Crazy for You (19 page)

“Was she your first?”

Andrew felt the right corner of her mouth
draw up in a sly grin. “My first what?” he teased.

Tasha slanted her body closer to him.
“Lover,” she whispered in a low devil-may-care voice.

He leaned in even closer, his lips barely
centimeters from her lips. Her eyes fluttered as he neared and he
peered into them. “Perhaps...perhaps not.”

Tasha slowly retreated. Dragging her left
hand up from her side, she combed all five fingers through her damp
hair and flipped it out and over the plank decking in a nonchalant
manner. Then slowly, she turned her gaze back to him.

“But you didn’t get married.” It was a
statement, not a question.

Andrew shook his head and looked to the short
expanse of wood between them. Reaching out, he traced the weathered
grain in the plank with his forefinger, the backs of his knuckles
grazing her abdomen, then shifted his body to look her more fully
in the face. “No,” he said quietly. “She died two weeks before the
wedding.”

Tasha’s eyes grew wide and dark with concern
and compassion. She reached out and touched his forearm. “I’m
sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”

“No,” he shook his head and looked again to
the dock. “It’s all right. I’m okay. It was tough at the time, but
I’m okay.” When he brought his gaze back to her face, she saw that
it was true. He was okay.

“Tell me about her.” The teasing quality of
her voice was gone.

Andrew angled a questioning glance her way.
“Why?”

Shrugging her left shoulder, a shy grin
splayed across her face. “I’d like to know about her. Unless it
makes you uncomfortable.”

“No,” he interrupted. “It doesn’t make me
uncomfortable.”

“Okay.”

Shifting for a more comfortable position,
Andrew settled in for the long haul. If he could, he’d make it as
short and sweet as possible. It had been three years, but the ache
was still there, however minute, it was still there.

“Diana was petite and blonde with blue
eyes.”

“Just like you. I mean the blue eyes part,”
she chuckled.

Smiling, Andrew nodded. “Yes, I guess so. She
was a teacher, elementary school. Grew up in Seattle. In fact, I
knew her most of my life.”

“High school sweethearts?” Tasha interjected.
When he looked at her, he knew she already knew the answer.

“Yes, but we went to separate universities,
started our careers, and then decided to get married.”

Tasha snorted. “Just like good little yuppies
should.” She regretted the statement as soon as it was out of her
mouth. “Sorry, that was uncalled for.”

Andrew was unsure what the tone of her voice
meant in that last remark. “We did what we thought was right.
Sometimes, I wish we’d eloped right after high school. At least
that way we would have had some time together. As it stands, we
never had a chance to build our lives together.”

Tasha stared over Andrew’s left shoulder. Off
in the distance, she could see cotton-candy clouds floating in the
breeze. A perfect day, she thought. Not a care in the world. Such a
tragedy he had suffered. Surely it couldn’t have happened on a day
like this, could it? This beautiful world couldn’t bring a tragedy
such as that? How could life hand out such travesties?

“How did she die?” She still averted his
eyes.

“By the hands of a seventeen-year-old kid who
thought he could do seventy in a residential area and could ignore
four-way stops. It was a stupid, idiotic act that snuffed out both
their lives. I was devastated. So was my family and hers. Then
there was the kid’s folks...they were pitiful. Their only child. It
was insane.”

“Andrew,” Tasha reached out again and touched
his arm. “I’m so sorry.”

He ignored her touch and stared off into the
blue sky. Right now, the thrashing emotions within him bounced back
and forth from the pain of remembrance to the reality of his desire
for Tasha. Confusing, racing emotions were reining out of control
within. He focused then on one thing. The only thing he could grasp
at the moment. His memories. For some reason, he needed to play the
scenario all the way through.

“She was so much like me,” he whispered, the
words barely falling on her ears. “She was perfect for me. We’d
planned everything. The house we would build. How many kids we
would have. Their names. Everything. And it was all taken away so
damn quick.” He closed his eyes at the pain.

“Children. You had planned children?”

