by Nora Roberts
“Irrelevant. No is the answer. Second, he showed his true colors, the engagement’s been off for months, and you’ve met a fascinating, attractive man. Now, let’s even take it a step further.” Warming up to the subject, Candy shifted on the bench. “Suppose—God forbid—that you had actually been madly in love with Eric. After he had shown himself to be a snake, your heart would have been broken. With time and effort, you would have pulled yourself back together. Right?”
“I certainly like to think so.”
“So we agree.”
“Marginally.”
That was enough for Candy. “Then, heart restored, if you’d met a fascinating and attractive man, you would have been equally free to fall for him. Either way, you’re in the clear.” Satisfied, Candy rose and dusted her palms on her jeans. “So what’s the problem?”
Not certain she could explain, or even make sense of it herself, Eden looked down at her hands. “Because I’ve learned something. Love is a commitment, it’s total involvement, promises, compromises. I’m not sure I can give those things to anyone yet. And if I were, I don’t know if Chase feels at all the same way.”
“Eden, your instincts must tell you he does.”
With a shake of her head, she rose. She did feel better having said it all out loud, but that didn’t change the bottom line. “I’ve learned not to trust my instincts, but to be realistic. Which is why I’m going to go hit the account books.”
“Oh, Eden, give it a break.”
“Unfortunately, I had to give it a break during the poison ivy, the lightning, the stove breakdown and the vet visits.” Hooking her arm through Candy’s, she started to walk toward the door. “You were right, and talking it out helped, but practicality is still the order of the day.”
“Meaning checks and balances.”
“Right. I’d really like to get to it. The advantage is I can frazzle my brain until the bunk really does feel like a feather bed.”
Candy pushed open the door, then squared her shoulders. “I’ll help.”
“Thanks, but I’d like to finish them before Christmas.”
“Oh, low blow, Eden.”
“But true.” She latched the door behind them. “Don’t worry about me, Candy. Talking about it cleared my head a bit.”
“Doing something about it would be better, but it’s a start. Don’t work too late.”
“A couple of hours,” Eden promised.
The office, as Eden arrogantly called it, was a small side room off the kitchen. After switching on the gooseneck lamp on the metal army-surplus desk, she adjusted the screen, flap up. As an afterthought, she switched the transistor radio on the corner of the desk to a classical station. The quiet, familiar melodies would go a long way toward calming her.
Still, as always, she drew in a deep breath as she took her seat behind the desk. Here, she knew too well, things were black-and-white. There were no multiple choices, no softening the rules as there could be in other areas of the camp. Figures were figures and facts were facts. It was up to her to tally them.
Opening the drawers, she pulled out invoices, the business checkbook and the ledger. She began systematically sorting and entering as the tape spilled out of the adding machine at her elbow.
Within twenty minutes, she knew the worst. The additional expenses of the past two weeks had stretched their capital to the limit. No matter how many ways Eden worked the numbers, the answer was the same. They weren’t dead broke, but painfully close to it. Wearily, she rubbed the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger.
They could still make it, she told herself. She pressed her hand down on the pile of papers, letting her palm cover the checks and balances. By the skin of their teeth, she thought, but they could still make it. If there were no more unexpected expenses. And if, she continued, the pile seeming to grow under her hand, she and Candy lived frugally over the winter. She imagined the pile growing another six inches under her restraining hand. If they got the necessary enrollments for the next season, everything would turn around.
Curling her fingers around the papers, she let out a long breath. If one of those ifs fell through, she still had some jewelry that could be sold.
The lamplight fell across her opal-and-diamond ring, but she looked away, feeling guilty at even considering selling it. But she would. If her other choices were taken away, she would. What she wouldn’t do was give up.
The tears began so unexpectedly that they fell onto the blotter before she knew she had shed them. Even as she wiped them away, new ones formed. There was no one to see, no one to hear. Giving in, Eden laid her head on the piles of bills and let the tears come.
They wouldn’t change anything. With tears would come no fresh ideas or brilliant answers, but she let them come anyway. Quite simply, her strength had run out.
He found her like that, weeping almost soundlessly over the neat stacks of paper. At first Chase only stood there, with the door not quite shut at his back. She looked so helpless, so utterly spent. He wanted to go to her, but held himself back. He understood that the tears would be private. She wouldn’t want to share them, particularly not with him. And yet, even as he told himself to step back, he moved toward her.
“Eden.”
Her head shot up at the sound of her name. Her eyes were drenched, but he saw both shock and humiliation in them before she began to dry her cheeks with the backs of her hands.
“What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to see you.” It sounded simple enough, but didn’t come close to what was moving inside him. He wanted to go to her, to gather her close and fix whatever was wrong. He stuck his hands in his pockets and remained standing just inside the door. “I just heard about the gelding this morning. Is he worse?”
