by Tory Cates
For the inescapable truth was, her life, her real life, was beginning again. The fairy-tale hiatus was coming to an end and with it her and Archer’s time together. That was the conclusion she’d reached during the long hours of struggle. She’d finally decided after hours of fighting the realization that she couldn’t use Archer as an emotional compass to keep her on course. She couldn’t hope to build any kind of relationship if she would be forever relying on him for her own psychic orientation. It was fundamentally unfair.
Meredith lost track of how long she wandered, lost in contemplation of what she had to do. When she glanced up again, a flock of balloons bobbed in the distance. Their tropically gaudy colors, once so enchanting, now failed to delight Meredith. Their vividness only served to highlight her somber mood. The bright promise they had once held now seemed a cruel mockery.
She was a fool to have ever believed that she could stay aloft in their high-flying company.
* * *
“I hope I didn’t wake you.” The call she’d prayed for last night and now dreaded came shortly after she returned to her apartment.
Meredith listened to Archer’s voice, memorizing every cherished inflection. “No,” she answered dully, “I’ve been up for quite a long time.”
“Are you all right?”
“I’m better.” She answered as truthfully as she could. “How about you? How are negotiations going?”
“Good. Getting a lot of problems ironed out. Listen, I’m going to have to get back to a meeting I ducked out of. I just couldn’t go another minute without hearing your voice. I don’t imagine that I’ll be through here until late. It’ll probably be close to midnight before I get in. I couldn’t possibly presume upon you to see me then, could I?” There was a laughing charm in his tone. “I mean, that would be unspeakably rude, wouldn’t it?”
The honey of Archer’s voice coaxed a wistful smile to Meredith’s lips. “No, Archer, it wouldn’t. I’ll be waiting for you.”
Archer’s heart was cartwheeling in his chest as he hung up. He looked out of the window of the Antonito mine headquarters. A wide open mesa rolled out farther than he could see. Planted smack in the middle of it was the conical thrust of Mount Taylor, a peak revered by the Indians of the area. He remembered all the questions that had boiled through him as a boy looking out at that sacred mountain. He felt now, for the first time, as if he understood the answers he’d found during that troubled time twenty years ago.
Those still-vivid memories collided with a remembrance of the fragile ivory body that had been unveiled to him and his blood warmed again. The fire she had ignited in his loins had mocked him almost continuously since that first day she’d walked into his office. How had he been able to sense the depths of tenderness and sensuality that had lurked beneath her professional primness? On a conscious level, he hadn’t known, but the woman she truly was had affected him at a depth he might never truly understand. He still had so much to learn about her. So much he wanted her to learn about him. She alone among all the women he’d ever known would understand about his past. About the discoveries he had made staring out at Mount Taylor. He wondered if there really was only one truly right person in the world for everyone. He couldn’t say, he was just thankful that he’d found Meredith.
* * *
Talking with Archer strengthened Meredith’s resolve. It had reminded her of the well of goodness within him. He deserved a woman who wouldn’t pump that reserve dry. Strong in the knowledge that she was doing the right thing, she was able to sit down and eat a meal for the first time in days. That most basic process also served to reinforce her decision.
Still, it was a decision that didn’t seem entirely real to her. The prospect of carrying it out loomed ahead of her like some dark and brooding mirage. She crawled into bed and, exhausted by the emotional upheaval she’d survived, fell asleep under the shadows that were rapidly solidifying into her future.
She was jolted awake many hours later. Her lids flew open, but she saw nothing, so strong were the tentacles of the nightmare gripping her. Rory, her brother, was sick, too weak to walk. She’d been pushing him in his wheelchair. Suddenly the path had begun sloping precariously. Try as she might, she couldn’t fight the precipitous slope. Her feet slid out from under her and the wheelchair was wrenched from her grasp. She ran—heart breaking, tears streaking her face—after the runaway wheelchair. It kept accelerating away from her, slowing down only in the instant before it toppled over the cliff at the end of the slope. In that moment, her brother, Rory, the smart one, the handsome one, the favorite one, had turned to her and smiled his golden smile.