Turning back to her, his eyes met hers and
held. Children...how would Tasha be with children? He chuckled
inwardly, the only way he could erase the pain. He could just
picture her children in his mind. Long-haired children, thin and
tan and healthy, eating raw carrots and granola for snacks,
learning how to be environmentally safe while trying to save the
ozone—all the while strumming their guitars and humming Kum Bah
Yah. And Tasha would be there right beside them, happy and healthy
and loving every minute of it.

She would be a wonderful mother.

“Yes,” his eyes still held fast to hers. “We
thought a lot about children. Of course, Diana always said she
would stay home with them during the early years, then she’d go
back to teaching.”

“Of course,” Tasha whispered. “That’s
important.”

“And she’d read to them and prepare them for
school.”

“Uh-huh. I can just imagine.” Tasha now
stared off again, over his shoulder. Andrew would have given a
hundred-dollar bill for her thoughts right now if he could.

“...and run them to ballet and music lessons
and ball practice,” he continued.

“...and feed the dog and bake cookies and
paint the picket fence too,” she barely murmured.

Andrew reached out to touch her chin,
bringing her gaze back even with his then as he took in the
strained quality of her voice.

“Yes,” she said as she looked into his eyes.
It was as if she was trying not to tremble at his touch, trying not
to show that the thought of his and Diana’s mythical children
disturbed her. He could tell that it had. “I’ll bet she was perfect
for you.”

“She was.” He dipped his head into a
questioning half-nod, his finger still lingering on her chin.

“Not like me,” Tasha supplied
half-heartedly.

“Diana was nothing like you.”

“Oh,” she lowered her gaze to the space
between them.

But I don’t want you to be, he wanted to say
to her, but didn’t. I don’t want you to be Diana. The words
wouldn’t come. Not yet. “Somehow I can’t see you whitewashing the
picket fence.”

Tasha tensed. “No. Probably not. Nary a
picket fence in my future.”

****

The thing is, she told herself, I might
actually, someday, want that picket fence. More than I realize. But
Tasha knew right then and there that she’d never tell him that.
Fingers of panic skittered across her abdomen.

She looked at him. “So, you don’t think I’m
the picket fence type?”

Andrew smiled a crooked smile and Tasha
wasn’t sure he knew how to respond. “I—I’m not sure.”

She didn’t want to hear any more about picket
fences or former lovers. She didn’t want to think any more about
what she did or did not want Andrew to know about her. This was
getting complicated. And she didn’t quite know why, but it made her
damned uncomfortable to think that Andrew thought she wouldn’t fit
in the picket fence world.

Well, she guessed he was probably right.
There was no use fighting it.

Abruptly, Tasha rolled over onto her back,
breaking free of his touch on her chin. Feigning indifference to
the whole previous conversation, she lay there for a few moments,
breathing evenly and deeply, hoping to convince Andrew that she’d
gone to sleep.

Hoping to communicate to him that she wished
she’d never asked him about being in love.

****

Watching her lay there, Andrew noticed the
change in the atmosphere around them. It was interesting that their
nudity hadn’t interfered in their discussion, or how they
communicated. It was just sort of…natural, their being there like
that, he thought.

Tasha’s facial features, at first tight and
tense, slowly relaxed as she breathed evenly in and out. Finally,
it seemed she’d wrestled whatever demon lay within her and had
reached some sort of conclusion. He only wished he could do the
same.

The notion that Diana was so much like
himself bothered her. He knew why. Why he didn’t tell her he
understood, he didn’t know. But he knew. She was frightened,
frightened to think that their differences—his and Tasha’s—would
not a couple make. And the more he thought about it, the more he
also knew how much of a kink that could throw into their
relationship. With Diana, he knew exactly how his life would be
laid out. With Tasha, he’d be lucky to predict what would occur
within minutes. Daisies and onions. It would never work. And she
knew it. So did he.

“What about you?” Andrew watched her eyelids
flutter open.

“What about me?”

“Have you ever been truly in love?”

Her eyes closed. “No,” she whispered.

The afternoon held the silence around them
like a saturated sponge. Andrew watched her face. It grew tense,
then after a while, relaxed. There was something more she wasn’t
telling him. He waited.

