“My grandfather gave me all his supplies. This one’s about eighty years old, but Grandpa and I always took care of the leather really well.”
TJ again lifted the saddle, easily settling it on Shenandoah’s back. “I didn’t know they made these.”
“I don’t think they do. This one’s hand-tooled. I have no idea if there were any others like it, or if they survived.”
He cinched the saddle under the horse, who protested only a little. “Norah, this has to be worth a small fortune.”
“Nope, not selling.” She smiled and fingered the scroll-work pressed into the leather, almost invisible after all this time.
He grinned. “I wasn’t insinuating that you should.” He put his hands on her waist and lifted her easily into the front, startling her. Then he put a hand against her jeans covered leg. “Stirrups are wrong. They’re longer in front, the back ones are shorter.”
He took a minute, adjusting each, while Norah explained. “Grandpa always rode in front. It’s been years. I would have been the last one back there.”
“What about Lilah?”
Norah shifted forward allowing him to slide up behind her, settling into the half-moon seat that came up right behind hers. “Lilah didn’t love it like I did. She inherited his house, and sold it promptly. I got the horses and the tack and extra money to care for them.”
With her heels, she gave Shenandoah the signal and he started off, albeit a little slow with the weight of two riders. Norah waited for TJ’s arms to come around her waist, for him to lean forward and meet her if she leaned back. But it didn’t happen.
Heading straight for the ridge, she steered them over small rises that led to a ridge with a view of the sunset. It had taken them long enough to get started that they would just barely make it.
Norah covered her bouncing feelings by talking. “Are you going to be back from your first round of touring by the twenty-eighth?”
“I think we get back the morning of the twenty-ninth, why?”
“My friend Mark from when I was in the ballet is coming into town, and he got tickets to the David Parsons Dance Theater. I don’t know if that’s your thing, but I wanted see if you’d like to go with us.” She hoped she made it clear she wasn’t dating Mark.
“I don’t think I’ll be back. But I’ll see you the next day when I get in.”
She nodded, stopping at the top of the ridge, glad that he was planning on seeing her when he returned. Well, more than glad, maybe stupidly ecstatic.
Shenandoah stood, his head turned slightly away from the glare of the huge sinking sun. Tall trees that had been here long before any of them stood sentry in little clusters on either side. A plop sounded, making TJ look over at the pond that was reflecting red and orange.
“Turtle.” She said, by way of explanation.
Her breath stopped as his hands finally left their perch on his thighs and slid around her waist. Just as she had wished, he gave her a small tug, bringing her back against his chest. He settled the two of them together, his head tucked just over her shoulder, his cheek against her temple. Norah leaned into him, almost closing her eyes. His breath in her ear whispered the words, “This is beautiful. Peaceful.”
She smiled, but he continued, his voice low and soft. “I needed some peace after this last week.”
“Yeah, it sounded like it.” She was tempted to turn her head and kiss him. It would be so easy. Yet it was so hard.
She just couldn’t make her muscles obey. And he made no such moves.
They sat like that, pressed against each other until she couldn’t ignore the growing dark and had to turn the horse back before he was likely to turn a leg stepping in a hole or ditch.
Just like that, TJ slipped back away, sitting up straight for the ride home.
He helped her put the tack away and rubbed saddle oil into the leather while she curried the big horse. He walked with her to the side of the house, but said he hadn’t even been to his own home yet, he’d come straight here from the plane. He said ‘thank you’ and ‘good night’ and disappeared.
TJ Hewlitt was an enigma, and she didn’t know what to do with him. She’d given him plenty of opportunities and, she hoped, plenty of signals. She loved the romance—sitting watching the sunset on horseback—but she wanted more. Norah sighed. Her dad was out with his girlfriend and she was frustrated.
She scrubbed up, washing the smell of horse away, and figuring she’d shower later. She stripped naked and pulled on dance-pants and a sport bra then went downstairs into the family room. Her father rarely used it, but it was fully furnished and took a while to clear.
Once she had a smooth expanse of hard floor in front of her, she opened the curtains, allowing the big picture window to act as a mirror, by the dark night beyond it. She found an old set of songs she’d downloaded. If she was right, I am off of Wilder’s second album was on there.
She let go when the third song started into a mournful melody about bringing on the rain. She danced it modern, spinning and sinking to the floor, and ending on her back with her lungs working overtime. It was the kind of exertion she most enjoyed. When she danced like this, her feelings worked but her brain turned off.
While she lay there on the floor for just a second, she wondered if TJ felt like that on stage. That was her cue, along with the rising notes of the next song to get her ass up and turn off her brain again. This one she did in straight ballet.
Then another.
And another.
And another.
Until she was thirsty and exhausted.
Chapter 54
TJ was in pain.
Sweet, horrible, carnal pain.
He’d left Norah after the horseback ride, his mind resolved. Though he’d contemplated just kissing her, he decided against it. He needed to tell her what he felt first. If he had turned to kiss her and was wrong about her feelings, they would have been stuck, on top of a horse and nowhere to go.