A cavern of loss hollowed Meredith out, but she kept on running, still chasing after her brother, still trying to catch him in time. It was a familiar nightmare with a familiar end. With her dream legs windmilling wildly under her, she would always follow her brother to the end of the slope. Then, unable to stop, she would plummet over the cliff after him, jerking awake as she hurtled through empty, black space.
She awoke with a sense of impending doom that the dream had only heightened, not created. The loss she felt upon awaking was for Archer and for herself. Disoriented, she glanced at the clock. The digital numbers glowing in the dark read 9:53. She’d slept around the clock. It was late evening. Archer was coming.
Groggy as she was, she was still all too aware of the odious task that lay before her. For a few seconds she bridled at the unfairness of it all. Why couldn’t she have been allowed just a few more days of happiness? She even considered postponing the inevitable. But in her present state of mind, what would that prove? No, it was better to cut it off now.
A shower revived her somewhat. She slipped into a violet, cotton robe that made her eyes look almost lilac. As she dried her hair, she thought of Archer stroking it for the last time tonight. As she applied a touch of plum-colored gloss to her lips, she imagined Archer’s farewell kiss. Her sad reveries were interrupted by a forceful knock at her door.
“I managed to get away early,” Archer explained, sweeping her into his arms as she opened the door.
His kiss was molten silver that poured into her veins, melting her resolve. She knew she should turn from the oblivion offered by his lips, but she was trapped. She couldn’t bring herself to speak as his tongue made slow, dipping forays into her mouth, stealing the words that would separate them forever. She knew it was wrong, dishonorable, but she couldn’t vanquish the need she had for him. She surrendered to the wooziness that was pulling a blanketing fog over her. It drugged her anxious thoughts, stilling them with an all-forgetting sleep.
His hands slipped inside her robe like stealthy night visitors come to rob the castle. They stole her determination as they glided over the bounty of her breasts, plundering their aroused crests.
“Could it only have been one night since we were together?” Archer’s question was expelled on harsh, shortened gasps. “It feels like a month, a year, an eternity. All day I sat in meetings listening to my own voice, and the whole time I was imagining the feel of your breasts responding to my touch, growing firm and full beneath my hand, just the way they are now. It was agony. You’re like a fever in my blood, Meredith Julianna Tolliver. I would be staring at some labor leader’s face and all I could see was you.”
He smoothed the robe down, off her shoulders, gently pulling it away from first one, then the other breast. His hands tantalized each one in the teasing unveiling.
“I kept thinking of your face the other day, that first time you let me see you, all of you.” His voice was a rasp of arousal. He held her eyes, then satiated himself on the sight of her before unknotting her robe at the waist. His fingers trailed along the V of the robe’s opening, parting it ever wider and sliding it down ever lower until his hands met just above the fiery core of her passion. He brushed an intoxicating hand over that most sensitive area.
A moan, half of desperation, half of delight, escaped Meredith. Aided by Archer, she quickly freed him of his encumbering clothe
s. He halted their rapacious frenzy while he removed the deep purple robe from Meredith with the adoring slowness of a sculptor undraping his life’s masterwork.
“You’re more beautiful than anything I imagined today or anything I’d ever dreamed of before I saw you.” He continued the celebration of her body with a flurry of kisses that adored the delicate bones and hollows of her neck, the ivory column of her throat, the shell pink curves of her ear, the tips of her breasts. As he settled there his kisses intensified and he sucked at the roseate centers until the chasm deepening inside Meredith spasmed with the ache for fulfillment.
Swept now by the same maddening rhythm that was driving Meredith to grind her hips against Archer in an instinctive plea, he bent before her and trapped her writhing hips. A bolt of startled pleasure ripped through her as his hot mouth covered her and his finessing tongue sought out the folds within the delta of her womanhood.
