The Ranch She Left Behind (28 page)

She shivered, but she let him go on.

“You could get to the point you almost hoped for one of them to come, because they brought a flashlight. It was almost worth it, just to remember where the walls were, and where the ceiling was. It can give you a strange sort of vertigo, having no way to be sure you still know which way is up, which way is down.”

“But couldn’t you feel your way to the walls? Couldn’t you at least touch the floor?”

“No.” His eyes clouded slightly. She had to fight the urge to put her hand on his heart again, like a stethoscope, just to be sure. “No. There were chains that were attached to the ceiling. In the middle of the room. I’m sure you’ve seen it in movies. I had. I just didn’t understand that things like that weren’t just film props. That they existed in the real world, too. And that real people—normal, everyday people—could find themselves hanging from them, in rooms like that.”

She was going to cry. She fought it hard, knowing how absurd and pointless and just plain
not helpful
her tears would be. But she couldn’t stop them. They hung at the bottom of her eyes, stinging, for several seconds. And then they spilled over, down her cheeks and onto his bare, taut belly.

There was more. Of course there was more. The men would have been angry, frustrated that their requests for money were being thwarted. There would have been beatings, punishments… Maybe no food, no water, no time out of chains to let the blood return to his hands…

“You don’t have to stop telling me the details,” she said. “I’m crying because I’m angry, not because I’m frightened. I’m crying because I want to kill them, and I can’t.”

He smiled, and he put his hand against her cheek. “I knew you were fierce, under all that little-girl exterior.”

“I can be,” she said. “If anyone hurts the people I care about…”

She stopped, realizing that she’d probably said more than she should.

But he didn’t seem alarmed by it. He moved his thumb softly behind her ear, and the sensuality of that small motion was oddly distracting.

“I’ll tell you anything you want to know, Penny. But I hope we won’t have to waste tonight talking about Mexico. The truth is, I don’t care very much about all that right now. For the first time since it happened, that basement seems a million miles away and a million years ago.”

She found that hard to believe. How could anyone be strong enough to put such a thing behind them?

“There are just a few hours left of this night.” He reached down, put his hands under her arms and raised her up where he could look straight into her eyes. “Let me use them doing something beautiful, instead of reliving something ugly.”

She nodded. In this position, she could tell that his desire had never abated. He was as firm and ready as he had been since waking.

She flicked the sheet back, baring his body to the dimly lit room, so that the fading storm could shimmer on every magnificent inch of him. She moved her legs so that she straddled him. He groaned softly and slid down, so that they no longer touched hip to hip, but so that she knelt just below that beautiful chin she’d spent so long trying to understand.

He lifted her nightgown and pulled it over her head. Then he put his palms on her bottom and tilted her forward. He smiled and murmured softly, and she realized they were so close she could feel his breath touch her most tender places.

“Max.” She tried to lean over and reach the nightstand. “We can make love safely,” she said. “I have condoms.”

She started to explain why she had them—because after what happened to her mother she would never, ever risk having unprotected sex. But she didn’t bother, partly because she knew he didn’t really care, and partly because she was having trouble breathing, which meant that forming words was difficult.

“Good,” he said, but he didn’t let her reach the drawer. He brought her back to his lips and then pressed in with his palms, so that she rocked forward and met his mouth. She felt his tongue move into her, and she cried out as different parts of her body simultaneously liquefied, stiffened…and caught fire.

“Condoms are nice,” he murmured as he used his palms, and his tongue, and his lips, to guide her into a subtle, torturous rocking motion that made her want to scream for more.

“But I’m afraid we won’t be needing them for a long, long time.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

W
HEN
P
ENNY
WOKE
, the sunlight was as bright as a mountain of diamonds. Oh—how late was it? She started to check the bedside clock…then remembered it had toppled off the nightstand hours and hours ago.

And with that, the memories flooded in, hitting her with a heat that was almost physical. Her body flushed and tingled, and she became aware that, under her light covering of sheet, she was completely naked.

