by Lin Stepp
Her dark eyes met his. “When did you start shooting?”
“After you dressed,” he answered honestly. “It wouldn’t have been right to take them before. But I wanted to.”
“Well, then.” She smoothed her hands through her wet hair. “It’s not every day a woman is admired by a man only as a subject for photography.”
He eyed her speculatively. “You don’t really want me to respond to that, Zolakieran.”
She dropped her eyes. “No, I guess not. And I didn’t mean to bait you with my words.”
Zola scooted forward on the big rock to dangle her feet in the water. “This is one of my favorite places in the world, Spencer. I always feel a sense of joy when I am here, a sense of cleansing.”
Spencer walked over to a flat rock by a tree and unloaded his camera equipment. Then he took off his vest and stripped off his sweat-damp shirt. Seeming to pick up on Zola’s ease with herself, Spencer pulled off his socks and boots and then dropped his jeans. He waded out into the deep, green pool in only his plaid boxers and then dived into the depths of the water.
The water felt cold but refreshing. He swam across the pool and then rolled over on his back to savor the feel of the rippling currents around him.
Pulling himself to his feet in a shallow spot, he playfully skimmed a handful of water Zola’s way. “Aren’t you going to come back in?”
She smiled at him. “I don’t think I’ll tempt fate quite that closely, Spencer Jackson. You’re very handsome there in the sun with the water sliding down your body.”
“I know the feeling,” he said, grinning back at her.
She splashed water at him. “I expect you do.”
Spencer swam a little longer, feeling the tension of the day ease out of him in the process, and then he pulled himself up onto the big boulder to sit beside Zola in the sun.
“You’re getting me damp again,” she complained.
“You’ll dry.” He gave her a teasing look and shook his wet hair so the droplets sprinkled on her.
To his surprise, she leaned over to kiss him. It was another of those sweet, spontaneous kisses, and she laughed afterward as she cupped his face in her hands.
“You’re a handsome man, Spencer Gordon Jackson.” Her eyes roved over him in admiration.
He found her lips again and kissed her back. Pulling away, he smoothed back her hair and then leaned in to kiss her forehead. “And you are a very beautiful woman, Zolakieran Sidella Eley Devon.”
She laughed a warm, husky laugh. “You’re the only person who ever remembers my whole name.”
He laughed back with her, propping his arms on the rock behind him to look up at the sky as he’d seen her do. “I’ve snapped this day into my memory—made a photograph of it in my mind.”
“I love you when you’re like this, Spencer.” She lay back on the rock in the sun, and Spencer dropped back to lie beside her.
The sun shone bright overhead, and the rock felt sun-warmed and hot underneath them.
“I’ve always been happiest when out of doors,” he told her.
They lay quietly for a few minutes, enjoying the pleasure of the day.
Spencer realized he hadn’t known enough moments like this in his lifetime. He wished he had.
As his thoughts darkened, he felt a hand steal over to take his.
“Talk about it,” Zola said. “Give the pain to the sun and the sky. Let them take it up and away.”
He looked toward her. “It’s not that easy.”
“It can be,” she said. “Just close your eyes and try it. Say, sun and sky, I give you this pain today. Take it and carry it away.”
Spencer thought about it. A child’s game. A playful act.
Without much conscious thought, he repeated, “Sun and sky take away the pain that’s left behind from all the times my brother hurt me.”
Zola muttered some words he didn’t understand and laid a soft hand on his midriff. “And let the pain be gone forever from Spencer Jackson. Take what fragments you can today, sun and sky, and let them never return.”
Spencer felt a little silly and yet much lighter. “Your turn,” he said.
She lifted her arms skyward. “Sun and sky, take away the old hurt that sometimes comes to haunt me of losing my mother so young.”
Zola laid her hand on her own midriff then.
“And let it be gone forever,” she repeated. “Take what fragments you can today, sun and sky, and let them never return.”
It almost seemed to Spencer that he felt the pieces of her hurt rising up toward the blue sky. He seemed to feel Zola’s relief, and he heard her sigh softly.
The game drew him in then. “Sun and sky, take away all my old hurts from the times my parents weren’t there for me as they should have been. Let me forgive them. Let me forget the disappointment. Let me walk away from the past. Let me be free.”
Again Zola laid her hand on his midriff and muttered words he couldn’t understand. “Let it be gone forever,” she said with passion. “Take what fragments you can today, sun and sky, and let them never return.”
She lifted her hands skyward then. “Oh, Great Lord above. We commit our hurts and pains of the past to you today. We give them to You and to the sun and sky. We cast the cares of them up to You and release them. Forgive us for not giving them to You before.”