So he had driven through a burger joint, and forced himself to eat it on the dark drive out to his house. The agent had an offer, and he was grateful as he chewed the burger he couldn’t taste. His brain was bouncing between what words he’d use to tell Norah and deciding that he’d need a house with a barn for her horses.
He’d unpacked. Showered. Changed. Then grabbed his guitar, thinking that he’d maybe sing her something he’d been working on and ask her opinion. He also figured it would be good to have something to do with his hands. Singing to a packed Central Park hadn’t made him as nervous as this.
At her house, only her own car sat in the driveway. He let out a breath, glad that he had her to himself, then hauled his nervous feet up the front steps to knock on the door.
No answer came.
Lights were on, he heard something, but no one answered the door.
He had knocked again. Again, no one.
Certain she was home, and even beginning to get a little worried, TJ circled the house, the guitar his only weapon. Music filtered out to him as he got around to the back and saw light streaming out the large window casting an awkward rectangle on the ground beyond it.
When he peeked in the side door, he could see that Norah had shoved everything out of the way and was dancing. Her hair was pulled up, her black pants clung to her lean form and revealed smooth olive skin from the waistband of the pants to the underside of her sports bra. A long, thin pink line ran up her belly and disappeared beneath the fabric.
He knocked but she didn’t hear him, she was that lost in the music. Watching through the small panes, he realized he’d seen her teach, and exercise, and practice. But she was right—that wasn’t dancing, this was.
TJ had moved around to look in the big window, but still she didn’t see him there. He waved and she looked right at him, but continued dancing. When the song ended, she turned away and started into a new dance when the next song came up. He did everything except press himself to the glass, but still she didn’t see. Only in the middle of the third song
, when she cocked her head and repeated a move while watching out the window, did he realize that she was using it as a mirror and couldn’t see him at all.
He looked around behind him wondering if anyone else was watching her. He felt like a voyeur, knowing she didn’t know he was there, but he was unable to move.
Norah, as always, defied gravity.
TJ understood how his own gift worked. He knew how vocal cords vibrated, and that his ears, too, were different from other people’s. But Norah’s dance was beyond him. She moved in ways humans weren’t supposed to be able to. She didn’t fall off her feet as he’d seen her students do.
She transitioned style with each song, moving easily from ballet into several different styles that TJ could only classify as ‘modern’.
He kept telling himself he would leave at the end of the next song, but she was mesmerizing. In this, she put herself out there, thoroughly living her dance. He recognized all of the songs from the radio, and all were at least several years old. He heard a Tim McGraw piece that she danced in the air and on the floor and almost none of it on her feet. He couldn’t leave for that. At the end, she reached up and collapsed backward, causing him to leap forward. When she landed on the floor in perfect form, with her knees tucked under and her head tilted back, TJ realized he’d almost gone through the window for nothing.
The next piece she straightened up and did in what appeared to him to be perfect ballet form. He tried to leave, but heard his own voice and turned around.
She danced I am. TJ propped himself and the guitar against the tree and stayed for that one, too. She ended with lungs heaving, which surprised him. She’d made the whole thing look so effortless, it was a shock to realize she’d worked for it.
The next song started and she didn’t dance. Her head cocked to one side listening to the deep bass line and a sultry voice. Tugging off her dance shoes, she pulled the tie out of her hair, shaking it down. That act alone turned him on, and he was grateful the show was over. But she didn’t turn off the music. She grabbed the remote and went back to the middle of the room.
Intrigued, he stared. Norah tossed the remote onto the couch as the song restarted. Now barefoot, she moved when the song started and her hands skimmed up the sides of her body and into her hair. Her shoulders and hips gave truth to the words about being able to sweep the devil off his red hot feet.
There was nothing stripper-ish or vulgar about it, but every move said ‘sex.’ Her hands never touched part of her body without skimming it. Never mind that it was a calf or thigh or shoulder or hip—it was hot.
All the blood drained from his head. TJ felt his body shift, thinking again that she didn’t know he was watching. There were subtle rolls in her chest and hips. When she turned and reached out toward the window to him, her hands swirling and curling all her fingers, beckoning, he thought about going straight through the glass, but she turned away. He knew she hadn’t seen him.
The look on her face was one he’d seen only once before, in bed with her. TJ’s mouth opened, dry and wanting, remembering what her skin tasted like. Then her hips ticked in perfect time to the music. She was off, turning and dancing for some imaginary lover, having no idea that he was just beyond the window and desperate to not be imaginary.
The song was slowing, and TJ was grateful, he needed to ease the pain he felt. Norah beckoned again to the man beyond the window, her arms coming in to wrap around herself, as her hips rolled to a final stop with the last note.
She held until the sound faded, then stood up straight and breathed heavily and walked off into another part of the house.
Breathing heavily himself, TJ sat down in the grass, even though it was damp and cold, and tried to get himself together. He’d almost forgotten what he came for. He had to go home. He couldn’t tell her he was in love with her with the front of his jeans like that. If he got within five feet of her he’d lose control.
So he pushed himself to standing and walked off toward his car. Music was still blaring and he doubted she’d hear the engine start. Steering down the driveway, his mouth still paper-dry, he tried to concentrate on what little traffic there was.
