“When we got chased home by the thunderstorm, we were at the point where the police had picked you up begging for bus fare to go visit your mother in New Orleans,” she prompted.
“Are you sure you want to hear this? Couldn’t we talk about you instead?”
“Later. I have news, but I want to know what happened to you before we get into that.” She smiled her encouragement, and Tate thought with surprise, She really cares.
As he had done before, he kept emotion out of it, relating his own story as he would if he was reporting it for a newspaper. Not that this was so difficult; right after college, he had held a reporter’s job on the staff of the Raleigh Express for three interesting years.
As Maggie listened, Tate told her how, as the years of his childhood passed, he often asked his mother Chantelle if he could live with her, but because she loved him so much, she thought he’d better stay where he was. Once he wrote to her and asked if he couldn’t live with her, could he please go to North Carolina to live with his father? Chantelle wrote back that his father was a no-good bum who hated them both. Tate believed it. What other choice did he have?
His ninth set of foster parents wanted to adopt Tate, but Chantelle refused to sign a release. When she got her life together, when she finally signed a recording contract, she wanted Tate to come to live with her. She loved him too much to let him go, she said.
“At least you had a family who wanted to adopt you,” Maggie said.
“They were nice,” Tate said reflectively. “The father spent hours playing basketball with me in the driveway, and the mother taught me to make toasted cheese sandwiches, but after the adoption fell through, I was sent to another foster family. I was heartbroken and withdrew into an angry, impenetrable shell where no one and nothing could reach me. By the time I was twelve, I was a chronic runaway. I had hardened my heart to the world. I didn’t fit in anywhere. I had no identity, no family, no friends. No one could reach me—not my teachers, not my caseworker, not anyone. And then my middle school physical education teacher discovered that I could play basketball.”
Finally, he told her, he had found a place where he felt comfortable. To his amazement, he became the star forward on his team, and when he got to high school, he was the star on that team, too.
When he finally realized that others respected him, he began to respect himself. His grades improved dramatically, and he won a full scholarship to the University of North Carolina, where he played championship ball for four years. In college, he was stunned to realize that he was popular; people liked him. Before long he had melded into the multicultural student population and was dating, joining a fraternity, planning a career. He thought he’d never look back.
And then his father died, which changed everything. Suddenly he’d been brought face-to-face with the part of him that he had so long denied—his Cherokee heritage.
“What happened to your mother?” Maggie asked.
“I sent her an invitation to my college graduation, and it came back stamped Addressee Unknown.
“And that’s the last you’ve heard of her?”
Tate shook his head. “I was often interviewed on television as a spokesman for Conso, and once Ma’s friend Agnes, who was vacationing here, recognized me from a picture that my mother had sent her. She called me at work. She said that my mother had died alone in a hotel in Dallas a few years ago.”
He glanced at Maggie to see how she was taking all this, and her expression was pained and more serious than he had ever seen it. He hadn’t told her his story so that she’d pity him, and he hoped she didn’t. Maybe it was time to let her know that he didn’t hold any grudges.
“The thing to remember, Maggie, is that I made it. I became a success in spite of everything that happened to me.”
“I’m sure you wish your father could have known how well you’ve done,” she said.
“He knew where I was when I was a college basketball star because my name was all over the papers in those days, and by that time I was using his last name, Jennings. He never tried to contact me.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. He moved away from Scot’s Cove about the time that I graduated from UNC, so he must have lost track of me. After college, I worked for a newspaper and later got a job in a public relations department for a big company near the coast. That led to my job with Conso, and eventually they transferred me to the office here. My dad never knew that I’d landed right here where he’d grown up. When he died in New York City, I read the obituary in the local paper and called Charlie Bearkiller, who was listed as one of the survivors. Through him I found out that my father had left me everything he owned, including this piece of land.”
“And now you and Charlie are good friends,” Maggie finished softly.
“That’s about it.”
It had grown dark, and in the brush, fireflies winked and blinked. Overhead a sickle moon was suspended in a velvety sky; he could not have been more content. Maggie slid her hand out of his and brushed back a strand of blond hair, hooking it behind her ear. He swallowed, wanting nothing so much as to kiss that pale expanse of skin along her exposed neck.
If she knew that his thoughts had swerved toward the pleasures of the flesh, she gave no sign. Maggie seemed comfortable, both with the place and with him. She grinned at him and linked her arms loosely around her legs. He liked the way she lit up the clearing with her bright face and luminous eyes. He had no need of firelight or moonlight when Maggie was near.
“You won’t believe what I did about my job,” she said.
Tate lay back and propped himself on one arm. “Try me,” he said, making himself match her casual manner.
“I called my boss at MMB&O and asked her for six months’ leave like you did with Conso,” Maggie told him, looking pleased with herself. “I think Bronwyn was fit to be tied. Which is about what I would expect from her since she’s been working on that Irwin Twine campaign.”
Tate laughed at that. “Do you think the company will go for it?” he asked.
