“Oh? You can tell after one class that he’s going to be a wonderful student?”
“You teach. You should understand that.”
“But I don’t get as involved as you evidently do.”
“No, I don’t suppose you would,” she said evenly. She finished wiping the chalkboard before she turned, dusting off her hands.
Sloane had moved closer. He was restless, and his energy seemed to vibrate through the small classroom. “Why did you ask to have Clay as your student?”
“Because I’m the best this school has to offer.” Elise lifted her chin as she said the words. “And because he’s your son, although that was almost as much a reason not to ask for him.”
If Sloane was surprised by her honesty, it didn’t show. “Clay will be fine. With or without your help.”
“It’s going to be a tough year for him, Sloane. He’s not like most of these kids. He’s way beyond and way behind at the same time. He needs all the help he can get.”
“Elise Ramsey. Rescuer.”
“Sloane Tyson. Cynic.” Elise realized she was feeling the effects of a long and emotional day. She really wasn’t up to trading insults with her teenage lover. And Sloane was hitting entirely too close to home.
“Don’t get too involved, Elise. We’ll be gone by June. The boy doesn’t need one more person flitting in and out of his life.”
“What the boy doesn’t need,” Elise said sharply, “is a hands-off policy. He’s flesh and blood, unlike his father. He needs love, just like the rest of us humans do, and even if that love is short-lived, it’s better than holding him at arm’s length.”
“You always did get overly emotional.”
“And you always did put me down for it.”
“Don’t play games with my son!”
“Then you play games with him, Sloane. Somebody needs to. This year is going to kill him if somebody doesn’t show him they care!”
They stood glaring at each other. Elise wondered if either of them really understood what their fight was about. The real conflict seemed to shimmer under the surface of their angry words, just out of reach.
“I’m going to have him removed from this class. I don’t want you clinging to Clay.”
Elise knew the color had drained from her cheeks. Even Sloane looked pale, as if he couldn’t believe he’d said what he had.
“Only you,” she said finally, “would think that of me. And you most of all, should know how untrue it is.”
“Me most of all?”
“I loved you once, but I let you go. Would I do less for your son?”
Sloane passed a hand over his eyes as if to wipe away any feeling that might show at her words. He straightened. “Elise,” he began.
Elise shook her head. “I’d like you to leave,” she said. “You can wait in the office; you can even change Clay’s schedule while you’re at it.”
“Elise…”
“Not now, Sloane. Not ever. Please go.” She turned back to the chalkboard, effectively shutting him out. Then she began to write the next day’s assignment in tiny, precise letters. When she had finished, Sloane was gone.
CHAPTER FIVE
Silence again. It should have been welcome after a day of noisy teenagers. But it wasn’t welcome at all because the silence didn’t affect the little voice inside her. As clearly as if her brain had faithfully made a movie, Elise played and replayed her confrontation with Sloane that afternoon.
She had thought she was beyond being hurt that badly. She had been wrong.
As the oven cooked her frozen dinner the kitchen of the little two-story house heated unbearably. Halfway through the suggested time on the package, Elise turned it off and left the dinner sitting on the oven rack, still frozen inside. She wasn’t hungry, and the good sense that always made her eat no matter how she felt was inoperative tonight. She settled for an ice-cold glass of lemonade and took it into the living room.
She ought to redecorate. The house still belonged to her mother; Jeanette Ramsey’s mark was everywhere. Perhaps if Elise cleared out the fussy, overstuffed furniture, the frilly curtains and the knickknacks, she’d feel more like a real person.
She had the money. They had lived frugally all these years, not because they had to, but because Jeanette had been such a miser she’d refused to spend a cent she didn’t have to. Elise’s father had left a large life insurance policy and a pension. The untouched insurance money had sat in the local savings and loan for seventeen years collecting interest. Now it was Elise’s money.
“I ought to take it and go around the world,” she said, breaking the silence with her own voice. “Have an affair or two in every country in Europe.” She set down her lemonade and leaned back, her hands behind her head.
What was stopping her besides a lack of inclination to do anything so ridiculous? She really was free to leave Miracle Springs; she could pack her bags and move anywhere she wanted. And Sloane was providing the motivation once again, although in a different way than he had once before. Seventeen years ago he had tempted her to follow him. Now he was tempting her to get away from him. Sloane’s purpose in life seemed to be to shake her loose from everything she held dear.
Good old Sloane. Tonight nothing seemed dear enough to make her want to stay in Miracle Springs and spend a year avoiding him. If he really did remove Clay from her classes, it would be easier. But avoiding someone in a town of three thousand was just about impossible. That was why people here treated each other as well as they did. Who wanted to come face-to-face with the enemy every day at the post office, the grocery store, or the gas station? God bless small towns, thought Elise, even if Sloane had never had much respect for their rules and regulations.