Weakened by the power of the sensual assault, Meredith felt her knees buckling. Before she could collapse, Archer scooped her into his arms and she was wafted to her bed. She would not allow herself to think, to let the sadness that was building inside her like floodwaters behind a dam pour out. She switched off her mind and thought and spoke only with her hands. Hands that couldn’t resist reaching down to cradle the rigid expression of Archer’s straining desire.
He groaned at her touch, a primitive, abandoned sound that beat through Meredith, emboldening her and educating her emotions. She feathered kisses across his chest and down over the flat bands of muscle girding his stomach. Her lips skimmed along the arrow of crinkly hair, then stopped and parted to encompass Archer in the kiss that she had reserved for only him. He shuddered beneath her as her tongue darted along the root of his masculinity.
Meredith continued the bliss-filled torture until the tickle of near satisfaction shivered up Archer’s spine. He grasped Meredith by the shoulders, pulling her up to the sweat-dampened tendrils of his chest. They lay, pressed against one another in a fevered embrace, until the tickle subsided. Then he levered himself above her and she guided him toward the singing completion of all that had gone before.
As the storm of their passion subsided, Archer propped himself up on his elbows and looked into the face that haunted and transported him.
“I love you, Meredith.”
The words were simple, but they tied up all that was in his heart. They could spend the rest of their lives unknotting the bundle and exploring its contents. “It’s a relief to finally tell you. But you probably already knew.” A bouncing ebullience enlivened Archer’s tone. It was a relief to say the words that had been burning within him. He stared into Meredith’s face. Her expression withered his happiness. It searched his, groping for words. “What is it?” he demanded.
Meredith’s gaze flickered over the beloved contours of Archer’s face. This last act of love had been a mistake. It had been wrong to delay. Even when Archer slid onto his side, she could barely suck air into her lungs. Still, she forced herself to speak.
“It can’t be.” She pronounced the sentence with a dead finality.
“What? What can’t be?”
“Us.”
“Oh, no, you don’t.” Archer reared up on his arm, looming above her like an enraged Nordic god. “No, Meredith, we’ve worked through all that.” He shook his head, trying to turn back her words.
“No, Archer, we . . . I mean, I didn’t. You don’t, you won’t understand.”
“Give me a chance,” he ordered. His command felt lifeless on his tongue.
And Meredith tried, but all the words tangled in her throat. She wanted to tell him about her parents’ call, about Chad’s call, about not eating, about her fears, but the task suddenly exhausted her. The only words she could force out from between her lips were, “It just won’t work.”
Archer sat up. He was trembling and felt as if he’d just taken a punch to the gut. Maybe the old rule he’d lived by before he met Meredith was best after all: Never leave yourself open. He’d let his guard down and now he was paying for it.
So sure of herself and what she was doing only a moment before, Meredith now felt shaken and unsure. She waited for Archer to make the next move, to say something. She almost wished that he would continue arguing. That he would refuse to give up what they had together. Scared by his silence, she touched his back. He flinched. “What are you thinking?” she asked.
He filtered air in and out through his teeth for several deep breaths before he answered. “Meredith, I’m not the hero in some cheap novel who can ignore words like the ones you’ve just spoken. Life, my life at any rate, can’t be treated so lightly and I don’t want people in it who expect it to be that way. If this is what you want, I respect your decision. Just don’t call me, because I won’t be calling you and coming around pleading with you to change your mind. Don’t expect me to forget your words. I’m not a yo-yo and won’t be played like one.”
Something inside of Meredith crumbled at the chilling finality of Archer’s words. She reached a hand to turn him toward her. “Archer, I . . .” She never finished her sentence, never knew if she was about to beg him to forget everything she had said.
He pulled away from her and stood, his back to the bed. He shook his shoulders as if throwing off a chill, then straightened them. His spine seemed to stiffen into a rod of iron. Without turning, he left the room.