“There is a man back home in Colorado. His
name is Mark Tyler. I left him standing at the altar a little over
a month ago.” She sat up then and turned toward him, propping her
head on her bent elbow. “But I’m sure you don’t want to hear about
that.”

“I want to hear about anything you want to
tell me.” Andrew watched her face, realizing how important it was
that she share this with him.

She lowered her gaze to the deck. “Mark and I
grew up together. We’ve been really great friends, best friends, I
guess you could say, since first grade. He’s always been there for
me. He always was there. About a year ago, he started telling me
that he loved me, that he wanted to marry me. At first I resisted,
then I thought why not?” She looked into Andrew’s eyes.

“I love Mark, but it’s not the type of love I
should have for a husband. I knew that, but I agreed to marry him.
I wanted to make him happy. I thought I would be happy. Finally, I
realized that all I was succeeding in doing was making us both
miserable. Actually, I’d pretty much done that all our lives
together. He’d always loved me. I’d always broken his heart. And
somehow, he always came back for more.”

Tasha shifted against the deck and heaved a
big sigh. Andrew watched her gaze drift off over his shoulder. He
simply waited, and listened.

“He’s such a good man, I don’t even deserve
his friendship.”

“Don’t say that.”

Her gaze shifted to meet his eyes. “I’m a
pretty all-around rotten person, haven’t you realized that yet? And
I’m beginning to think that the only place I belong is in the
apartment above my shop in that little rinky-dink mountain town
where everybody understands me. That is, except for Mark, of
course. Right about now he doesn’t understand me at all.”

Andrew reached out and touched her shoulder.
“Why do you beat yourself up so? There’s nothing wrong with you,
Tasha,” he returned softly. “You’ve never been in love, so what? I
think you were right for not going ahead with your marriage to
Mark. You both would have been miserable. You’ve learned from your
mistakes and you’ve grown from them.”

“Have I? I’m not sure if I’ve grown at all
from this thing with Mark—or from life at all for that matter. In
fact, I haven’t spoken to him in since the day I called off our
plans. I’ve been acting like a spoiled little girl. When I was
moping around in a blue funk for a month at my shop, that’s when my
mother gave me this trip. To get me out of the house and to stop
wallowing in my misfortune. I thought that I could get my head
together to go back and face him. But now...” she let her gaze play
over his face, “now I think I’m more confused than ever.”

“About loving him?”

Tasha quickly shook her head. “No. Not that.
I’ve always known I didn’t love him the way I should to marry him.
I know I have to talk to him when I get back. I’m just confused
about...other things. Feelings.”

Andrew held her gaze for another brief
moment. He touched his fingertips to the back of her cheek. “I
know,” he whispered. “I kind of feel that way myself.”

Twenty-seven

The Lake

Shedding the outer trappings

“Isn’t this wonderful?” Tasha queried of
Andrew a bit later. He glanced at her, leaning back on the dock
looking up into the sky. They both had sat silent for the past
several minutes.

It was as if she’d finally come to terms with
what was at hand, and was willing to leave it alone. He was glad
they’d both cleared the obstacles of their past. All that remained
were the obstacles of the future. Somehow, he thought those might
not be quite as easy to break down. Tasha knew what she needed to
do concerning Mark, that was apparent. And they both knew they were
going to have to come to terms with what was happening between
themselves.

“What?” His glance at her willed her to look
at him. She did.

“This...finally we’re free.” Eyes closed, she
tossed her head back, her hair cascading down her back to the dock,
arching her neck as if paying homage to the sun. “We’ve shed the
trappings of our society, Andrew. We’re at one with nature. We
don’t need our clothing. All we need is our bodies, ourselves. It’s
just like how Samuel said it would be.”

Andrew tipped his head closer to her, taking
in the relaxed expression on her face. He liked it better. The old
Tasha was back. And his libido was churning into action as his gaze
played over the smooth arch of her neck. “Yes,” he supplied
seductively. “I wholeheartedly agree...”