Hallie's Comet

by Denise Dietz

  Maybe the best plan was to wait until the Broncos headed for the exits and pray that Josh didn’t get trampled by all those humongous cowboy boots.

  She should have known. Victorious football players didn’t head for exits. Instead, they joked with the crowd and signed autographs.

  Okay. She’d have Josh paged.

  Trying to maneuver through the crowd was more difficult than driving the wrong way down a busy one-way street, but she finally managed to reach a service phone. Panting, she leaned against the wall.

  Then she saw the poster with its large red letters:

  HALLIE O’BRIEN

  Clever Josh.

  Except it wasn’t clever Josh.

  The piece of cardboard was held aloft by a total stranger.

  Except he wasn’t a total stranger.

  He was her Archangel.

  She shook her head, trying to clear her vision. But her vision wasn’t out of focus. There he stood. Gabriel. His hair was dark, long, combed back from his face, emphasizing, no, dramatizing those soulful eyes.

  Her portrait had stopped at Gabriel’s waist. However, she could start a brand new painting, working from the waist down. Because this man who resembled Gabriel had lean hips, a flat belly, and legs that strained the seams of his faded jeans, as if he’d spent hours, days, months with the latest exercise equipment.

  He was tall, perhaps six-three. Turning slightly, his gaze traveled above the crowd, and, for the first time in her life, Hallie felt a savage, almost animalistic impulse to rush forward and rip a man’s clothes off.

  Why not do it? Everybody else was watching the Broncos.

  No, they weren’t. A few women were casting admiring glances toward her Archangel.

  An almost overwhelming jealousy caused her to stumble forward.

  Dismayed, she dropped her purse, raised both hands to her face, and pressed her fingers against her scorched cheeks. She had lost what little remained of her mind. Because this man wasn’t her anything. She was bemused by Amelia’s incessant chatter. She was dizzy from the press of people, lack of sleep, hunger, perhaps even fear that her pending search for answers would simply propel her into a maze of incomprehensible questions.

  Despite every rationalization, she wanted to fall into this total stranger’s arms.

  Awkwardly bending down and retrieving her handbag, then walking forward again, she said, “Gabriel?”

  “Yes?”

  “Gabriel?” Even to her own ears, her voice sounded far away, as if she’d left it inside the plane.

  “Yes?” His gaze traveled downward until his eyes caught and held her stunned, disoriented stare. “Hallie?”

  “You know me,” she whispered.

  The luggage depot spun in ever widening circles and the sea of faces blurred. With the soft mew of a confused kitten, Hallie pitched forward and fell into her Archangel’s outstretched arms.

  SEVEN

  Hallie blinked open her eyes. She was entwined by strong arms — one beneath her legs, one cradling the small of her back.

  In the distance football players were still signing autographs, so she’d only blacked out momentarily. As her gaze darted left and right, up and down, she saw that her Archangel’s cardboard sign now decorated the floor. A sneaker’s imprint had almost obliterated the HAL in HALLIE, and a spiked heel had pierced the O in O’BRIEN.

  “It looks like a target’s bull’s-eye,” she murmured.

  “What looks like a bull’s-eye, honey?”

  “Your sign.” She raised her lashes and focused on his face. “The ‘O’ in O’Brien.”

  “Oh.” His chiseled features relaxed. Then his arms tightened. “Why did you faint?”

  “How did you know I was me?” she countered.

  “Josh described you perfectly. Approximately five-five, he said, with hair the color of a mahogany armoire, eyes the color of semi-sweet chocolate, and a figure that would make Cinderella’s stepsisters jealous.” His gaze traveled from her face to her collarbone. “And a heart-shaped locket.”

  She had a feeling the locket had been an inspirational ad-lib, halting his highfalutin’ gab. She also had a feeling that Josh hadn’t gone into quite so much detail.

  But then, Josh was an author, so maybe he had.

  “This was a gift from my great-granny to my mom,” she said, fingering the locket. “Mom gave it to me on my twenty-first birth … please put me down.”

  “First, tell me why you fainted.”

  “Aviation disaster overload,” she half-fibbed. Then, ignoring his quizzical stare, she said, “Who are you?”