The house was stifling. Elise had thrown open all the windows and there was a faint breeze stirring the humid summer air. But nothing would begin to make the mercury drop except central air. Elise was tempted to go for a drive. She could open all the windows and feel the breeze blow through her hair. Nearby there were green rolling hills covered with thoroughbred horse farms, miles and miles of picturesque wooden fences and pastures, lush and emerald-hued. There were orange groves, too. Miracle Springs was a little too far north to be considered safe for citrus crops, although there were those who tried to grow them with varying degrees of success. But just to the south, within easy driving distance, were geometrical patchwork quilts of orange trees that spread as far as anyone could see.
By the time she left Miracle Springs behind her, however, darkness would extinguish her view of anything except the road in front of her and the pattern of her own headlights. It was too late to take a drive, too early to sit in the frowsy living room and count the beads of perspiration forming on her forehead. Too late to find solace in the meditative motion of the car, too early to find solace in sleep.
Elise stood. She refused to be trapped. There had been other nights like this one, nights when she’d felt she might go crazy from the unreleased tension that haunted her now. Miracle Springs might not have much to offer, but it did offer the source of its name. She’d put on her swimsuit and walk to the springs. There was a place farther down the Wehachee where she’d be almost guaranteed to find privacy. The cold, clear water would revive her and help wash away the humiliations of the day.
“Do you want to go for a swim?”
“I’ve got homework to do.”
Sloane smiled sympathetically at the tone of Clay’s voice. The boy sounded bewildered that he should be forced to suffer the indignities of schoolwork at home. “Do you need help?”
“It’s just reading and answering questions for history. You can do the algebra for me if you want.”
“I never understood algebra,” Sloane admitted.
Clay shrugged. “The guidance counselor said I’ll probably be moved to remedial math tomorrow anyway. Evidently no one has ever scored as low as I did on the math part of the test she gave me.”
Sloane had spoken to the counselor himself. Clay wasn’t kiddin
g. Nor was he telling the whole story. The test, a basic IQ and achievement test, had indicated that Clay was going to have a tougher time than any of them had thought. His education had been so sporadic and dependent on the whims of the adults in his life that he didn’t have some of the skills of an elementary school student. At the same time the test had also indicated that the boy’s intelligence was easily in the superior range. The counselor had been enthusiastic. More testing would follow, but she intended to have a conference with Clay’s teachers immediately to motivate them to help this strange, gifted child achieve his potential.
The guidance counselor saw Clay as a marvelous challenge. Elise saw him as a boy badly in need of affection. Sloane saw him as a stranger with his own face, a son he didn’t know how to raise. He wondered how Clay saw himself.
Tonight, watching him struggle with the homework that was so foreign to his experience, Sloane wanted to offer his son the love that Elise seemed to think he needed. He just wasn’t sure how to do it. “You could do your homework when we got back.”
“You go on. I’m pretty tired.”
Clay did look tired. He looked as if the day had stripped something important from him. Sloane wondered if sleep alone would replace it.
Tentatively Sloane reached out to touch his son’s shoulder. “All right. I won’t be home late.”
He changed into his swimsuit and pulled on a pair of jeans before heading toward the springs. His last vision of Clay was of the boy, head bent over his books, looking as if he wished he was anywhere else.
In a matter of weeks an evening walk might be pleasant, with soft breezes cooling his skin. But tonight, even with the sun gone below the horizon, the air swirled around his body like the steam from a hot shower.
It had rained earlier that afternoon, ending the drought that had curled foliage and burned grass right down to its roots. The ground had been so dry that the water lingered in puddles seeping drop by drop into the thirsty earth.
The smells of summer hung suspended around him. Jasmine and freshly cut grass. The faint tinge of sulphur water brought from deep within the earth by a droning pump to water a lawn. The fragrances of pine, cedar and a few late roses.
Nostalgia at his age. Didn’t that start later? Wasn’t he supposed to experience, not re-experience? Wasn’t he too young to be so overwhelmed with memories of other summer nights when he’d headed down Hope Avenue to the springs? Nights when he’d smelled these same smells? Nights when his body had been tormented by the sensuality of a Florida summer?
There had been one place in particular where he had always gone to swim. The beach was often populated, but farther downriver had been a spot he and Elise had found together. It was a treacherous walk through palmetto and trees draped low with clinging Spanish moss, but the riverbank itself had always been clear enough with a huge fallen oak blocking the growth of underbrush and providing comfortable places to perch.
The tree would be gone, dissolved by time into the verdant Florida earth to help nourish it and begin a new life cycle. But the riverbank and that peculiar shelf of crystal sand leading out to deeper water might still be there.
Memories would be there, too. Memories of velvet nights and the smooth satin skin of his teenage lover. Memories of water so cold it left your body tinged with the ice-blue of the water itself, water so cold and yet never cold enough to cool the passion he had felt for Elise.
The riverbank was sacred ground. Elise had lost her virginity there, and although his had been long gone before she entered his life, he had lost something there also: his detachment, his solitude, his heart.
He had lost his good sense too. He had known from the beginning that he and Elise were two different animals. She was home and duty and kindness. He was restlessness and curiosity and hard-edged insight. They had never had a chance, but his insight had not been hard-edged enough. He had wanted to believe otherwise.
The spot on the riverbank might still be there, but Sloane knew it would not be the same. And that was as it should be. He reached the beach, and his eyes drifted over the water. He could see that the springs itself had drawn others who wanted to drown the day’s heat. Tonight he wanted no company.