She shook her head, then struggled to keep her voice calm. “No, he’s better. It wasn’t as serious as we thought it might be.”
“That’s good.” Frustrated by his inability to think of something less inane, he began to pace. How could he offer comfort when she wouldn’t share the problem? Her eyes were dry now, but he knew it was pride, and pride alone, that held her together. The hell with her pride, he thought. He needed to help.
When he turned back, he saw she had risen from the desk. “Why don’t you tell me about it?”
The need to confide in him was so painfully strong that she automatically threw up the customary shield. “There’s nothing to tell. It’s been a rough couple of weeks. I suppose I’m overtired.”
It was more than that, he thought, though she did look exhausted. “The girls getting to you?”
“No, really, the girls are fine.”
Frustrated, he looked for another answer. The radio was playing something slow and romantic. Glancing toward it, Chase noticed the open ledger. The tail of adding-machine tape was spilling onto the floor. “Is it money? I could help.”
Eden closed the book with a snap. Humiliation was a bitter taste at the back of her throat. At least it dried the last of her tears. “We’re fine,” she told him in a voice that was even and cool. “If you’d excuse me, I still have some work to do.”
Rejection was something Chase had never fully understood until he’d met her. He didn’t care for it. Nodding slowly, he searched for patience. “It was meant as an offer, not an insult.” He would have turned and left her then, but the marks of weeping and sleeplessness gave her a pale, wounded look. “I’m sorry about the trouble you’ve been having the past year, Eden. I knew you’d lost your father, but I didn’t know about the estate.”
She wanted, oh so badly, to reach out, to let him gather her close and give her all the comfort she needed. She wanted to ask him what she should do, and have him give her the answers. But wouldn’t that mean that all the months of struggling for self-sufficiency had been for nothing? She straightened her shoulders. “It isn’t necessary to be sorry.”
“If you had told me yourself, it would have been simpler.”
“It didn’t concern you.”
He didn’t so much ignore the stab of hurt as turn it into annoyance. “Didn’t it? I felt differently—feel differently. Are you going to stand there and tell me there’s nothing between us, Eden?”
She couldn’t deny it, but she was far too confused, far too afraid, to try to define the truth. “I don’t know how I feel about you, except that I don’t want to feel anything. Most of all, I don’t want your pity.”
The hands in his pockets curled into fists. He didn’t know how to handle his own feelings, his own needs. Now she was treating them as though they didn’t matter. He could leave, or he could beg. At the moment, Chase saw no choice between the two. “Understanding and pity are different things, Eden. If you don’t know that, there’s nothing else to say.”
Turning, he left her. The screen door swished quietly behind him.
***
For the next two days, Eden functioned. She gave riding instructions, supervised meals and hiked the hills with groups of girls. She talked and laughed and listened, but the hollowness that had spread inside her when the door had closed at Chase’s back remained.
Guilt and regret. Those were the feelings she couldn’t shake, no matter how enthusiastically she threw herself into her routine. She’d been wrong. She’d known it even as it was happening, but pride had boxed her in. He had offered to help. He had offered to care, and she’d refused him. If there was a worse kind of selfishness, she couldn’t name it.
She’d started to phone him, but hadn’t been able to dial the number. It hadn’t been pride that had held her back this time. Every apology that formed in her mind was neat and tidy and meaningless. She couldn’t bear to give him a stilted apology, nor could she bear the possibility that he wouldn’t care.
Whatever had started to grow between them, she had squashed. Whatever might have been, she had cut off before it had begun to flower. How could she explain to Chase that she’d been afraid of being hurt again? How could she tell him that when he’d offered help and understanding she’d been afraid to accept it because it was so easy to be dependent?
She began to ride out alone at night again. Solitude didn’t soothe her as it once had; it only reminded her that she had taken steps to ensure that she would remain alone. The nights were warm, with the lingering scent of honeysuckle bringing back memories of a night where there had been pictures in the sky. She couldn’t look at the stars without thinking of him.
Perhaps that was why she rode to the lake, where the grass was soft and thick. Here she could smell the water and wild blossoms. The horse’s hooves were muffled, and she could just hear the rustle of wings in flight—some unseen bird in search of prey or a mate.
Then she saw him.
The moon was on the wane, so he was only a shadow, but she knew he was watching her. Just as she had known, somehow, that she would find him there tonight. Reining in, she let the magic take her. For the moment, even if it were only a moment, she would forget everything but that she loved him. Tomorrow would take care of itself.
She slid from the horse and went to him.
He said nothing. Until she touched him, he wasn’t sure she wasn’t a dream. In silence, she framed his face in her hands and pressed her lips to his. No dream had ever tasted so warm. No illusion had ever felt so soft.
“Eden—”
With a shake of her head, she cut off his words. There were weeks of emptiness to fill, and no questions that needed answering. Rising on her toes, she kissed him again. The only sound was her sigh as his arms finally came around her. She discovered a bottomless well of giving inside her. Something beyond passion, something beyond desire. Here was comfort, strength and the understanding she had been afraid to accept.