“Bronwyn called back today and offered to let me work at home. At the cabin, I mean. Today I bought a fax machine, and as soon as my computer arrives from the office, I’ll be in business. I can’t afford to quit, since I’ll certainly need the job to support my baby once he or she is born.”
“What about whatsisname?” he asked as though her answer wouldn’t interest him much. “Will he contribute to the baby’s support?”
Maggie’s face became somber. “I don’t know. I hope so. On the other hand, I would dearly love to tell Kip Baker to take a long walk off a short pier so I won’t have to accept money from him ever.”
“I don’t think you still love this guy,” Tate said, testing the waters.
“I never said I did. I said I wasn’t sure. And the longer I stay here on Flat Top Mountain, the less relevant to the situation he seems.”
“Any second thoughts you’re having about Kip Baker are good news to me,” he said mildly.
She studied him for a moment, and he took that opportunity to reassure her. “I care about you, Maggie,” he said quietly with all the force of the conviction that he felt in his heart. He waited to see how she would respond.
“I care about you, too,” she said in a troubled voice.
“I won’t pressure you for more than you’re willing to give. I promised,” he said, wondering if this was realistic even as he said the words. They had already seen and touched each other intimately, and telling himself that it had been Peg and Tsani might well be a cop-out and a refusal to face reality.
“You won’t?” she said hesitantly.
“I promised,” he repeated.
He knew she was thinking this over, and he realized suddenly that what she was worried about was not how to fend him off if he became amorous but how to convince him to continue the other day’s proceedings if she decided that she wanted to. He turned away to smother a chuckle, camouflaging it as a cough.
“Then,”
Maggie said in a very small voice, “I guess you wouldn’t be interested in making love to me tonight, would you?”
Chapter Eight
The cough almost choked him.
“What did you say?”
Maggie sighed. “All right, maybe it was a bad idea,” she conceded.
He studied her eyes, so deep and mysterious, and her lips, so full and inviting. Impulsively he reached over and covered her hand with his. “It was a very good idea. But I’m not sure it’s what you really want.”
“It was when I said it,” she told him.
“I hope it was you talking and not Peg,” he suggested with a glint of humor.
“It was me. I had this kind of spur-of-the-moment feeling that if we don’t make love now, we never will. And that would be sad, I think.” He didn’t doubt her earnestness at all, and he certainly agreed with her that it would be a tragedy if they never made love. He was taken by surprise by her unexpected suggestion, that’s all.
He touched her hair, which was bound up in a braid. It was the softest hair he had ever felt, so different from his own. “And why, if we don’t make love now, do you think we never will?”
She gazed at him mutely, and he thought she might not answer. “Because I’m pregnant,” she said finally. “Because soon you’ll leave your camp to go back to work. You’ll move back to your apartment in town, you won’t live on the mountain any more. We might not even be friends.”
“We’ll be friends no matter where I live,” he said with great conviction.
“That’s good,” she said. “My pregnancy—” she began, but she stopped when she saw his expression.
“What about it?”
“I know that I’ll become less desirable as I get bigger,” she continued in a resolute tone. “I won’t be attractive when I’m huge with child.”
She sounded so woebegone that Tate leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “You will be beautiful no matter how big you get. I know you will.”
“To whom? The only thing I’ll be able to have a relationship with is the Goodyear blimp, and I’m not sure what gender it is. Come to think of it, maybe that’s the point.” Tate was not surprised to see tears welling in Maggie’s eyes, and he reached out and tipped one with his finger. It quivered there, a prism in the firelight, before it fell to the dust.
“Are you sure you’re not just feeling sorry for yourself? What’s this about, anyway?” he said.
“I can’t get my jeans on anymore,” she said. “My stomach is too big.”
He looked at Maggie’s stomach and saw nothing different about it other than she was wearing what appeared to be a man’s shorts. “You look fine to me,” he said.
She took his hand and moved it to the triangle where her belly curved so gently. “There,” she said, pressing his hand into her. “Feel it?”
He did feel something under the fabric and zipper, a kind of a round hard mound above Maggie’s pelvic bone. He didn’t move his hand; he didn’t know what to do. He felt himself beginning to get aroused, but if Maggie realized it, she gave no sign.
“I just—just—” and Maggie began to sob.
Tate removed his hand from her abdomen and took her in his arms. “Shh,” he said as she wept, “it’s going to be okay. It’s going to be all right.” Reluctantly he reminded himself to take it easy.
Finally when her sobbing quieted and all they could hear was the crackling of the fire and the dulcet calls of night birds in the darkness surrounding them, he moved slightly apart from Maggie.
“I would love to make love to you if I thought it was what you really want. What you want—what you need—is someone to care about you. When and if we make love, Maggie, it will be for a better reason than loneliness.”
She sighed deeply and stirred in his arms. “Tate,” she said. “I’d better go.” He saw the beginnings of an even greater distress building in her, and he felt her unhappiness like a stab in his own heart. He couldn’t let her leave now.
“Go? And be even more lonely when you’re back at your cabin and start replaying this conversation in your mind? I don’t want you to regret any of this, Maggie. Dear Maggie, I want to comfort you, but not in a way that you might regret later.”
