His blue eyes grazed over her. “You’re upset.”
She shrugged. “Look all you want.” She went to the closet, gave the door a yank, and dropped her shoes on the floor with a clatter.
“I see the pattern,” he said, turning to the images mounted on the wall. “Your beloveds,” he said, washing the air from left to right with his strong, well-shaped hand. “Longest-ago to most recent.”
She closed the closet door.
He came back to her, stood at her shoulder by the left-most end of the gallery and pointed to the oldest black and white print, as if he were the collection curator and she had fallen too far back in the tour. “Your mother. Very first. Point of origin. Early shots, filled with enthusiasm. There’s a clear talent here, but not yet developed. Next—your father. But only one shot of him, which I find interesting, and he’s not looking pleased with you. Your brothers, all of them with their backs turned, except for James. It’s so telling that only James has a name when you speak of them. The others are a gang: ‘My brothers’.”
He stepped away, moving alongside the photos.
“Here, an interesting gap. What I don’t see, and would have expected, are childhood friends. College chums. But, nope,” he said with a hint of sadness. “Not a one. A digression into architectural shots and landscapes. Technically superb—but nothing passionate.”
He moved along. “This one…” he trailed off, the muscles in his jaw twitching. “It shocks me that it’s here, on your wall. I never would have expected it.”
It was a reprint of the blurry shot taken of her on the billiard table with the Emir.
Daniel studied her. “A reminder,” he said softly. “Cautionary.” He made a small sound in his throat, took another step down her gallery. “James resurfaces, with Gary. A loving pair, crowd of friends, mostly same-sex couples. Their commitment ceremony?”
She nodded.
“The next images we see are of Ari. So many of him. The love of your life—candids of him playing piano, with his men, by the sea, a studio shot of him nude. Your talent has come to the fore. All these disparate shots and they all have the same theme: that look in his eyes that says he loves you. He’s not a handsome man, but in every picture, he looks attractive, like someone you’d want to know.”
He smiled a little wistfully, and leaned forward to tap a cluster of three-by-five snapshots. “These aren’t your photos, of course. They’re just likenesses. Nice dress on you. Good suit on Ari. The two of you together in every shot, holding hands, arms around each other, smiling. Happy. James and Gary, a little tipsy, at your wedding.”
There was a gap after the images of Ari, an open space with nothing on it. He rested his palm against the wall as if it were injured and needed healing touch. “The Pulitzer. That’s what belongs here. Ari’s death. But you can’t bear to look at it, so you’ve just left the space.”
A frisson ran down her spine. She shouldn’t be surprised by his perspicacity, but she was. He was reading her wall—her life—perfectly.
“Luc, in the background at your wedding, comes to the fore here in Kavsak. You’ve got him framed alone at the airport, his young troops in the background, the weight of responsibility on his shoulders.” He tipped his head, examining the portrait more carefully. “Hmm. Didn’t see it first time, but there’s love revealed here, too. Only…hinted. Emotion concealed. Too much soldier up front.”
He looked her in the face, seemingly distracted by an unspoken thought. He broke off, went to the next photograph.
She moved with him, nearly bumped into him when he stopped.
He tapped Jasha’s image. “Your quintessential relationship. He’s driving, the burned side of his face toward you and Kavsak a blur beyond the windows. He’s glanced your way and in that instant, you see friendship, trust, respect. What a complicated man: a warrior, a loving son, a thinker.” Daniel paused reflectively. His brows drew together as he rested his fingertips on the edge of the frame. “Huge loss, this man. Huge.”
The next photo was Dr. J, back when Brenna first met her.
“Gracious scholar, serving coffee. This was her home, I’m guessing, before she lost it. I like this framed picture in the background. Her with her husband and four sons. You’re at your professional height, showing your eye for detail and composition. There are pictures within pictures now, stories within stories in every image. So much sub-text.”
“Mariana with a bloody scalpel,” he continued. “Exhausted healer, doggedly hanging on. The line of patients has no end.”
She tracked alongside him, nearly at the last of the portraits. The present.
“And here,” he chuckled, “Mom. My mom, all her wisdom clear to see. And look at that smile—that appreciation of who you are. Success!” He grinned, gave her a friendly elbow-nudge. “She cracked the tough nut, and the tough nut knows it.”
Brenna dropped her eyes.
He took a final step to the last framed image. Squeak, the over-the-shoulder, down-the-bosom shot she had labored over.
“This is what you see when you hold her. Such an effortless-looking representation. I’ve got to wonder what contortions you went through to get it. But look at her, the way she looks up at you, staring into your face, her hand resting placidly on you. Mutual adoration. Even though we can’t see your face, we know it. Pictures say as much about the photographer as they do about the subject.”
Well, lay me bare, Daniel Ellsworth.
“So tell me,” he said, turning fully to her, standing closer, ratcheting the potent chemistry of proximity. “Anything missing?”
Uneasiness welled up inside her. He’d noticed the other omissions, read between the other lines. Why not the glaring one?
“It’s…” Her voice croaked, failing her. She cleared her throat, tried again. “It’s incomplete.”
His eyes pored over her as they had that day in the stairwell at the hospital. “Tell me how it’s incomplete,” he said.
He still had her back, she realized. He’d waited for her to settle Squeak, walked her through her gallery to help her re-center herself in what was familiar, and now he was giving her the chance to say what was hers to say—what he had been waiting a long time to hear.
“It’s…” Her heart began thumping in her ears. Her feelings rushed through her like a flash flood, an uncontrollable torrent overflowing its borders. She wanted to tell him how much she loved him, how she missed him, how she felt bereft without him, how she didn’t care where he lived or what he did for a living, that she wanted him to be Squeak’s dad, that she wanted blue-eyed, spiky-haired children, that she just wanted to be with him for the rest of her life.