Suddenly, everything that had been so crisply black and white when she had come to her decision was now muddied and gray. Meredith heard the sound of him dressing, the rasp of his zipper, the whisper of his shirt being hastily pulled on. Then the most desolate sound imaginable reached her ears—the scrape of a door being shut forever. She rolled away from the silence that followed and faced the window where she had hung the stained glass balloon. Without light to dance through the pane, it simply hung there, a dull, lifeless bit of colored glass.
* * *
Archer fled down the stairs. He was glad for the cover of night, glad because it hid what he hadn’t allowed Meredith to see. What no human on earth would ever see or cause again. Before he stepped out into the cool darkness, he hastily wiped his sleeve across his face. The desert air quickly dried the tears smeared over his cheeks.
Chapter 11
Writing the profile on Archer made Meredith feel as if she were composing a eulogy to a lost love. Meredith sat slumped behind her laptop, desultorily pecking out a word at a time as she searched for a lead, for a way to start the story. She had less than a week before it was due at Enterprise magazine. That deadline loomed over her more threateningly and more impossibly with each second that ticked fruitlessly away.
Two weeks had passed since the night Archer had left, and still the pain was as raw as it had been when she’d heard the door closing behind him. In the first few days after he’d left, she’d hoped he might call. But the calls she received were from sources with more tales to tell of the wonderful Archer Hanson. The subject himself never phoned.
For another uncounted time, she wondered if Chad had been right. Had Archer been stringing her along? She thought of how he had lunged out of bed that last night without even turning to face her. Of how he hadn’t tried once to get back in touch with her. It was hard not to think that he might have been just slightly relieved when she called it off.
And why shouldn’t he have been, after he saw what an emotional cripple I am? she asked herself bitterly. She couldn’t blame him for not wanting to haul her emotional load for the rest of his life. She was pulled from her thoughts by the impatient humming of her laptop; it was as if the machine were reminding her that there was work to be done, a great deal of it, if she was going to meet her deadline.
She reread what she’d typed so far: “Big-time ballooning and high stakes entrepreneurship—it’s been a winning combination for New Mexico’s Archer Hanson. Except that Hanson has added a secret ingredient: the sun.” A spastic twitch kicked loose in her stomach.
She highlighted the paragraph and hit Delete—n
ot for the first time today. The lead was trite and had a forced peppiness to it that gagged her on a second reading.
She wasn’t putting everything she had into the profile. Some essential part of her was removed from the process, standing aside and wondering how Archer would react to the words she was typing. That, she realized, was not the way to write a good profile. She knew that a good journalist couldn’t afford to let herself consider her subject’s feelings. What she was doing, though, was far worse: She was dwelling obsessively on Archer. She couldn’t stop thinking about him.
Something had to be done or she’d muff her first and, if she blew this assignment, only chance at becoming the business writer Archer had announced to the nation she already was. Somehow she had to regain her objectivity. The route was clear once she’d mapped out a destination: She’d visit his uranium mine at Antonito. It was what any good journalist would have done to begin with. She would turn over the rock he had asked her to ignore and see what crawly things scurried out. If she couldn’t forget Archer, at least she might learn to remember him with disgust.
* * *
The drive out to Antonito was a straight shot west along Interstate 40, the famous strip of road once called Route 66. But Meredith barely noticed the scenery, so intent was she upon the images flickering across the screen of her mind. She replayed the events of their courtship again and again like a well-worn fairy tale she never tired of telling herself.
She started from the beginning, from the moment those icy blue eyes had turned on her like a splash of cold water from the North Sea. Then their second meeting, the glorious, incalculable chance of him owning Cloud Waltzer and of her becoming a part of his crew. She could still remember the metallic taste of fear in her mouth as she left the safety of earth on her first balloon flight. And how that bitter taste had turned to ambrosia.