She was also alone.

“Max?” She got no response. She lay completely still for a few seconds, listening, trying to discern whether there was any movement in the house—the shower, or the faucet, or even the light sound of a bare, male foot across her hardwood floors.

But the house was silent. The sunlight streamed across the bed in brilliant white bands, spotlighting the empty place, rumpled sheets and cockeyed pillow where Max had been…but was no longer.

The night was over.

She sat up, clutching the sheet to her breastbone with both hands, and shivered slightly, her body remembering. She wondered, numbly, whether it would ever forget.

No. She shook off the melancholy that hovered around the edges of her heart. She wasn’t going to be sad already.

She had known what she was doing. She’d understood that they had plucked last night out of real life, the way you might pluck a diamond from the walls of a mine. It was beautiful, and it was a joy—and while it might have been forged by extreme pressures deep in that gritty earth, it could never be fully integrated back into the rock and soil from which it came. It would always be a thing apart.

But for those delicious, life-altering hours, she had held the diamond in her heart, and she planned to hold its afterglow as long as she possibly could.

She swiveled, tossing the sheet aside and putting her feet on the floor. Now that she faced the nightstand, she saw that the clock had been restored to its regular position. It stood on her sketch pad, which was open—to a sketch that she could tell in an instant wasn’t her own.

She slid the clock aside and pulled out the sketch pad. She held her breath without knowing why, as she realized the drawing was of Penny, herself.

In the sketch, she lay asleep. The perspective was tricky, but effective. She must have been lying on her left side, but at some point had tilted three-quarters of the way toward her back and had thrown her arm over her head. Her face was turned toward her elbow, so that it was drawn mostly in profile. The sheet covered her, but had slipped a little, exposing one breast—represented in the sketch by little more than a curve, a point of darkness in the center and a shadow beneath.

The picture was breathtaking. No one had ever sketched her before. She hadn’t known anyone who liked art enough to bother. But she should have known Max had talent. Ellen’s own abilities must have come from somewhere, and an architect would have been trained….

Even so, the sketch moved her, almost to tears. The woman here was far, far more beautiful than Penny could ever hope to be. She was both vulnerable and strong, both tender and erotic. Her deep peace and physical ease told anyone who looked that she had been deeply, repeatedly satisfied by the lover who watched her sleep.

She pressed the sketchbook up against her chest, feeling her heart throb slowly against the paper. It might be only a goodbye. A thank-you, not for the sex, but for the comfort and the kindness.

Only a goodbye. But, as goodbyes went, this one was fairly wonderful.

Suddenly she heard a knocking—as startling as a gunshot. It was someone rapping on the front door.

Her first, leaping instinct said…Max!

But then her gaze snagged on the clock. Eleven-thirty already? And suddenly her heart stopped. It wasn’t Max. It was her first student. Arriving for the first art class of Penny’s much-anticipated new career.

Yesterday, seventy-year-old Margaret Johnson’s watercolor lesson had loomed large—the first step in establishing Penny as a full-time working and teaching artist. Today, that milestone had been eclipsed by a few pencil scribbles on a nine-by-twelve piece of two-hundred-and-twenty-gram white paper.

Perspective.
It really all came down to perspective, didn’t it? She looked once more at the picture before closing the book and dashing toward her closet to find something suitable to throw on.

Not just in art, but all of life. And falling in love, as she’d been foolish enough—and lucky enough—to do in Max’s arms last night, had changed her perspective forever.

* * *

E
LLEN
COULDN’T
SEEM
to hang on to a mood these days. She could feel happy one minute, and then the least little thing could make her really mad, or sad. Alec told her it was her hormones, but she didn’t think he was any kind of expert on moods. And besides, she didn’t like the idea of “hormones.” It made her sound as if she wasn’t even a real person, but just a collection of chemicals, like a science experiment.

