Read A Little Learning Online

Authors: Margot Early

Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #Contemporary

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BOOK: A Little Learning
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Exhaustion raced through Rory. She remembered many occasions in years past when
she’d
been the one recovering from a breakup, fired from her job or, most recently, dealing with the loss of a beloved pet. Desert
had
been there for her. Desert could be eminently reasonable. But Lola didn’t bring out her better side. Neither had being dumped by Jay Norris.

Yet now, Rory saw the disintegration of their dance troupe—not to mention the friendship between Samantha and Desert. All because of a Burmese python. Why had they ever let Desert acquire the snake? But Burmese pythons were cheap to buy—as cheap to buy as they were expensive to maintain. People in warmer parts of the country sometimes released them into the wild when they grew tired of their pets, where they decimated other populations. Indigo snakes, in the Everglades, for instance. Some localities had ordinances forbidding citizens from owning snakes over a particular length. Of course, there was no ordinance like that in Sultan.

Desert said, “Why don’t you just go now? Why don’t you just go sleep at the hot springs, like you obviously want to?”

The hot springs had a hostel, as well as rooms for rent, few of them occupied this time of year.

“Desert, if she goes, you and I can’t stay. We can’t deal with Lola alone, if she gets out of hand.”

“She’s eaten recently. She’s not going to do anything.”

Rory closed her eyes.
That’s not how it works.
Nobody knew what made a python decide to attack and constrict another creature. Sure, Lola wasn’t
likely
to do it...

“I’m not going to sleep somewhere else just because Lola’s loose,” Desert said. “Forget it. You’re being paranoid.”

Rory wasn’t sure what to do. All right, she and Desert would be safer together than either one of them would be alone.

“Are you evicting me?” Samantha asked, looking close to tears herself.

One thing was certain. Generous as Seamus’s invitation had been, there was no way that Rory was going to take refuge in his house. She would go stay at the hot springs with Samantha.

“Yes!” said Desert. “If you’re going to act this way about Lola.”

Rory said, “I’m going to bed. If you’re not coming in soon, please look in, will you?”

“I’m going to bed, too,” Desert answered. “Samantha can do what she wants.”

They all ended up in Desert’s bedroom, as they had for the past few nights, ever since Lola’s escape. Rory closed her eyes and wished fervently that Lola would turn up and that they could transport her immediately to Rocky Mountain Reptile Rescue in Denver. And that no one would get bitten or squeezed in the process.

The phone rang, and Desert took it from her bedside table. “Hello? What?
What?

The call was for her, and it wasn’t about the python. But it changed everything.

* * *

S
EAMUS
HAD
NEVER
YET
had trouble sleeping, not since he’d come to Sultan. Tonight was an exception. He’d come home to find both Caleb and Belle asleep. Lauren lay on her bed reading a novel in the room she shared with Belle. Lauren hadn’t mentioned their earlier argument and neither had Seamus.

We’ll just forget about it,
he told himself.

Yet tonight, he was the one who couldn’t forget. Even more, he couldn’t forget the images of Janine that had surfaced. He couldn’t quiet the recollection of her unending streams of conversation, always peppered with the latest in skier-surfer-snowboarder slang.

And then this totally sick avalanche runs at us...
Seamus tried to remember if she’d always been loud and tough-talking. He must have liked that characteristic once—but he couldn’t remember ever feeling that way.

She’d been a youngest child, the youngest of five girls. She’d feigned ignorance of everything remotely related to growing up
as
a girl. She’d never worn dresses and she’d always liked sports. She’d never wanted to own a horse; she’d never played with dolls. She had always, by her own admission, preferred male playmates to female.

As a grown woman, she’d devoted herself to teaching other women to defend themselves, physically as well as legally. Martial arts, of course. She’d been a black belt in aikido, and had an utter lack of humility in regard to her skills.

Seamus had known other men in Telluride who’d come very close to saying—to him, no less—that they didn’t care for Janine Jensen. He’d understood that certain men felt threatened by her strength and by her take-all-comers attitude.

