Mayne Attraction: In The Spotlight (24 page)

With a deft mixture of polite questions and
intriguing commentaries he kept any threat of awkward silences
completely at bay while we enjoyed our time together. He asked me
about my friendship with Sam and my impressions of Trevor. I
explained the deep sense of gratitude and attachment I felt for my
best friend and the ways she had helped me to crack out of my shell
over the past few months. I also explained the love/hate nature of
my relationship with my ‘best-friend-in-law’, Trevor. It occurred
to me that perhaps Ash may have thought I had feelings for Trevor
at some point, and looking back at the big brother-like torture
he’d put me through on an almost daily basis, that notion was truly
laughable. When I questioned him about his own impressions,
especially of Trevor, his only comment was that he made a decent
spotting partner at the gym. He seemed unwilling or unable to give
me anything more than that. Then in a move to guide the
conversation elsewhere he directed the focus a little closer to
home as he began with a new line of thought about a different
intimate associate of mine.

“Hoyt seems like an agreeable step-father,”
he said. As I thought about the elegant truth of that observation
he continued, “You can’t imagine how jealous I used to be of him,
and your date nights,” he added, as a quiet laugh punctuated his
comment at the end.

I was pleased by this confession and
couldn’t help but smile as I nodded in agreement.

“He’s very agreeable; that’s a good
description. But you should know those date nights were horrible at
first. Hoyt’s not shy, well, not like me, but he’s a man of few
words and in the beginning we were like two monks observing a vow
of silence,” I informed him, chuckling softly at the memory. “He
tried harder after Grandpa died. We both did.”

I could feel a dark cloud of sadness
building on my mental horizon, threatening to dampen the sun-soaked
happiness. Taking a deep breath as if I could blow it away, I
refocused my thoughts on something funny and chuckled in an
exhale.

“What?” Ash was watching my face the entire
time and had seen the dip and turn in my thoughts.

“Hoyt and I had our first real breakthrough
when we realized how much we both hate Monica-style nutritional
imperialism.”

It took him a half-second to compute my
meaning, but then he smiled in understanding.

I continued, “She’s like a June Cleaver
version of Darth Vader, but she doesn’t strangle you with the
force. She uses logic, and sweetness, and worst of all: guilt! Ugh!
You know how the Emperor in Star Wars could use force lightning?
Well, I swear, she’s got some kind of invisible ‘guilt lightning.’
It knocks me on my butt every time,” I said, shaking my head and
rolling my eyes, feigning aggravation but then giving way to a
laugh.

He laughed indulgently. I wondered if he was
being sympathetic or empathetic. That would depend on his mother, I
supposed.

“But don’t get me wrong. I love my mom to
pieces—most all of the time. She’s very sweet and I would never
trade her, even for June Cleaver. But she definitely puts the
‘mother’ in ‘smother’ sometimes. I know it’s because she loves me,”
I finished with a sigh of resignation. Ash made no comment, and
though he was looking at me, his mind seemed distant, for the
moment. I kept talking anyway.

“Hoyt and I have an inside joke about how
freaked out she would be if I ran off and joined the Air Force some
day. That was his idea. I always thought of myself as more of a
Marine, but whatever.”

Ash laughed indulgently once again, though I
sensed a slight edge of wariness within it. I tried to reassure
him.

“Oh, don’t worry. It’ll never happen. I’m
pretty sure they won’t let me in. I’ve heard that they have
standards—or something,” I added in a slightly conspiratorial
tone.

He smiled and shook his head in simulated
disagreement.

“But I can totally picture my assignment.
I’d be the back-up light bulb changer at some frozen airstrip in
Alaska. Of course, in my fantasies I pilot a C5 Galaxy Transport,
because there’s nothing funnier than a really little person at the
controls of a really big piece of equipment, especially the kind
that flies, and especially a girl, right?”

“Exactly,” he replied, with an expression
that was a mixture of amusement and puzzlement.

“So you’d like to follow in your father’s
aviation footsteps, then?” he proposed.

