying anything. But she couldn’t rim away from his words as easily.
During the drive back up the hill his lecture echoed over and over inside her head. The idea of Travis marrying, having children with someone else, made her feel wretched. No, it couldn’t happen! No one could give him what she could.
Give him what? her conscience demanded. You did throw him away, just as J. C. said. He wanted to give you the world, and you refused without giving him a chance.
When she reached the cabin, she rushed inside and flew through the house, doing twenty things at once. Within two hours she led the horses into the trailer she had already hooked up to the jeep.
J. C. didn’t look surprised when Kali marched back into his store carrying two large cartons.
“Would you keep an eye on the cabin and the horses for me?” she asked without preamble, setting two cartons of food on the counter. “And I’d like to use your phone too.” She headed for the basic black telephone in a corner without waiting for an answer.
J. C. grinned. “Hot damn!” He chortled, slapping his knee. “She’s finally gettin’ some sense in that thick head of hers.”
Travis had been out of the studio for two long and frustrating days due to working with Deke, who had decided to go on a binge. Travis had taken it upon himself to dry his old friend out. When he returned to the studio late one morning, Jenny attacked him with a vengeance.
“Why haven’t you returned my calls?” she demanded, stalking him back to his office.
“I’ve been busy.” He looked at her quizzically, surprised that his usually unflappable assistant acted so upset. “I can’t believe something came up around here that you couldn’t handle, so you might as well tell me why I’m in trouble.”
She stood in front of him, her hands braced on her hips. “True, any emergency I can handle, but this isn’t something I should have to worry about unless you want me to pick Kali up at the airport.”
Travis froze. “When?” he asked sharply, afraid to believe his ears.
“The telegram came two days ago. It wasn’t marked ‘personal’ so I opened it. It was just as well I did; otherwise, you might not have been at the airport and she would have thought the worst, wouldn’t she?”
His lips thinned. “When, dammit!”
‘Ten o’clock tonight.”
Travis looked down at his desk, cluttered as usual. He was positive there was work there that required his immediate attention, but he couldn’t think about anything
but the fact that Kali was coming to him.
“I called your cleaning lady to come in today and get your house ready. I also made a hotel reservation in case Kali prefers privacy,” his assistant went on.
“And, yes, there’s work here you should be doing, but I doubt you’d be of any use to us. Go on home, do whatever you do there to remain calm, and be sure to arrive at the airport with time to spare.”
Travis ran over to Jenny and picked her up, spinning her around in a circle.
“Do you realize how happy you’ve made me?” He grinned, feeling more lighthearted than he had in a long time.
“I have a pretty good idea.” She laughed. “Don’t you think you ought to get going?”
Travis stopped long enough to drop off the film he had taken of Deke before running out of the studio. His motorcycle kicked up a great deal of dust as he roared off, and how he managed to arrive home without a speeding ticket was a miracle. Of course, the way he felt now, he firmly believed in miracles.
Not knowing what to do with himself, Travis wandered through the house until his cleaning lady ordered him out by suggesting he take a ride, go to the beach, anything but bother her.
He rode for several hours, ate the dinner his cleaning lady had left for him, and watched the clock hands move slowly until it was time to leave for the airport.
As it was, the flight was late, since the evening flights were stacked up overhead. Travis strode into the bar for a drink, changed his mind because he didn’t want liquor on his breath, then changed his mind again. His insides were knotted up with anticipation of seeing Kali, and he decided he needed something to calm him down. A whiskey was just the ticket.
Kali sat in her first-class seat wishing they were on the ground. She wasn’t a good flyer to begin with, and a bumpy four-hour fight hadn’t helped. She drank several Kailua’s with milk to soothe her jumpy nerves, but all she ended up with was a woozy head. She looked out the window but could see only tiny lights below.
Only Love Page 16