Likewise, he’d known that there was something very sweet about her underneath it all.

For instance, her thing for teddy bears. She loved teddy bears—as a hobby, she’d sewn them. Not teddy bears with clothes, because the idea of teddy bears with clothes offended her sensibilities. At the same time, she avoided making Halloween costumes for the children; avoided being known as a woman who
could
sew.

Yes. I loved her.

Though how much he’d
liked
her, especially in the last year, especially after she’d bought the handgun, was another question.

Colorado’s full of people who have children and own guns,
Janine had said.
You keep the ammo in a separate place and you teach the kids firearms safety.

Not in Seamus’s opinion.

His opinion remained unchanged: Having guns and children in the same house was a recipe for tragedy.

And it wasn’t as if she was a law-enforcement officer, for instance, and
needed
a gun for work.

He’d asked her in what situation a handgun would help her against the men she believed to be threatening her. He’d asked why a black belt in aikido needed a handgun to defend herself.

Janine had given him answers, but Seamus had known that all her answers were simply rationalizations. She’d wanted a handgun because she’d wanted to be a woman who owned a handgun.

She’d learned to fly a plane, not because she loved flying, but because she wanted people to know that she
could
fly a plane.

More skills, more dangerous activities, more risks. And not because she loved the activities in themselves. No.

Because she wanted people to know all the things she could do.

What was it Lauren had said?
You wanted her to die? You were glad she died?

Not true.

What was true was that, though he couldn’t have stopped loving Janine, he had also come to despise her. At some point, he’d lost respect for her—and he hated that in himself.

He didn’t judge people that way. He didn’t look at a person’s accomplishments and
lose respect
for the individual. But Janine had become the enemy—the woman who’d brought a gun into his home. He’d begun to see her as unreasonable, then dangerous in her wrong-headedness, and finally pitiable.

None of those feelings had diminished with her death.

Tonight, what he’d avoided for more than three years had happened. One of his children had spoken admiringly of Janine and he’d been unable to stop himself from voicing his true feelings.

It would happen again, if he continued to spend time with them, and his children would grow to hate him for it. Lauren would, anyhow. And probably Beau.

His feelings weren’t going to change, they weren’t going away, and they hadn’t lessened with time.

* * *

“I
T

S
MY
MOTHER
.”
Desert looked stricken.

“What?” Samantha and Rory both moved from their sleeping bags and air mattresses to Desert’s bed.

“She has Alzheimer’s. My father wants me to come back to Florida.” To Boca Raton, where she’d grown up. “So that she can stay at home longer. He asked if I would help.”

Rory’s own reaction shamed her. A stab of jealousy. Desert’s father had asked for her.

Kurt Gorenzi hadn’t even spoken with Rory since she’d begun working with Seamus Lee’s family. He’d nodded to her in passing twice. Two times, and she remembered each occasion. She imagined a phone call from across the country.
Come home. I need you.

I would give anything,
she thought. And then she was ashamed of herself. Poor Desert. Having to watch her mother’s mental condition deteriorate.

“I’ve told him I’ll go. I didn’t tell him about Lola. I could take her with me, I suppose.”

Samantha’s expression said,
Great idea!

“We have to find her first,” Rory pointed out. But she could imagine the problems of taking apart this two-and-a-half-storey house in order to find a python.

“Would you two stay here and keep renting?” Desert asked. “Or maybe I should sell.”

“You don’t have to decide anything tonight,” Rory told her.

“Except how you’re going to find Lola,” Samantha replied.

An hour later, Rory was still thinking about Desert’s call to come home, to return to her father, an Orthodox rabbi, and her mother. The situation would be fraught with complications for her freedom-loving housemate. Tattoos, piercings, a shaved head—how would all of this go down in Boca Raton?

Yet Desert would have her family. Her family
wanted
her.

