by Karis Walsh
Before the brewery, Tace would never have considered having a college professor—especially one so time-consuming—live in her house no matter how much she needed the cash. For once, Tace had something to work for besides her family, something of her own. It happened to be a run-down, failing business, but it was hers. She’d put up with anything to give it a chance to succeed and at least break even in the sale. To give herself a chance to succeed at something. Anything.
She’d be much happier if Berit weren’t so damned beautiful. Tace was used to being able to walk away from anyone connected to teaching or the college. Anyone who might make her feel inadequate. She couldn’t walk away from Berit without leaving her house, and even then she’d have to return to drive Berit somewhere. Just a physical attraction would have been bad enough, but Berit was interesting and worldly as well. Things Tace definitely wasn’t. Soon enough, she’d ask about Tace’s job and education, and then she’d move on to find friends with more interests in common.
Tace swung the trimmer forcefully and jarred her entire body when she smacked into a hidden rock. She tossed it out of her way and continued. She was making headway on the yard, but she knew the brewery needed more than a pretty garden to have a chance. She’d been learning a little about the brewing process, when she could get Joseph to give her more than a monosyllabic answer to any question she asked. He seemed painfully shy, but also passionate about brewing, so Tace hoped she’d be able to get him to open up eventually. She now knew the difference between a mashing tun and a whirlpool and between top- and bottom-fermented beers. Every time she went into a store or bar, she checked out the beer selections. She needed a catchy name for the brewery and for its individual beers, and she had excitedly talked to Joseph about making specialty brews for each season. He had seemed a bit frightened by her enthusiasm, but he was coming around. He’d been much more inclined to talk after she’d given him a paycheck—she presumed it was the first he’d seen in a long while.
Besides his salary and the cat’s food, Tace had splurged on fees for a lawyer. He was young and fairly inexperienced—meaning cheap—and he’d returned to Walla Walla where he’d done his undergraduate work. Tace’s ties to the college were getting too numerous for comfort, but Lawrence had been helpful and seemed delighted to be combining his love of beer with his legal career. He’d already helped by stopping her brilliant marketing plan of giving free kegs to the local frats. He’d turned pale and had lectured her for half an hour on liability issues. In the end, they’d agreed on deeply discounted kegs for local restaurants. Without a name, though, Tace couldn’t get a following.
She turned off the trimmer and wiped her forehead with the sleeve of her shirt. She’d cleared most of this side of the building, and her arms were aching with the echoing vibrations from the trimmer. She’d worked off some of her simmering desire for Berit and a little of her boiling anxiety about having such a famous scholar in her house and at her dinner table. She needed to get home and take a shower before Berit needed her again.
CHAPTER SIX
Berit roamed through the first floor of Tace’s house while she waited for her to return. The contractor had made quick work of the ramp, and Berit had rolled on and off the porch until her arms were sore. She’d lost some muscle tone during her recuperation after the surgery and she was anxious to get back to her pre-accident strength. She was eager to get back to everything pre-accident—her job, the excitement of discovery, and even the primitive lifestyle she often had to endure. She’d be happy to bring Tace’s bed with her when she moved on, though. The sheets had been worn and washed to cotton-ball softness and, even better, they smelled like Tace. Lavender and pine. Sweet, yet with a bite.
Berit went into the study she’d use while she was downstairs. She might not be on a dig in some far-off location, but she couldn’t stop her mind from searching for clues and recreating events. The den was clean, but there were swathes of fine dust on some of the shelves, as if Tace had wiped them down quickly after emptying them. The outline of books was still visible in some areas. Some pressed, dried leaves had fallen on the floor under a large pine table. A reader. A nature lover? She was impressed by how much Tace had gotten accomplished since her arrival last night. Berit had a ramp, an accessible room, and a clean study just waiting for the shipment of her books and other belongings to arrive. Tace must have cleaned out the room for Berit after she went to bed or before she got up. Berit had slept so soundly, Tace could have driven a pickup into the room to move her things, and she wouldn’t have noticed.
The kitchen and patio next. The pantry shelves were well-stocked with spices, and bunches of fresh herbs grew in a sunny window box on the back porch. The fridge was practically bare, though, with eggs, milk, and a few containers of takeout. Tace seemed to like the chemistry of cooking and flavor, but to have little time for actually making meals. She had beer. Several dark, unmarked bottles. Berit was tempted to sample one of the mysterious liquids, but she didn’t think Kim would appreciate her showing up at today’s reception with beer breath. Berit closed the fridge and moved into the living room where she continued to unearth details of Tace’s life.
Lots of magazines, all with subscription labels. Berit flipped through the eclectic pile. Biking, astronomy, and beer. The latter were well-worn and seemed to be favorites. Local periodicals and hiking guides. A shallow glass bowl by the front door with a name tag from Drake’s. Stacy, not Tace.
Berit eased herself off the chair and onto the sofa. She felt restless. She usually could occupy herself for hours sifting through the lives of alive or long-dead people, but she was having trouble reducing Tace to a handful of objects. She wanted to talk to her, ask her questions about her name and her job. Find out how to combine the clues she had discovered into one textured, whole person. Berit wasn’t used to feeling this way—usually she preferred a distance between her and her subjects of inquiry. Like a millennium or two.