He drew her down on the bed of fresh juniper boughs where he laid his blanket at night. He slid his arm under her head, and she stared at him in the darkness. Neither of them spoke for a long time. He caressed her face with his eyes, lost himself in the symmetry of her features, inhaled her sweet natural fragrance.
She lifted a hand and touched her fingertips to his face. The whites of her eyes glistened in the firelight, and her lips were slightly parted. She was more beautiful than ever in that moment, and he knew that he wanted her to fall in love with him as deeply as he was falling in love with her. He wanted it more desperately than he had wanted anything in his whole life, and not just to save Tsani and Peg from wandering in search of each other. This had to do with him and with Maggie and the way they had met when each was at a major turning point in life, when they both needed solace and comfort.
She smiled at him. “You seem so different here in your camp,” she said softly.
“How different?”
“More free.”
“I hope so. You know, Maggie, I’ve learned a lot by taking this six-month leave. Now the hard part is going to be to translate what I’ve learned as one of the Real People to my ordinary life.”
He smoothed her hair, and her braid came undone. He unraveled it by threading his fingers through the pale strands again and again until her hair framed her face in soft waves. He took in her lovely gray eyes, the small nose, the pale freckle at the right corner of her mouth. He wanted more than anything in the world to kiss that freckle.
Maggie pulled his head down and kissed him on the lips, slowly and gently. She gazed at him, her eyes wide and serious. She hesitated, perhaps gauging his mood. “I want to stay here tonight,” she said.
He certainly didn’t want her to go. “In that case, I think you’re entirely too far away from me,” he said. He took her in his arms. She sighed, or maybe it was a low moan, and nestled closer to him. He felt protective of her, as if she had been entrusted to him—as perhaps she had. His conversations with Maggie had made him feel closer to her than he had felt to anyone in his life.
While he pondered this, a whippoorwill cried overhead. When he next looked down at Maggie, her long tangled lashes were curled against her cheek, and she slept peacefully. He found that he couldn’t look at her without desiring her, and so he stared into the fire for a long time until he finally slept.
He was awakened once during the night when Maggie said clearly and distinctly against his shoulder, “Pickles. Ice cream.”
He was sure that she was awake, but the light of Grandfather Moon showed her eyes to be closed; her eyelids twitched as if she were deep in sleep. He listened to her soft regular breathing for a time before getting up and tossing more wood on the fire. Then he went into the asi and brought out a blanket, which he tucked carefully around both of them.
If she had truly awakened and asked for pickles and ice cream, he would have done anything in his power to get them for her. But she didn’t. Finally, smiling to himself, he fell soundly asleep.
MAGGIE WOKE AT DAWN, and for a moment she couldn’t figure out where she was. Then she remembered. The warm musky smell of him reminded her that it was Tate who slept beside her. The hand on the back of her thigh was his. Memory flooded into her consciousness: his camp. Asking him if he wanted to make love to her. Her cheeks grew hot with the memory. Apparently pickles and ice cream weren’t the only things she craved at this stage.
She couldn’t imagine what Tate must have thought last night when she’d so awkwardly come on to him. Thank goodness he had cautioned against making love; otherwise, she’d feel like a first-class fool this morning.
She turned her head to look at him and saw that he was lying on his back, his chest rising and falling gently. His free hand rested
on his diaphragm, and it too rose and fell to the rhythm of his breathing. He looked like the little boy he must have been, a little boy who had suffered in so many ways. No wonder he didn’t like the idea of single mothers raising their children alone; his mother had really botched the job.
But her own mother hadn’t, and Maggie was sure she couldn’t fail as a parent with such a good role model. Eventually Tate might understand why Maggie felt equal to bringing up a child on her own. He understood so many other things about her; certainly last night as they poured their hearts out to each other, they had bonded.
Yet she wasn’t at all sure how much feeling Tate had for her over and above kindness and compassion. And lust, of course. She could hardly ignore that, even after the sweetness of last night.
Thinking about it, about how much she had wanted him to make love to her, she was embarrassed. Now maybe he wouldn’t ever want to make love, and it was all her fault. Suddenly she wanted to be up and gone, saving both of them from the inevitable embarrassment of the morning after a night when nothing had happened.
Or had it?
Carefully she eased away from Tate, lifting his hand and setting it down beside him. He sighed and rolled onto his side so that his face was toward her. She wouldn’t disturb him.
In the fresh morning air, the lingering aroma of smoke blended with the scent of juniper. The fire had gone out, and birds were beginning to try to drown out each others’ songs in the branches overhead. Once she’d washed her face, she would head back to her car.
Maggie followed what she surmised was the path to the river. Preoccupied with her thoughts, she suddenly heard a freshet of birdsong rippling from a nearby glade and for some reason, it was so prepossessing that she automatically turned and headed down the narrow trail leading in that direction. She stopped in her tracks when she saw what lay within the circle of trees ahead, greeting its jewel-like beauty with a sharp intake of breath.
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