CHAPTER SIX

“I
F
L
OLA
ISN

T
FOUND
by Monday morning,” Desert said, “I’m going to have some construction guys come in and start taking things apart. There can’t be too many places warm enough for her to hide.” It was Friday evening, just before the start of the Sultan Winter Festival. Caldera’s hour-long performance would kick off a week of events. On Tuesday, Desert would leave to drive to Boca Raton, taking Lola with her in a glass vivarium. Lola would ride in the back of Desert’s Toyota Land Cruiser. Desert was putting her house on the market. Until it sold, Rory and Samantha would continue to live there.

“You’re sure, then,” Rory cautioned, “that you’ll want to stay in Florida. I mean, what if...” She didn’t want to finish her question. What if Desert still didn’t get along with her family, as she hadn’t growing up?

“If it doesn’t work out, I’m going to look for a place down in the Keys. There are some massage schools there I want to check out, and maybe I’ll look into learning acupuncture.”

“You’re really a free spirit,” Samantha murmured.

“You and Rory can keep performing together,” Desert pointed out. They were all in the living room of Desert’s house, using the big Victorian mirrors, with their ornate gilded frames, as they dressed and did their makeup. Rory and Samantha tied their hair back, severely adorning it with cowrie falls. They would soak their heads before the fire sets. All three young women pressed
bindi,
small false jewels, to their foreheads between their eyebrows in the position of the third eye. They applied eyeliner and dressed themselves with coin bras and heavy silver jewelry. The night’s performance would take place inside the Sultan Recreation Center—with firemen standing by.

Rory planned to pick up her grandmother and give her a ride to and from the performance. So when she was dressed, she set out in her car.

Rory loved to perform, loved the almost hypnotic pleasure of working with blazing poi, and loved the drama of tribal-fusion belly dance. She felt no nerves before these performances.

Now she pulled up outside the two-storey Victorian where she’d grown up. Before she’d even parked, the front door of the house was open. Rory left the engine running while she went up the sweeping concrete steps to the hillside house.

Sondra Nichols stepped out, dressed to the nines, all in white.

“You’re beautiful,” Rory told her.

“No. I’m old.
You
are beautiful. Your father told me you’re doing lovely things at the Sultan Mountain School.”

Rory’s heart soared. “He did?”

“Yes. I think his client’s very impressed by your way with his children.”

In spite of herself, Rory rolled her eyes. “The
client
should spend some time with those children.”

Sondra glanced at her once. “He doesn’t?”

“For a while, he seemed to want to be with them. But he has obviously recovered from that impulse. He’s not quite as bad with the younger two, but he treats the older ones like they have the plague.”
A bit like my father has always treated me,
she thought grimly. Something she and her grandmother had discussed through the years. “And, of course, they
long
for his attention.”

As if reading her mind, Sondra said, “I can imagine that wouldn’t win him any points with you. Any idea what the trouble is?”

“Not really. I assume he prefers grown-ups.”

“Do you think that’s how
your
father felt, Rory?”

“I think my father is angry at my mother—or at least he was when I was growing up. I think he didn’t want anything to do with me because of it.”

Sondra Nichols neither confirmed nor challenged this picture. In the car, she fastened her seat belt. “You look very like her, you know.”

Rory lifted her eyebrows. “Not from any photograph I’ve seen.”

“It’s subtle. It’s in your expressions and the way you laugh.”

They arrived at the recreation center, where their drummers were carrying equipment inside. Three men would be providing live drumming for part of their performance.

As Rory lugged her heaviest tote bag, she spotted Lauren and Beau approaching the rec center.

They waved, and Rory waited at the deck railing for them to reach her. Her grandmother lingered beside her, intrigued by the children.

“Can we watch you set up?” Lauren asked. “Hi, Mrs. Nichols,” she added.

Rory was impressed. It was a week since Lauren had met her grandmother.

“Hello, Lauren. It’s nice to see you again.”

“Of course, you can watch.” Normally, Rory would have discouraged other people hanging around while the troupe set up, but she liked these children. Maybe it was that she, like they, knew what it was to wish for a father’s love and attention. Maybe it was that she, like they, had no mother. Maybe it was that she kept wanting to
help
Lauren—Lauren, who was so impressed with her dead mother, who clearly missed her and wanted to be like her.