  “I thought you knew my name.”

  “Gabriel.”

  “That’s right,” he agreed.

  Her Archangel sounded as if he were humoring a small child. Annoyance battled confusion.

  “Gabriel Quinn,” he added.

  “Quinn,” she echoed.

  “My friends call me Gabe. I’m Joshua’s brother.”

  “Joshua’s brother?”

  “Yup. Josh couldn’t meet your plane so he asked me to collect you.”

  “Where did you get the name Gabriel?”

  “My family has this thing for biblical names. What about Hallie?”

  “My father’s a music buff. Hallie’s the mangled version of Alice.”

  “Cooper?”

  “No.”

  “There’s another famous singer named Alice?”

  “I thought we were talking about your name.”

  “Gabe’s the shortened version of—”

  “Gabriel.” Hallie shook her head. “I don’t believe it.”

  “I could probably dig up my birth certificate.”

  She felt her cheeks scorch again. “It’s just that I painted a man who looks like you and his name’s Gabriel and…” She swallowed the rest of her explanation. He might think she was nuts. So what? He already thought she was nuts.

  Was she nuts? Now that her emotions had stopped churning like a Jacuzzi, she had time to study his features, especially since his face was so close to hers. There were many differences between her Archangel and Gabriel Quinn. For instance, Gabriel Quinn’s eyes were a gray-jade while her dream man’s eyes were pure umber. She could picture the tube of paint. Umber.

  “They say everybody has a double,” Gabe Quinn stated with a slight shrug of his broad shoulders. “Some people even say I look like Johnny Depp.”

  “Right. Your mouth, uh, smile.” She took a deep breath. “Mr. Quinn,” she said somewhat desperately, “won’t you please, please put me down?”

  “Sure. But only if you call me Gabe.”

  “Yes. Okay. That’s a good idea. I prefer Gabe.”

  “To what?”

  “Gabriel.”

  As he placed her on the ground, she tottered then quickly regained her balance. “When someone steps off a ship, they’ve lost their sea legs,” she said, hoping he’d believe her brief fainting spell was due to turbulence, which in a sense it was. “What about someone who steps off an airplane?”

  “I guess they’ve lost their sky legs.” Retrieving the discarded name-poster, he tossed it into a nearby recycle can.

  Not me. I’m walking on air. I’ve met my dream man and I should be soaring through space rather than wobbling about like some bullyragged jellyfish.

  Bullyragged jellyfish? Where on earth did that come from? First blue devils, now bullyragged jellyfish. What next?

  “Do you feel faint again?” Gabe asked, his voice concerned.

  She shook her head and began to stride forward, her feet decisive, like a New Yorker determined to cross the street before the light changed. Marianne had once told Hallie that the person who timed Manhattan’s stoplights had a weird sense of humor, perhaps even a death wish.

  “Whoa,” Gabe said. “Slow down.”

  Turning, she watched him walk toward her, his gait somewhat choppy. Her dream man limped. No big deal.

  She had a sudden thought. Her Archangel portrait stopped at Gabriel’s waist
. If she had painted his entire body, would he have sported a game leg?

  Ridiculous! She was letting her imagination run wild. In any case, she couldn’t probe her theory and try another dream-man painting because it would look like Gabe Quinn rather than Gabriel Question-mark.

  Was Gabe Quinn’s beauty skin deep? Granted, each sight of his sculpted form caused a series of delicious shivers to crisscross the back of her neck. But she was affected by structural perfection. After all, she was an artist.

  Structural perfection? In her mind’s eye, she could see Marianne. “Tell it like it is,” Marianne would say. “You crave to unbutton that starched white shirt, yank it free from those butt-tight jeans, and finger-paint that flawless torso. Now, let’s talk about his waist, hips and legs.”

  “Let’s not!” Hallie exclaimed.

  “Let’s not what?”

  “Um, waste time. I was contemplating, um, something to eat. Maybe a pastrami sandwich.”

  Gabe’s laugh was contagious. The sound caused people around them to glance their way and flash toothy Cheshire-Cat grins. Hallie didn’t get the joke, was immune to his laugh, and felt out of sync.

  “What’s so funny?” she asked, fingering her locket.