Of all the times that Hoyt and I had joked
about it, the very notion of me behind the controls of aviation
equipment remained just that: a joke. Now in a fleeting instant I
could picture how proud my dad would have been if the scene I’d
just described was real and he was there to see it. Suddenly I
realized that my own joke had bitten me somewhere deep in my heart
and I was looking through that hole in my future that would never
be. Once again, the same cloud of tears threatened to block the sun
in my mind. Working to mask the self-inflicted damage, I sighed and
smiled at Ash, though I knew I’d accidentally let a little bit of
the pain I felt slip out in my expression. There was clearly a look
of regret in his eyes. I hurried to dispel it.

“Yeah. Maybe for pleasure, but not for a
career. That would be too hard on my mom, and I’m not quite that
evil,” I confessed. Then switching up and tossing it back I asked,
“So what do you fantasize about driving?”

He smiled enthusiastically, as happy as I
was to embrace the change in topics.

“Any vehicle, as long as you’re the
passenger. A bike will even do—if I can fit you safely on the
handle bars, that is,” he joked.

“Or in the basket, like Toto?” I joked
back.

He laughed with a slight edge of discomfort.
Then side-stepping the pet reference altogether he said, “Again, I
was quite jealous of you at the Kentucky Speedway. You got to live
one of my dreams that day: topping out in Corvette ZR1.”

“Oh. You saw that, huh?”

I felt a twinge of delayed
self-consciousness at the notion of observers in the stands, though
by that time I knew I had them. I must have been too nervous about
wrecking the sports car to think about who might be watching.

“Now tell me the truth. Were you afraid for
the car? I was,” I said very seriously.

He laughed like I’d told a great joke.

“That was awesome, but we didn’t top out. I
was watching the speedometer like a big baby and Lidia took it easy
on me. She’s very considerate.”

He didn’t respond but for split second it
looked like he wanted to disagree with me and then decided not
to.

So the strange discord between them that
night at my house was not my imagination after all. This intrigued
me to no end, but something in the back of my mind warned me to
steer clear of that path, for now. I chose a different dangerous
path instead.

“That’s twice you’ve mentioned it. Are you
by chance the jealous type?” I was going for playful ribbing, but
his response indicated he had interpreted my question as though it
were a serious accusation. His eyes darkened a shade and he looked
positively mortified. I felt instantly awful and angry with
myself.

He caught that too and now he was working to
dispel my discomfort, smiling big with a chagrined look in his
eyes.

“It would seem so. But Ellery, I … I hate
jealous behavior. It’s what tore my parents apart, and I swore I’d
never give in to it, no matter what the situation. Of course I
never expected to have anyone to be jealous over, and now I see I
was being a bit idealistic in my resolutions,” he said with an
apologetic looking smile.

There was a slightly uncomfortable silence
as I worked furiously to come up with a way to plug the hole I’d
just created with one of my signature idiot bomb questions.

“Am I even allowed to ask about your
parents?” I finally ventured, certain that it was just as dangerous
a topic but unable to come up with anything better.

“Allowed? You can always ask me anything,
Ellery. Always,” he replied, his eyes pushing so deeply into mine
that I couldn’t even blink.

Eventually he released me to look at a
bright red cardinal that landed on the rail just inches away from
us. When the beautiful little bird flitted away he began again.

“From what I understand, they were very
happy in the beginning. They met in college. She tutored him in
English and he tutored her in Chemistry. She was in nursing school
and he was studying to be an engineer. My mother was a very smart,
generous, and hard working young woman and exceptionally beautiful,
but with a very modest opinion of herself. My father tended to be
somewhat serious, but they say he absolutely adored her, perhaps to
a fault because over time he became consumed with jealousy. The
lack of trust and reasonableness on his part eventually drove her
away,” he sighed. “They divorced when I was eight. I lived with her
until she died in a car accident when I was ten—”

He paused and closed his eyes, just for a
second, but in that second I felt the pain and emotion and the
presence of the same kind of mental storm cloud that loomed in my
own mind. I rubbed his arm in reassurance and his eyes instantly
met mine, a mixture of sadness and embarrassment there.