Though Rory had grown up motherless, she’d never felt a desire to be
like
her mother. Sometimes like her grandmother, yes, because her grandmother had such a love of life. But part of what troubled her about Lauren—
and
made her protective toward the girl—was her own certainty that the picture Lauren had of her mother was inaccurate. Rory’s own picture of the person described by Samantha and Seamus, as well as by Lauren and Beau, felt incomplete. Yet a part of that picture was of a type of woman—sort of brash, making “strength” a virtue, while true strength wasn’t necessarily the quality demonstrated. More like bravado.

Of course, she could be wrong.

She gave Beau the job of carrying the prepared fire staffs into the rec center. “Are Belle and Caleb going to be able to come and watch?” Rory asked.

“Fiona’s bringing them,” Beau said, sounding unenthusiastic.

Rory’s stomach dipped. Who was Fiona?

A girlfriend of Seamus’s, no doubt.

Which shouldn’t bother her at all. In fact, it should bother her so little that she definitely wouldn’t ask if Seamus himself would be coming to watch the performance.

Lauren’s expression mirrored her brother’s.

While Samantha cued a CD and Desert talked to the drummers and the firemen, double-checking safety procedures related to the fire performance, Rory watched her grandmother with Seamus’s two oldest children, both of whom seemed to enjoy talking with her. She was proud of Sondra, proud of the woman she was. Though she was older now, she remained attractive and fit and entirely capable of relating to teenagers. Never, in all Rory’s years of growing up with Sondra, had her grandmother
embarrassed
her.

Fiona, Rory decided, would be blond and gorgeous and expensively dressed—very Telluride. Undoubtedly, she’d be staying in Sultan with Seamus’s family for the remainder of their stay here.
Another excuse for him to ignore his own kids,
Rory thought bitterly.

Her father would be here tonight, but she didn’t kid herself that he would be coming to see her perform. This was a community event and he would be here to promote the interests of the town.

All the pleasure and excitement she’d felt earlier had begun to fade. She didn’t have to think about why, didn’t want to think
about why.

Fiona.

Fiona, who would be bringing Caleb and Belle.

Seamus might not even bother to come, and if he came she might feel worse. Seeing him with Fiona.

“Are you all right?” Samantha asked, as the three dancers waited in the kitchen of the community center.

Rory nodded, checking again to make sure that her hair and Samantha’s was completely soaked with water and that no stray tendrils were hanging loose.

Samantha cast her a penetrating look. “You like him, don’t you?”

“Who?” Rory asked.

Samantha smirked slightly, then turned away. Abruptly, she swung back. “I think he’s probably a pretty decent guy, Rory. Reading between the lines of the story Janine mapped out.”

“It doesn’t
matter,
” Rory hissed at her. “I just wish he liked spending time with his kids. And you didn’t hear me say that.” Then, she softened her tone. “But thank you for asking. Thanks for everything.” Impulsively, she hugged her friend.

Then, they heard the director of the local public radio station welcoming everyone to the festival. At this cue, they filed out into the hall carrying their fire staffs, and their drummer, Woody, lit the wicks, setting the staffs ablaze. The lights had been turned off, and now the fire staffs and glowing exit signs provided the only light in the room.

Rory no longer thought of Seamus Lee. There was no room for anything but the task at hand. Fire-dancing required complete concentration, and Caldera’s combinations of movement demanded perfect execution.

The first number went flawlessly.

While they doused the wicks in the back corridor and exchanged their staffs for poi, the percussionists beat a fast tattoo. The women filed back out, poi swinging in perfect time.

Rory began to feel the sheer pleasure of the performance. This sort of art, for her, was not about showing others what she could do, as much as it was the joy of working in sync with the other two dancers. Sometimes it seemed as if a tide connected them; as if her arms were guided by a force that also guided Desert’s and Samantha’s, so that all of them moved in perfect harmony.