She was going to go stir crazy here.
What would occupy her mind for the next academic year? Yes, she was fascinated by the hints of Tace’s character she’d found and she wanted to know more. Tace was clearly a homegrown woman. Her tastes seemed to emphasize what she could experience right here—the stars she could see, the trails she could hike or bike, and the produce she could find. How long would Berit be interested in the local flavor? So far what she’d seen in Walla Walla hadn’t been promising, Tace excepted. Her job would surely prove to be stupefying. Teaching first-year Greek students how to conjugate verbs and parse sentences? Crawling through Plato with the second years?
Berit sat up with a start when she heard a car pull in to the driveway. Tace. She shifted back into her chair and went out to greet her.
“Look,” she called as she came down the ramp to meet Tace on the pathway. She wasn’t sure why she was so glad to see Tace. She’d been alone all morning, but she usually relished her time by herself since she got far too little on digs. Maybe she had just gotten out of the habit of being on her own. That was an acceptable explanation for her response of being happier to see Tace than she wanted to admit. She was wearing dirty and grass-stained jeans, her cheeks were flushed, and her hair was slightly damp as if she’d been sweating. Berit couldn’t keep from staring. What had she been doing? Moonlighting as a gardener? Tace had the look of an earth goddess. Connected to the land, strong and physical. Berit could imagine her out on a dig, dirty and perspiring and excited over some new find.
“Are you supposed to go that fast?” Tace asked with a concerned look. “You might need your brakes checked so you don’t roll across the street before you can stop.”
“Going down is the fun part,” Berit said with a grin. “Getting back up on the porch is a killer. Are those my books?”
Tace was holding a box with a plastic Whitman bag on top. She pulled the bag off as if she wanted to hide it. “Yes, these are yours. You have quite the cult following on campus. I expect I’ll have paparazzi hiding in my bushes once they find out y
ou’re staying here.”
Berit was about to say that any new blood was probably welcome in this town, but she didn’t want Tace to feel insulted by any disparaging comments about her home. Instead, she gave a self-deprecating laugh. “Once they fall asleep to one of my lectures they’ll realize I’m just as dull as the other professors.”
“You’re anything but dull,” Tace said, with a hint of something—sadness?—in her voice. Berit tried to read her expression, but Tace got behind her and helped push her up the ramp.
“What time is your reception?”
“It starts at two. I should get ready for it, I suppose.”
Tace let go of the chair once she had crossed into the house. “I’ll take a quick shower and then we can go. Let me put these in the study for you.”
Berit went into the bedroom while Tace continued down the hall to the den with the box. She heard Tace going up the squeaky attic stairs as she rummaged through her bag and found a sheer ivory blouse made of crinkly, soft cotton that she’d bought in Thailand. A matching camisole underneath and a pair of brown cargo pants, and she was as dressed up as she could get. She never had to spend much time thinking about what to wear since she traveled with only a handful of outfits, all of which could survive being folded up in her duffel for weeks at a time without looking too wrinkled. She fastened a leather cord around her neck with a teal chrysocolla pendant hanging from it. A gift from her grandfather on her first trip to Greece with him, when she’d stood among the ruins of an old temple and found her true home.
Tace was waiting when she came into the living room, and Berit thought she saw a glimmer of appreciation on her face before she looked away.
“You look very nice,” Tace said, grabbing her keys and heading toward the door. “Ready to go?”
Berit was anything but ready. She was dreading the afternoon. Chatting with students she didn’t want to teach, being asked questions about the career she’d had to put on hold while she festered in this little college town. She wanted open air. Windblown dust and bone-melting heat. Hours spent crouched over a shard of pottery, sweeping away the dirt one layer at a time until she held a piece of history in her hand. Instead, she’d be spending the next nine months trapped in a classroom reciting Greek conjugations.
Berit inhaled the fresh scent of Tace’s lavender shampoo when she leaned close to help her into the passenger seat. She had washed away all traces of her morning work and was wearing a crisp blue shirt and black jeans. Her just-shampooed hair was slightly tousled and sexy, and Berit had to clasp her fingers on her lap to keep from touching it. She’d always been a tactile person, needing to feel and hold things to really understand them. The ancient world had become real to her when she was able to grasp its artifacts. She wanted to understand Tace the same way—to run fingers over and through her until she was completely known. Berit looked out the window at the rows of Craftsman houses they passed. She’d never felt this way about another person, this need to understand. She’d only felt the urge to truly connect with lives lived long ago, safely in the past.
Tace turned off Boyer Avenue and parked in the shade of a huge chestnut tree, a few doors down from the college president’s house. Students and faculty, singly and in small groups, were approaching from all directions and filing through the gate leading into the back garden. Berit sat and watched them while Tace got her wheelchair out of the Chrysler’s cavernous trunk. She didn’t move until Tace tapped on her window and startled her. She reluctantly opened the passenger door and eased her legs out of the car.