He made a mental note that the new house would need not only a music studio, but a dance studio. With real mirrors—he was not letting his neighbors get an eyeful of that.
After he’d gotten back home, he puttered around, sketching ideas for the house. Maybe Norah’s dad would design them a place. Maybe TJ shouldn’t let her father near it, because he intended to christen every room with that girl.
He slept a fitful night, waking constantly in either a cold fear that she would say she felt nothing for him or a hot sweat imagining what might happen if she did.
He got up the next morning and worked out. He took JD and Kelsey’s kids to the duck pond because it was Sunday and the kids always went. He’d volunteered as a thank-you for the both of them letting him steal JD that day at the police station. Six kids at the grocery store buying bread and then at the duck pond was a handful. But the two oldest, Daniel and Andie, helped a lot with the little ones.
This time when he turned up on Norah’s doorstep, she answered and he heard her father in the background. So he told her about his day instead of his feelings.
Her father came into the room a few moments later. “I thought I heard voices.”
Though TJ was certain the man could read his face, he was grateful he hadn’t actually said anything. “Sir.”
“Stop calling me ‘sir.’” Mr. Davidson laughed.
Norah sidetracked what little conversation there was. “You probably heard the TV, Daddy, I was watching it.”
TJ saw then that a program had been paused on the screen.
Her father nodded. “I’m headed up to bed. Good night.”
TJ felt himself frown, and Norah kissed her father and promised to keep the sound low. It was only nine o’clock.
As Mr. Davidson disappeared up the stairs, Norah laughed at him again. “He was out of town last night, and has to get up for work in the morning. You didn’t run him off.”
Her head tilted, her feet, cute in white socks, were pointing toward him, flat on the couch. “Did you come for something in particular?”
He shook his own head back at her, lying, and covered her white socks with his own, enjoying the heat of her feet. It was a small intimate gesture that was all he could afford right now, when he wasn’t sure how to get the words out of his mouth. “Norah?”
“Yes.”
“I—” Okay, maybe not ready enough. But he tried again. “I—”
She waited.
He blurted, “I like being your friend, but—”
“But?” She tipped her head sideways and looked at him, clearly concerned.
He shook his head, thinking he might dislodge his heart from the back of his throat where it was making everything come out wrong. “Don’t look so worried.” He sighed. “All right, maybe you should look worried.”
That only caused her face to reflect greater alarm. “TJ?”
“Norah, I love being your friend but I want to be your boyfriend.” It wasn’t what he’d intended, but close enough.
He watched her blink, wondering what was going through her mind. He could read the surprise right off her face.
After a moment she asked, “Like a date for national holidays?”
“More.” Like your lover, like ‘the one’, like you don’t notice anyone but me. But he didn’t give voice to any of those thoughts.
Norah sucked in a breath. “TJ, I can’t.”
“Oh.” He froze in place. She’d said ‘no.’ “Okay.” He sucked in a breath of his own, forcing air into his system and knowing he had to get out of here, before . . . he didn’t want to think about ‘before’ what. “Well, now that I’ve made an ass of myself, I’ll be going. Good night.”
He didn’t know how he’d managed to make that last good night sound casual. Knowing it would sink in later, he headed for the door, only to feel her fingers on
him. Both of her hands grasped at his and he tried to shake her off.
“TJ.” She tugged at him, but he couldn’t look.
“Norah, I have to go.”
“TJ, don’t look so hurt.”
How was he supposed to look? But he didn’t get it out before she spoke again.
“I can’t be your fallback.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She tugged at him, but he still refused to turn around, certain he couldn’t look at her without . . .
“TJ, a little while ago you were in love with someone else. You asked me how to tell her.”
He cracked a little, and wondered if this was his way in. TJ had believed that if she said ‘no’ he’d accept her answer and leave, but now, standing here, he’d take any way in he could get. “Would it make a difference if you were my first choice?”
Her voice was small. “Yes.”
This time he rounded and found her eyes. She still sat on the edge of the couch, her hands tugging his, not willing to let him go. “You are my only choice. I asked because I didn’t know how to tell you.”
Her shock showed. “You didn’t say anything!”
“Of course not! I was an idiot! I waited too long, then . . .” He sighed again, letting the pent up air out, and kept talking, because he was beginning to think maybe. “Then you were attacked, and all bruised up.”
She bit her lip, her eyes falling closed, black lashes fanning her cheeks, black hair framing her face. For a moment he just looked, thinking he’d hold that picture of her in his mind, maybe forever. Her voice pushed him back. “I was pretty ugly.”
“Don’t go there, Norah.” He grabbed her chin and her eyes popped open, startled by the touch. “You were never ugly. You were beat up and bruised and beautiful, and I didn’t want to hurt you.”
“You wouldn’t have hurt me.”
His hands went into his hair, only as he moved them did he feel her fingers sliding off his hand. “But I did hurt you. That morning, you were lying there on the ground and you put your arms out to me and the only thing I could think was that I wanted to kiss you. I needed to. You were covered in blood, and that’s all I could think of. It wasn’t even thought.”
Love Notes Page 29