This show marked the last time—at least the last time for a while—that Caldera would perform as a group.

But Rory couldn’t and didn’t think of this, either. She gave herself up to the fun of spinning poi.

When their fire-dancing segments were over, the applause was thunderous. Most of the audience was standing, anyhow, to watch, although some, including Rory’s grandmother, sat at tables along the walls and windows. Rory could see no one in the dark as she left the stage. The dancers doused the poi balls, and Rory and Samantha hurried to let down their hair.

When they returned to the stage, lights had been turned on and Rory saw Seamus. He stood against one wall beside her father, and both men had their eyes on the stage.

Rory allowed herself a small smile of greeting—to her father—and quickly looked for Caleb and Belle. She might as well see what Fiona looked like. But Caleb and Belle sat at a table on the opposite side of the room from Seamus. With them was an elderly woman with long gray-and-white hair in a single braid. She wore a flannel shirt and jeans and looked like a mountain woman.

So, Fiona was
not
a girlfriend.

But
why
wasn’t Seamus with his kids?

Lauren stood in the back of the room talking to the lift operator from the Sultan ski area. Bobby Briggs was about twenty-two, Rory thought. He’d served in the military and then returned to Sultan, where he’d grown up. He was very handsome, with the bones of a
GQ
model, and she was unsurprised that Lauren had been keen to talk with him.

Bobby was no fool. He wasn’t going to mess around with a girl Lauren’s age—supposing he’d wanted to, which was unlikely. But he did enjoy having a harem of admirers at the ski slope.

Where was Beau?

By himself. Standing near the windows with a black expression.

Oh, Seamus.

It was the last thought Rory could afford to give any of them. At the moment, she needed to focus on Desert. Rory echoed her friend’s movements, following through backward figure eights, taxim and clock floreos, and then Samantha followed Rory’s movements, and again Rory became connected to the tide of movement, in rhythm with her partners. Goddess arms behind veils, then the twirling aside of veils, a giant pinwheel of silk.

She would not look at Seamus Lee again.

* * *

“D
OES
IT
BOTHER
YOU
,
seeing your daughter doing that?” Seamus asked Kurt Gorenzi during a break.

Kurt’s stern expression didn’t change. “Which part?”

“Any of it. The fire. The costumes. Sensual dance.”

“It’s belly dance, not stripping,” Kurt answered tersely. “It’s an ancient art form and Rory says it’s a celebration of femininity. It’s people with their minds on one thing, who insist on interpreting it as something different. Rory and her friends are professional dancers.” He was silent. “Anyhow, I’ve not exactly set myself up to have a say in what she does with her life.”

“Do you regret that?”

Kurt slid his eyes sideways to look at Seamus but didn’t answer.

The music turned fast, and Seamus stood spellbound at the skill of the dancers, who could isolate each muscle, each bone. They were beautiful, all of them, and their skill at this tempo left him feeling like an idiot for suggesting to Kurt Gorenzi that the other man
ought
to have a problem with his daughter’s appearing on stage in a coin bra and flared black pants, her hair trailing beads and feathers and cowrie shells.

Seamus knew he was in trouble. It had happened without his awareness. He was captivated by Rory Gorenzi, spellbound and enchanted. He thought about her dozens of times every day.

His feelings were involved to an extent he’d not have believed possible. He couldn’t remember
ever
feeling this way about a woman.

Quite simply, he was
certain
that he wanted her to be a permanent part of his life, a permanent part of his children’s days and nights. He had found someone precious and already he knew that he didn’t want to lose her.

Yet she wasn’t his to lose, and she showed no sign of becoming so. In the past several days, she’d become more aloof, though she treated his kids as thoughtfully as ever. The fact that she cared about them couldn’t be plainer.

Nor could the fact that she had no time for him.

When Caldera’s performance ended, he wandered back into the lobby, to make sure she didn’t leave before he’d had a chance to speak with her.

“Dad!”

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