And she wanted to say how sorry she was for all the hurt she had caused him, for driving off with James and abandoning him to cope alone with the awful thing she’d done. She wanted to convince him she could be worthy now, and make him happy. But she couldn’t imagine how he could ever trust her again, or forgive her— God. She closed her eyes. How could she even begin to explain all that?
“Nothing to say, Brenna?” His voice cut through her swirling thoughts.
Her eyes flew open again, wide with alarm. “No—”
His shoulders sagged. Mouth tightened. Eyes found the door.
She caught his forearm. “No! It’s that…there’s so much to say, I don’t know where to start.”
He sank his hands into his pockets. “There’s only one thing I need to hear, Bren.”
She nodded. “My gallery, Daniel. The portraits are my loved ones, and you’re not in it. That’s all I see, when I look at it—that you’re missing. That’s all I feel, that empty space where you belong.”
He shook his head, his expression pained. “Say the words,” he entreated. “The ones that are just for me.”
Jasha was on that wall, she realized belatedly. Luc and Ari, too. There were categories—friend, unrequited lover, husband—and Daniel needed to know where he fit. She swallowed, reached into memories that would never go away. “Maric put hi
s gun to your head,” she said. “I chose to save you.”
He grunted, struck by the power of her simple declarative sentences and the act they represented.
“Daniel—there was never a question whether I loved you.”
He looked stricken—as if all along it should have been obvious, and he had missed the banner waving in his face.
“The question,” she continued, “was whether you could forgive me for having done so. I traded you for the children. I knew you’d never want that, but I—” She clasped her hand over her mouth, fighting a sob, too disturbed to continue.
“Bren,” he said, gently touching her hair, “the children are safe home.”
“No,” she demurred, trying to collect herself again. “It was the act that mattered, not the reprieve. I betrayed what you would have wish—”
He leaned forward, caught her chin, and brought his mouth down on hers.
She was caught up in her protestation. She wanted to explain the impossible. She wanted to resolve the irresolvable. She… His mouth was gentle, insistent. Oh, God. She remembered, now, the taste of him. Slowly, she stopped resisting. Gradually, she shifted focus. Incrementally, she yielded. Hesitantly, she raised her arms, circled his shoulders, felt her breasts flattening against his chest. He eased his hand down her back to the curve above her bottom and drew her to the solid strength of his body. A moan escaped her, and she spiraled the rest of the way into him.
“It’s ironic,” Daniel murmured, tempering the gathering momentum between them, “that I lament not having saved us, and you mourn that you did.”
She gasped, a small surprised sound, and pulled back to look at him. It had not occurred to her that they were suffering from opposite responses to the same event.
“The point I’m trying to make,” he said, cupping her face in his hands, “is that no amount of analysis can turn the incomprehensible into anything other than what it was. We have to stop holding ourselves accountable for circumstances that were never under our control. Those were pivotal minutes of our lives, sweetheart, but not the totality of them.”
She nodded, hearing him, understanding the need to move forward.
“And, we have to stop distrusting the one good thing that did come out of Kavsak—”
“Love,” she whispered, completing the thought. “The least-expected thing of all.”
“Love, Bren. No matter what impossible choices life brings.”
“No matter what impossible decisions?” she asked uncertainly.
“No matter.”
She slid her arms around his waist, and slowly, falteringly, lay her head on his shoulder. “I’m sorry I hurt you,” she said, emotion hitching her belly. “I didn’t mean to, Daniel, I just...”
“You were broken, Brenna.” He pressed his lips against the nape of her neck, reassured her with caresses. “I know it wasn’t on purpose, or out of disregard.”
She straightened again so she could look him in the eye. “I want to love you so well that you don’t have to forgive me all the time. So you never doubt me.”
“Good,” he said. He began swaying, moving her with him. A pulse, reverberating deep within them, was quickening. “I’d like that.”
“Could I—” She pressed her lips together.
He turned with her, looked down into her face. “Could you what?”
“Could I have the bracelet back?”
Daniel stopped. The flecks of gray in her eyes were dancing with the intensity of her feelings. “It’s the equivalent of a wedding ring, Brenna.”
“I know,” she said. “I want it.”
“Enough to make a lifetime commitment?” He needed a lifemate. Nothing less would suffice. He had to make that clear.
“For better or worse? In sickness and in health? ’Til death do us part?” she asked. “Aren’t those the boxes that you and I have been checking off this past while, Daniel? However awkwardly on my part.”
He thought about that. Flexed his mind to reinterpret their relationship as she would see it. Nothing with Brenna seemed to run an expected course. But like a river that cut its own path across rough terrain, she somehow still managed to reach the sea.
And take him with her.
He nodded, found himself moving again to a sensuous tempo. She readily took it up. They were dancing to music only they could hear, moving toward a place that only they would occupy in each other’s lives.
He turned her without haste, skimmed her hips with his own, threaded his thigh between hers. He felt the heat rising through his body, sensed hers answering, not to be stopped by tuxedo or designer dress. He pressed forward.
Her breath caught.
Yes, he wordlessly acknowledged, he sought admittance to her innermost core. His heart didn’t deny it and his body couldn’t conceal it.
Tears gathered at her lids and slid down her cheeks.
“I like you this way,” he murmured, his face hovering near hers.
“Red-eyed and runny-nosed?” she asked, sniffling.
He chuckled, gave his head a tiny shake. “Open,” he said. “Accessible.”
She caught his face in her hands and kissed him. Breathlessly breaking the bond, she stepped backwards, guiding him toward her bed. “Come here to me,” she whispered. “I want to make your heart sing.”
Day Three Page 64