  “This is Colorado. As far as we’re concerned, pastrami is the name of the football quarterback who, many, many years ago, played for the Houston Oilers. Maybe you should contemplate a buffalo burger.”

  “New York has Buffalo Bills,” she retorted, darting a glance toward the few remaining Denver Broncos. “And Giants. And at least three delis in my neighborhood serve hot pastrami on seeded rye. They also serve boiled tongue.”

  Gabe ran his tongue along his lower lip, as if making sure it had survived her diatribe. “Seriously, Hallie,” he said, “would you like a sandwich? It’s a long ride to Colorado Springs.”

  “Colorado Springs? I thought Josh lived in Woodland Park.”

  “He does.” Gabe gestured toward the escalator. “How about something to drink? A brandy might settle those sky legs.”

  “No, thanks. I really should retrieve my luggage from the carousel. Where do you live, Gabe?” she asked conversationally, striding forward again, although this time she adjusted her gait to his.

  “Didn’t Josh call last night?” he asked. He looked startled.

  “I got home late last night, from a family dinner, and never bothered to check my answering machine. Why would Josh call?”

  Halting, Gabe stared down at her. Then he absently tucked a stray curl behind her ear. “I live in Colorado Springs,” he said, “not far from Woodland Park, not far from Josh, and…” He paused, as if he planned to attempt the rockets-red-glare high notes in the Star Spangled Banner.

  “And you’re going to be my roommate,” he finished, grasping her elbow and guiding her toward the luggage carousel.

  “Your roommate,” she repeated, and felt her eyes widen.

  “That’s right. You’ll use my bedroom and I’ll sleep on the couch.”

  She opened her mouth to object. Before she could, he said, “I lease a two-story house, Hallie. From the outside it looks like a top hat. The crown includes a spacious bedroom and bath and a redwood deck that can’t be seen from the front. On the bottom floor there’s a family room, a second bathroom, a darkroom, dressing rooms, kitchenette, and I’ve knocked out some walls to make a studio.”

  “Studio,” she parroted, her mind still trying to assimilate the change of plans. “Did you say darkroom? As in darkroom-darkroom? You’re a photographer!” she said triumphantly, as though she had just solved a Murder She Wrote rerun before the third commercial.

  “I’m a Boudoir Photographer,” he said. “I shoot intimate glamour portraits. Do you understand?”

  “Of course. I’m not some featherbrained mooncalf.”

  Gabe smiled at her expressive words, but Hallie felt a vise of fear grip her heart.

  Add featherbrained mooncalf to blue devils and bullyragged jellyfish. Then try to figure out why you’ve written a new dictionary inside your head.

  She knew full well what those six words meant — blue devils for sorrow, bullyragged jellyfish for unbalanced coward, featherbrained mooncalf for idiot — but she didn’t know why she was suddenly chitchatting in what Marianne might call “obsolete speak.”

  Although she sometimes took a break from her everyday, stress-related world by devouring Marianne’s historical romance novels, she remembered characters, not their dialogue. What about historical movies? The Last of the Mohicans. Glory. Did an Indian or Union soldier shout “Bullyragged jellyfish!” while scalping or shooting his adversary?

  “I don’t think so.” Noting Gabe’s puzzled expression, she quickly added, “I don’t think I should stay with you.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’d be imposing.”

  “Define imposing.”

  “Sometimes, especially late at night, I paint.”

  “When the sun goes down, I hibernate. Nothing disturbs me. For the next few nights I’ll hibernate in the family room. There’s a fairly large alcove where I keep costumes and props, just off the studio. It would be a perfect place for you to paint,” he urged. “You can’t stay with my brother, Hallie. For one thing, he has a fat St. Bernard named Napkin, the size of a small pony.”

  “Napkin?”

  “Josh christened him Napkin because, even as a puppy, he licked crumbs from the table, not to mention faces. In any case, Napkin would chew up your paintbrushes while you slipped into blissful slumber.”

  I haven’t enjoyed much blissful slumber lately!

  “I don’t own an alarm clock,” Gabe said, “because I have a bird feeder and the magpies tend to wake me at sunrise. They’ll wake you, too. If you get up and prepare fresh coffee, we’ll call it even.”