Spencer felt an odd lightness of being as she spoke.
She sat up then and reached down beside the big boulder where they sat to grab a handful of small, smooth pebbles.
“Here,” she said, handing him half of them. “Throw them off one by one into the water as you remember the sins or sorrows you want to be free of. It’s another symbolic way to lighten your load. It’s in the Bible, you know, as a part of one of the old festivals.”
Seeing her so intensely involved in the process, Spencer humored her and began to toss the pebbles into the swirling waters one by one.
She scowled at him. “You have to believe you’re truly throwing them away, Spencer,” she admonished.
He focused his attention then and began to name the sorrows he never wanted to relive, or think of again, with each rock. Zola was right about it bringing a cleansing feeling.
They sat together companionably on the rock afterward, each thinking their own thoughts.
“You’re good for me,” he said at last with open candor. “I’ve tried to fight my feelings for you, for reasons hard to explain, but I want you to know I carry strong feelings for you, Zola Devon.”
“And I for you,” she said, dropping her eyes. “I have tried to fight my feelings for you many times as well.”
He stroked her cheek with the back of his hand.
“Do you think I’m normal?” he asked impulsively.
She laughed a throaty laugh. “No. I think you are gifted, and that is better. Who would want to be normal when you could be gifted?”
Spencer shook his head. “You sound like David.”
Zola shrugged. “David is quite wise sometimes.” She hugged her knees as she turned her eyes to his quizzically. “Why would you want to just be normal, Spencer?”
He thought about it. “I guess because I was always made fun of for being different in so many ways.” He looked away.
Zola giggled. “Maya would call all of those people who made fun of you for being who you are bootoos—foolish and dumb people.”
Spencer smiled at her. “And do you like me just the way I am, Zola?”
She looked him up and down thoughtfully. “I like what I see on the outside very much, Spencer Jackson. And, today, I like what I see on the inside rather well, too. When you free yourself to be natural like you have today, I like you very much. The creative artist in you, the thinker, and the playful man who can revel in the joys of nature—that man I like very much indeed.”
Her words touched him and freed up a painful spot in his soul.
He skimmed a rock out over the water. “Sometimes I go out on a photo shoot before dawn and crouch for
an hour or more in a blind or behind a row of thick shrubs to catch a shot of water birds as they first fly out into the day. Or to capture with my camera the first rays of light dancing across the water of the lake.” He reached over to take Zola’s hand. “You make me feel similar joys to those moments, Zola. You’ve brought light into my life. And beauty and grace. I thank you for that.”
He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it.
With a smile, she melted into his arms then, wrapping her arms around his body and seeking his mouth with her own. It was another of those ecstatic moments—holding Zola and kissing her in the warmth of the sun—with the waterfall thundering behind them. Spencer felt himself oddly content simply to kiss and hold her, to revel in the moment—even when they were touching skin to skin, he bare-chested and dressed only in his boxers and Zola wrapped only in her thin pareu dress, with her body intimate against his.
They pulled up on their knees on the rock, so they could hold each other more tightly and move more closely together in warm intimacy. It was a heady moment.
Spencer recognized, too, when the moment of joy began to turn heated and he pulled away. Zola laughed and tried to pull him back close again, but he shook his head, sliding off the rock to start toward the pile of clothes he’d left on the bank.
He remembered, as their passion sizzled, the caution of Zola’s grandfather and of how he’d warned of the natural and spontaneous warmth Zola was capable of, because of her heritage. It might have been possible to take her further today in the midst of this ecstasy, but it would have been wrong.
Spencer pulled on his jeans and slipped his now-dry T-shirt back over his head. Then he sat down to pull on his socks and boots.
Zola grinned at him from the rock. “I don’t know if I want to hug you anymore now that you’ve put back on that old sweaty shirt.” She made a face.
“Good,” he said, smiling at her. “I need protection from the spell you’ve been winding around me, island girl.”
“Was I?” She looked pleased.
“Very much so.”
Zola climbed down off the rock to look for her own pile of clothes. Finding her shorts, she turned her back to slip them on under her pareu. Then she slipped on her tennis shoes.
He smiled at her. “Do you work tomorrow?”
“Yes,” she answered.
“What about the next day?”
“I’m off then.” She smiled back at him.
“Then we’ll go somewhere special that day if you’re free.”
“I can be free.” She cocked her head at him teasingly.
He laughed. “Then I’ll pick you up after breakfast and take you up to one of the balds with me on the top of the mountain. I want to get some photos there, and you’ll like the views. How does that sound?”
“It sounds wonderful.”