The smells changed as Sloane walked down the beach and began to make his way through the moonlit jungle that surrounded the civilized portion of the springs. Florida had a way of reminding a person just how close to nature he still was, even if man had done his best to destroy the environment and create an illusion of civilization. Tie up so-called civilized man for a hundred years then set him free to examine his world, Sloane speculated. Florida would be a wreathing mass of vines and moss, insects and reptiles. Hurricanes would have blown away half the condominiums and shopping centers that Florida builders loved to erect; humidity and heat and relentless sunshine would have taken care of the rest.
Now Sloane inhaled deeply. The smells were savage here; there was nothing civilized about them. Rotting vegetation, a fresh, unexplainable tang from the river, the occasional stark sweetness of some exotic blossom. The smells were as primal as the earth itself, and they did nothing to still the ache in his body.
The path he followed was faint, just barely discernible in the pale light of a moon not quite full, but Sloane could tell it had recently been used. Others had discovered the special place, but Sloane hoped that on this night he would be alone.
The path took a sharp turn toward the riverbank. Seventeen years had passed, but his feet had turned before he’d even noticed the path changing direction. The river was calling to him, welcoming him home, inviting him to immerse himself far from the civilized waters of the springs.
At last Sloane stood on the sand and bark-covered riverbank, stripping his shirt over his head with one hurried movement. Moonlight scampered over the surface of the gently flowing water, painting a pattern of sparkling diamonds and deepest ebony. Framed by the lacy shadows of moss-draped trees on the opposite bank, Sloane could almost believe that the river was inviolate. No one had ever penetrated its depths; no one had ever found its secrets.
But as he watched, the water was split by a human form. He felt a sharp stab of disappointment, like a man who has risked his life to climb an unscalable mountain only to discover a broken soft drink bottle at its peak. He chastised himself for his sentimentality. The river was large enough to accommodate more than one swimmer. It did not belong to him. He had, in fact, rejected it right along with everything else when he left Miracle Springs.
He watched the lone swimmer, debating whether to vanish back into the jungle. But as he watched, he realized the person was swimming toward him.
His eyes narrowed and he concentrated on the form approaching. It was a woman. She was swimming on her back, and her body cut through the water with graceful, feminine strokes. As she reached the shallow shelf and stood, wringing the water from long dark hair, he knew immediately who she was.
Somewhere, deep inside him, he had wondered if Elise would be here tonight. He hadn’t been able to admit it. If he had, he wouldn’t have come. And yet on some level thoughts of her had led him here to this place where they had once shared everything. Her back was still turned to him and she stood, staring up at the moon and stars as if their light provided her with something infinite, something vital, that daily living never could.
Images too poignant to bear examination flooded through his body, making him remember more than he wanted to remember. Much, much more.
A boy and a frightened girl, alone on the riverbank on a night like this one. The girl’s voice was a soft plea. “Sloane, I don’t know if we should. I don’t know if I want to.”
For once the boy had not taunted her for her lack of courage. He had understood her fears. He had kissed her gently as he explored her body through the clinging one-piece bathing suit. “I know, Elise. Just trust me, we’ll stop when you want to.”
He had believed his own words; only soon there had been no hope of stopping. Even Elise’s fears, the guilt inbred in her by a puritanic
al mother, had not been able to extinguish the innate sensuality that had flared that night, sensuality that had flared brighter and brighter until it had become a brilliant flame enveloping them both. Each new intimacy, each new revelation had shone in her eyes like the starlight reflecting on the crystal sand.
Undressing her had been easy. The swimsuit slid down her sleek young body inch by easy inch. Sloane had touched her breasts before, but never had he seen them. Sloane had known all about male arousal, but he had never cared enough to pay attention to what happened to a woman when she wanted a man. He had been astonished when he saw the way her nipples hardened and peaked, just as a part of him was doing at the same moment. He had been astonished and oh, so proud.
Elise had made a sound somewhere between a moan of surrender and a demand for him to stop. He had soothed her, teased her by dropping small kisses all along her chin and cheeks. He had whispered words of comfort and encouragement as the swimsuit slipped lower, and when he had reached the place she was protecting by crossing her legs against his intrusion, he had told her how much he loved her.
He hadn’t been lying. He had loved her. At that moment with her trembling body given up to his keeping, he had meant every word. Never had he known this fierce desire to protect, to explore, to join. It was so much more than just wanting another sexual experience. This was Elise, a girl-woman who had touched him in ways no one else ever had.
Her swimsuit had been stripped away along with his own, and patiently—if a seventeen-year-old male could be patient—he had run his hands over every inch of her. He hadn’t taken her as his own until, finally, she had surrendered herself to him, shown him she was ready by opening herself and clasping him to her body to give him the gift she could only give once in her life.
He had hurt her. His control had been much less than perfect in those days. But almost as if she welcomed the pain, she had clung to him, inviting him to come deeper inside her. And then there had been no pain. Only an intense pressure that had built inside both of them until his found its release in a storm of passion that left him almost senseless when it ended.
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