  “I’ve never developed a taste for coffee, but I suppose I can follow the directions on the can. How hard could it be to cook coffee?”

  “Brew, Hallie. One brews coffee.”

  “Will you let me pay for food and lodging? If not, forget it.”

  “I have a much better idea. I want to increase my business by marketing a new portfolio, so you can be my model.”

  She had a feeling he had just improvised the model-portfolio bit. “Clothed or unclothed?” she snapped.

  “Clothed. My brother says you plan to explore Cripple Creek. I’d like to shoot some photos of old landmarks with you dressed in authentic garb. The Mollie Kathleen gold mine, the Imperial Hotel, the Old Homestead.”

  “The Old Homestead?”

  “Yup. It was a famous—”

  “Parlor House.”

  “You’ve heard of the Old Homestead?”

  It’s in one of my paintings.

  Aloud, she said, “I read up on Cripple Creek before I left New York. My mother’s a history teacher. She mentioned the Old Homestead.”

  There! She hadn’t lied. Her mom had talked about the famous parlor house.

  “A photo shoot sounds like fun,” she added, hoping he wouldn’t ask her why she wanted to explore the mining town.

  “Unfortunately,” Gabe said wryly, “there aren’t very many old landmarks still left intact.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Didn’t Josh tell you? There are slot machines everywhere. Gambling’s legal in Cripple Creek.”

  Hallie felt as if she’d been punched in the stomach. The airport receded while images whirled.

  The inside of a saloon.

  A poker table.

  Seated at a table were five men and a heavy woman shaped like a box. The woman’s corset thrust her abundant breasts above her bodice. Had she not worn a corset, her breasts would have sagged to her waistline.

  “I’ll throw in my gramophone,” said one of the men, his beard not quite hiding his scowl, “if you bet your Knickers.” He pointed to a young girl who stood nearby.

  The boxy woman looked down at her cards. “Your gramophone’s worth thirty dollars. My Knickers is worth much more. Throw in your h
orse.”

  The young girl gasped. “Don’t bet your horse, Gabriel,” she said. “You need your horse.”

  Ignoring her plea, the bearded man nodded, his dark hair haloed by clouds of cigar smoke.

  “It’s a deal, Madam,” he said.

  “How’s that for a deal?” Gabe said.

  “Huh?” Reaching out blindly, Hallie clutched his muscle-corded arm.

  “You model for me and … honey, are you all right?”

  “Yes. Of course I’m all right. Why wouldn’t I be all right?” She shook her head. Then she flexed her arms and legs, as if she played put-your-whole-self-in-and-shake-it-all-about. “I suddenly felt light-headed, that’s all.”

  Gabe chuckled. “It’s the altitude. Most people feel light-headed when they first hit Colorado. We’re so high up, the mountains tickle God’s feet.”

  EIGHT

  We’re so high up, the mountains tickle God’s feet.

  Gabe hadn’t exaggerated. Hallie gazed with awe at the distant mountain peaks, already sprinkled on top with early snowfall, looking like a chocolate-pistachio sundae sprinkled with coconut. Lord, she was starving.

  As if he’d read her mind, or heard her tummy growl, Gabe downshifted.

  “There’s a Red Lobster not far from this exit,” he said. “Josh and I reckoned you’d be starving, so my brother suggested we meet in Colorado Springs, around five. According to my dashboard clock, it’s five-ten. We didn’t know what kind of food you like, but—”

  “Lobster’s great. I love all seafood. Unless I eat at my mom’s or my sister-in-law’s, I’ll order Chinese take-out.” She fiddled with her seat belt. “It’s five-ten? I dozed for an hour and a half? Holy Moses!”

  This time her newest obsolete-speak, Holy Moses, didn’t shock her mind. Or body. After all, her epigrammatic catchwords had something to do with her strange paintings and she planned to solve that particular paradox.

  “I’m going to face that Irish bull head on,” she stated, her voice resolute.

  “Irish bull?” Parking his Chevy Blazer, Gabe slanted her a puzzled glance.

  “Isn’t that your brother? Standing by the restaurant door? Sure it is. The Huck Finn grin and dreadlocks are dead giveaways.”