“You’ll be fine,” Tace said, apparently reading the misapprehension on Berit’s face. She’d hoped she had hidden it well, but it must be showing. She needed to get control before she faced the crowd of three-hundred-plus freshmen and at least another hundred professors who would be at the reception.
“They obviously see it as an honor that you’re here,” Tace continued. “You’ll be the star of the party.”
Berit sat in her chair and got as comfortable as she could. She had a sinking feeling Tace was correct, and she would get more attention today than she wanted. She was new and she’d written a few books that admittedly made her life seem more glamorous than it was—the finds she’d chronicled were as exciting as they sounded, but the books had glossed over the hours and years of painstaking work unearthing and cataloging non-spectacular, but still important, relics.
Tace pushed her chair a few feet toward the house, as if giving Berit a running start, but she didn’t make any move to continue the forward progress. Berit wasn’t about to admit her agoraphobia to Tace—she never told anyone about it—but she knew she couldn’t face so many people at one time, especially if they gathered around her. She felt the chest-tightening she’d experienced since childhood when faced with large groups of people in closed spaces. Hours spent in casinos, waiting just outside the line marking adults-only gambling areas from the sections where minors were allowed, while her mother played just one more quarter, honey.
“I’m not going,” Berit said, pushing on her right wheel and turning back toward the car.
Tace crouched beside her and held her gaze with those direct, clear eyes. “No one here will care about your injury or this chair. You’re gorgeous and famous, and they’re going to adore you. Apparently there are long wait lists for students hoping to take your classes. The girl in the bookstore was devastated because she couldn’t learn Greek from you. She said her life was ruined and she was going to drop out of college and become a hobo, riding the rails in despair.”
Berit had to laugh as Tace’s goofy story released some of her anxiety. She playfully pushed at Tace’s shoulder, and Tace pretended to lose her balance and staggered back a few steps. Berit didn’t care about her chair, although Tace seemed to think it was the reason she was hesitating.
“I’ll go in there with two conditions,” Berit said. “One, I will only stay an hour. And two, you have to come with me.”
“No way.” Tace’s expression lost all sign of humor.
“Come on,” Berit said. “You know I’m still having trouble maneuvering. What if I run over someone’s feet, like I did last night?”
“So I’d be there as your, what, valet?”
“Of course not,” Berit said. She was torn between her own need to have someone familiar by her side while she suffered through the hour among too many people and her desire to understand what was behind Tace’s reluctance. She could understand if Tace thought the reception would be boring, or if she didn’t want to be roped into taking care of Berit, but there seemed to be something more going on. Tace’s expression had completely shut down, and her arms were crossed tightly over her chest. Berit had never been as good at reading people as she was at deciphering relics, but she couldn’t help but see Tace’s discomfort.
“I just want you there as a friend,” Berit explained. “Someone familiar. I hate large groups of people. I’ve spent most of my life on digs in remote areas, with only a few other archaeologists around. But I don’t want to make you miserable, too. I’ll be okay.”
Tace looked at the people entering the garden and she visibly and audibly sighed. “One hour. You can have your tea with the president, and then I’m leaving.”
Berit’s relief didn’t last long. Tace helped her get through the gate and down a gravel path to the lush grass of the president’s backyard, but as soon as she was spotted, a wave of people descended on her. She was soon the center of a circle of admirers, even more uncomfortable than she’d expected because she was forced to look up at everyone, and Tace was jostled away from her. Someone handed her a cup and saucer and another person gave her a plate full of food she hadn’t picked out herself. She balanced the tea on one thigh and tried to remain polite while she answered questions about her books and responded to the numerous gushing comments about her classes from enthusiastic students.
“Yes, I’m looking forward to reading Pindar with you, too,” she lied. She wasn’t. To her, the daily implements of n
ormal human life told more about the past than words. She traveled the world, never staying in one place for long, to discover how other people—long ago—had set up their homes and strengthened their roots. She loved to study the connection between people and the place where they existed. She didn’t want to settle and forge such connections herself. She had to pretend she wanted to be here to teach, but she was itching to be well enough to leave.
“I’m excited about the Greek class, too. I’m sure you’ll enjoy studying the language.” Berit repeated words she had spoken just five minutes ago, but she was searching the throngs of people for Tace. She finally spotted her, standing in a corner of the lawn near a huge rhododendron and talking to a youngish male professor. He was animated and making sweeping gestures while he spoke, but Tace seemed to have shut down even more than she had been by the car. Her arms were crossed again, and her expression neutral, almost masklike. She was as still as he was volatile. Berit gripped her wheels to go to her rescue, to chase the guy away and tease Tace into laughter and expressiveness again.
“You still have the knack.”
Berit stopped and turned at the familiar voice and reached up to return Kim’s hug. Her arms barely fit around her pregnant friend’s waist. “The knack for what? You look superb, by the way. When are you due?”
“During winter break. That’s my plan, at least.” Kim pushed her wire-rimmed glasses higher on the bridge of her nose and then rubbed her belly. “God knows what this little guy has in mind. And I meant your ability to attract the prettiest woman in town. You’ve been here, what, one day? Or did you bring her to Washington with you?”