“Anyway, I don’t mean to be so serious and
dark. It’s just that jealousy happens to be one of those emotions I
try to keep in check, and I wanted you to understand why,” he
smiled at the end, sounding very final regarding this line of
conversation.

It was bad timing and very inappropriate but
I had to laugh at the thought of anyone—especially the poster-child
of handsomeness by my side—ever experiencing anything remotely
related to jealousy in connection with me. Ash looked puzzled by my
outburst, and slightly hurt.

“I’m sorry. It’s just that between the two
of us it seems more likely that I would be the one to struggle with
feelings of jealousy and suspiciousness. I mean, have you looked in
a mirror—ever?” I was trying to hold down the sarcasm but it was
slipping through in chunks.

“Have you?” he replied with raised eyebrows
and a lopsided smile.

“Alright. Fair enough. I hereby declare our
association to be jealousy-free. And that will conclude this week’s
meeting of the Mutual Admiration Society.”

He chuckled and nodded, patting my arm now
and looking away at the waterfall again.

I didn’t want him to think I was fishing for
compliments so I tried my hand at conversation control and switched
topics, though it was more abrupt and less sophisticated than I
would have preferred.

“New topic. Did the realtor help you set
this up?” I asked motioning toward the table and picnic basket.

I was extremely curious about his handiwork
for this occasion so I decided to ask him about the extent of his
contribution. It occurred to me that if Martha Stewart wasn’t
available, Leah Shelby would make a worthy stand in.

He looked surprised, but then smiled with
only the barest trace of chagrin flitting across his
expression.

“Yes, as a matter of fact she did. But the
more questions you ask about her involvement, the less impressed
you’ll be with me,” he said with a half smile.

“Well as long as this was your idea, you get
full credit…for all of it. Thank you for all the trouble. It was
absolutely amazing—just like you.”

I was back to flirting. He didn’t respond
with words, but the look in his eyes was the best thing I’d seen
all day. It was pure limerence (the powerful exhilarating rush of
falling in love) and I knew it was perfectly mirrored in my own
eyes.

Eventually my insecure side resurfaced and I
got back to asking questions to which I didn’t really want to hear
the answers.

“When you were here the first time, were you
house-hunting?”

I tried to seem casual, as opposed to
pathetic and desperate.

“Yes. And though this is phenomenal,” he
paused as he waved at the waterfall, “there were several factors
that knocked it out of contention.”

It seemed like he was going to leave it at
that until he saw the expectant look on my face, expecting to hear
those factors.

“Well, the layout of this house is very
strange. I’ll walk you through it before we go and you’ll see what
I mean. It looks like the person who had it built designed
everything around his artwork. I understand he was a painter. So
unless you’d be willing to do some water colors for me—very large
ones—I think it would be awkward at best to try to fit a normal
décor into this space.”

He’d been looking back at the house while he
spoke, peering in through the windows. Now he turned to face
me.

“But the most important factor was distance.
It’s much too far away from you. Everything was. So I gave up
looking after a while. I’m glad I did. I like where I live now, and
I’m especially fond of one of my neighbors.”

He said that last part with a jillion dollar
smile, while squeezing my hand slightly. I nearly passed out with
pleasure from the multiple forces acting on my senses and my
heart.

After I recovered from my close call with a
pleasure pass-out I said, “I haven’t seen Leah since last summer.
It sounds like you’ve had more interactions with her than I have in
the last twelve months. She’s my mom’s cousin,” I explained.

His eyebrows raised and then crinkled
together in a bit of a smirk and he asked, “Wouldn’t that make her
your cousin as well?”

I laughed once and agreed.

“Yeah, I guess so—second or third removed or
something like that. She’s my mom’s age, so if anything, she seems
more like an aunt. Leah’s the relative who gets things done in our
family. If I ever got married, she’d be the wedding planner and
tell us all how it was going to go, and my mom would roll over and
let her because she’s always right.”

And then I waved my hand at the table and
the picnic basket making my point with an example.