She had been extra happy last night, when she was sleeping over at Bell River. She’d been able to forget all about Dad, and their fight.

At home, everything he said seemed to play, over and over, through her head, until she wanted to scream at it to stop. It had to stop, because every time she heard it she felt herself getting closer to believing him.

But believing him would mean believing her mother had lied to her. And she would never do that.

But here at Bell River, the memories went away. Everything had been just as awesome as they promised—maybe even more awesome. Great food, fun games, lots of art projects and sing-alongs. All the kids were nice to her, even.

It had been perfect timing, because tomorrow was the one-year anniversary of her mom’s death, and she definitely needed something to distract her.

Plus, school started Monday, and that was beyond awful. She said so aloud to Alec. It was the easiest part to talk about. She didn’t want to mention her mom.

“Why is school awful?” Alec paused and turned around with a curious look on his face. He was about five feet ahead of her on the grass, leading the way to see some baby kittens that had been born out behind Mr. Harper’s house. “Are you sure you’re not just cranky?”

“I’m not cranky.”

Alec just rolled his eyes and started walking again. He knew she was mad because she’d been invited to stay for the afternoon and even dinner, but Dad had said no. He said he had to come get her right now, but then when he got here Bree invited them to come see Mr. Harper’s new foal, which had just been born last night. And of course he said yes. He wasn’t really in all that much of a hurry to get home, was he? Not when there was something
he
wanted to see.

And then, when they got out to the Harper place, out on the west side of Bell River, Penny had showed up, too. That should have been nice, but it wasn’t, not this time. For some reason, Penny was the center of everyone’s attention today.

Ellen had wanted her dad to notice that she was still angry with him, still refusing to speak to him or show him the pictures she’d drawn at the camp-in.

But with Penny here, he didn’t even seem to be aware that Ellen was giving him the cold shoulder. He didn’t try to draw her out, or make nice so that she’d forgive him. He just kept looking at Penny.

Ellen noticed these things. No matter where Penny went, or who she was talking to, Dad’s eyes followed her.

Ellen felt jealous, even though she knew that was stupid. She didn’t want Dad and Penny to be good friends. She wasn’t sure why.

No, she was sure. It was an embarrassing reason. She had a terrible feeling that they would like each other better than either of them liked her.

Alec yanked a few leaves off a low-hanging branch as he went by and began ripping them apart just for fun. “So, seriously. What’s wrong with school starting?”

“I don’t know.” Ellen pushed away the swaying branches that almost hit her face. “I guess so far I’ve been able to pretend I’m on vacation or something. But starting school—that makes it real. It’s like I really
live
here.”

Alec turned again. “So? It’s awesome here.”

“Not if you’re used to Chicago.”

“Well, I think I’d
hate
Chicago.”

“That’s because you’re not used to it. The city is really fun. We always go shopping, and to the mall, and…”

Annoyingly, she couldn’t really think of what else they used to do. And she knew that Alec wouldn’t think the mall was very exciting.

He screwed up his face. “You like going to the mall more than you liked riding Clapsaddle to Little Bell Falls?”

“No. But—”

“You like shopping better than you like taking pictures of the deer on the western slopes?”

“Well, no.”

But why couldn’t he see how confusing it was to see herself changing like this? It was as if the Ellen of Chicago was disappearing. And if that Ellen disappeared, what would happen to her mother?

Several times, since her talk with her dad, she’d had the most awful, disloyal thoughts about her mom. That was so messed up—how could you think bad things about a person you loved?

It was almost as confusing as the situation she had with her dad, where she couldn’t help loving him, even though she was mad at him almost all the time.

It was as if love and hate, respect and disrespect, had somehow mixed together, like an emotion stew. It was too complicated, and it made her heart hurt. All she could think was that her mom wouldn’t like this Ellen, the one who smelled of horses, and got her knees dirty, and didn’t always brush her hair or worry about whether her shoes matched her purse.

“And, come on, you know you wouldn’t really rather go to the movies than—”