His fingers trailed up to her hair, as if each touch reassured him she was indeed real. When he opened his eyes again, his arms wouldn’t be empty, but filled with her. Her cheek rubbed his, smooth skin against a day’s growth of beard. With her head nestled in a curve of his shoulder, she watched the wink and blink of fireflies and thought of stars.
They stood in silence while an owl hooted and the horse whinnied in response.
“Why did you come?” He needed an answer, one he could take back with him when she had left him again.
“To see you.” She drew away, wanting to see his face. “To be with you.”
“Why?”
The magic shimmered and began to dim. With a sigh, she drew back. Dreams were for sleeping, Eden reminded herself. And questions had to be answered. “I wanted to apologize for the way I behaved before. You were being kind.” Searching for words, she turned to pluck a leaf from the tree that shadowed them. “I know how I must have seemed, how I sounded, and I am sorry. It’s difficult, still difficult for me to . . .” Restless, she moved her shoulders. “We were able to muffle most of the publicity after my father died, but there was a great deal of gossip, of speculation and not-so-quiet murmurs.”
When he said nothing, she shifted again, uncomfortable. “I suppose I resented all of that more than anything else. It became very important to me to prove myself, that I could manage, even succeed. I realize that I’ve become sensitive about handling things myself and that when you offered to help, I reacted badly. I apologize for that.”
Silence hung another moment before he took a step toward her. Eden thought he moved the way the shadows did. Silently. “That’s a nice apology, Eden. Before I accept it, I’d like to ask if the kiss was part of it.”
So he wasn’t going to make it easy for her. Her chin lifted. She didn’t need an easy road any longer. “No.”
Then he smiled and circled her throat with his hand. “What was it for then?”
The smile disturbed her more than the touch, though it was the touch she backed away from. Strange how you could take one step and find yourself sunk to the hips. “Does there have to be a reason?” When she walked toward the edge of the lake, she saw an owl swoop low over the water. That was the way she felt, she realized. As if she were skimming along the surface of something that could take her in over her head. “I wanted to kiss you, so I did.”
The tension he’d lived with for weeks had vanished, leaving him almost light-headed. He had to resist the urge to scoop her up and carry her home, where he’d begun to understand she belonged. “Do you always do what you want?”
She turned back with a toss of her head. She’d apologized, but the pride remained. “Always.”
He grinned, nudging a smile from her. “So do I.”
“Then we should understand each other.”
He trailed a finger down her cheek. “Remember that.”
“I will.” Steady again, she moved past him to the gelding. “We’re having a dance a week from Saturday. Would you like to come?”
His hand closed over hers on the reins. “Are you asking me for a date?”
Amused, she swung her hair back before settling a foot in the stirrup. “Certainly not. We’re short of chaperons.”
She bent her leg to give herself a boost into the saddle, but found herself caught at the waist. She dangled in midair for a moment before Chase set her on the ground again, turning her to face him. “Will you dance with me?”
She remembered the last time they had danced and saw from the look in his eyes that he did as well. Her heart fluttered in the back of her dry throat, but she lifted a brow and smiled. “Maybe.”
His lips curved, then descended slowly to brush against hers. She felt the world tilt, then steady at an angle only lovers understand. “A week from Saturday,” he murmured, then lifted her easily into the saddle. His hand remained over hers another moment. “Miss me.”
He stayed by the water until she was gone and the night was silent again.
Chapter 7
The last weeks of summer were hot and long. At night, there was invariably heat lightning and rumbling thunder, but little rain. Eden pushed herself through the days, blocking out the uncertainty of life after September.
She wasn’t escaping, she told herself. She wa
s coping with one day at a time. If she had learned one important lesson over the summer, it was that she could indeed make changes, in herself and in her life.
The frightened and defeated woman who had come to Camp Liberty almost as if it were a sanctuary would leave a confident, successful woman who could face the world on her own terms.
Standing in the center of the compound, she ran her hands down her narrow hips before dipping them into the pockets of her shorts. Next summer would be even better, now that they’d faced the pitfalls and learned how to maneuver around them. She knew she was skipping over months of her life, but found she didn’t want to dwell on the winter. She didn’t want to think of Philadelphia and snowy sidewalks, but of the mountains and what she had made of her life there.
If it had been possible, she would have found a way to stay behind during the off-season. Eden had begun to understand that only necessity and the need for employment were taking her back east. It wasn’t her home any longer.
With a shake of her head, Eden pushed away thoughts of December. The sun was hot and bright. She could watch it shimmer on the surface of Chase’s lake and think of him.
She wondered what would have happened if she had met him two years earlier when her life had been so ordered and set and mapped-out. Would she have fallen in love with him then? Perhaps it