Spencer turned to start up the mountain, not trusting himself to spend more time with Zola while she was in this mood.
“You’re much lighter, Spencer,” she called.
He turned back at that remark, giving her a questioning look.
“Surely you can feel it.” She gestured around her head, drawing a circle with her hand. “There’s not so much heaviness hanging around you anymore. Don’t you feel the change?”
Spencer felt reluctant to admit it, but he realized it was true.
“This has been a good day, Zola,” he said instead.
She smiled at him. “Yes, it has.”
As Spencer hiked the rest of the way up to Raven’s Den, he wondered if the games he’d played with Zola had really helped him remove some of the sorrows of the past he’d carried for so long. Just now, in the haze from being with Zola in so much intimacy, he wasn’t sure if he felt lighter from the rush of feelings of being with her or lighter from being freed from some of his darkness. Perhaps he would be able to tell more tomorrow. For now, though, he could definitely say, once again, that it had been a fine day. He knew for a certainty, also, that he’d dream tonight of the water nymph he’d seen rising out of the pool below the waterfall. Despite the artistry of the moment, the man watching the scene hadn’t been blind.
CHAPTER 15
Zola walked down the mountain realizing that she and Spencer Jackson had turned a corner in their relationship. He’d opened up with her at last, shared some of the pain of his past. And he’d shared some of the feelings he had about her.
Oh, he hadn’t said he loved her yet. But, perhaps, it wasn’t time for that. She wasn’t sure if she felt ready to say those words herself. Still, the words had lurked unspoken under the surface for both of them.
Turning the corner from the trail toward her house, Zola saw a familiar figure sitting on the front porch. It shouldn’t have surprised Zola to see Nana Etta sitting on the porch waiting for her, and yet it did.
As Zola drew near the porch she saw that her grandmother was crocheting a colorful pot holder while she waited. Always busy hands, her grandmother.
“I have a serious man in my life.” Zola told her, coming up on the porch.
“Yes, I saw that. That’s why I walked over.”
Zola leaned over to kiss her grandmother.
“Not many people know you carry a gift of the sight, Nana.”
“Only a little now and again for practical purposes.” She looked at Zola’s wet pareu. “You been swimming naked with that man?”
“No.” She opened the front door and reached in to get the shirt she’d left hanging over the chair by the door. Her back to her grandmother, she slipped off the damp pareu and pulled on the T-shirt over her shorts.
“He’d been on a photo shoot and came back up the trail to find me at the falls.” Zola spread the wet pareu over a chair in the sun to dry out. “Nothing happened but some heart confessions and some of what your friend, Judy, calls ‘a little sweethearting. ’ ”
“Hmmmph,” Nana said.
Zola sat down in the big rocker on the front porch and started to rock. She wished she could simply savor her thoughts of the day right now instead of facing a cross-examination with her grandmother.
Nana picked up the pot holder to work on it again. “I’ve seen the boy’s a Christian but his walk with God isn’t as close as yours.”
“Whose is, Nana?” Zola knew she sounded querulous.
“Well, there’s a point in that,” her grandmother admitted. “You did deliverance on that boy today.” She gave Zola a pointed look. “You reckon he understood it?”
“No.” She smiled. “But I know he is lighter now. I saw some of his past hurts and pains lift off.”
“How’d you do that without him resisting?”
Zola grinned. “Played a little game with him like my mother used to play with me. We gave things up to the sun and the sky. I sort of slipped in the principal part of it—and to the Lord—as we went along. After all, Nana, God is in everything. He’s in the sun and the sky.”
“I suppose, but it’s borderline heathenish and you know it.” The older woman glowered at her. “However, I know the Lord wants that boy to get free from some of that past hanging over him.”
“Have you been given anything specific about that, Nana?” Zola looked at her questioningly.
“A bit. Not much.” She picked at her crochet work. “He experienced a lot of painful things in his early life. It could take time to get past it all. And it might shoot up to haunt the both of you now and then as you go along. You up for that?”
“If he can take on my peculiarities, I guess I can take on his.” She giggled. “He has the hardest time with the little things I see sometimes.”
She told her grandmother about seeing the yellow jackets and telling him where the poison to kill them sat under the kitchen sink.
Nana chuckled. “I can remember some tales of my own when you saw things of that nature when only a mite—after you first came to live with us. It took a bit of getting used to.”
“You see things, too, Nana.”
She shook her head. “Not in the same
way, girl, and it’s seldom I can recall ever being asked by the good Lord to share them with others. I simply get some knowings now and again.”
“Are you troubled about my relationship with Spencer?”
“Some,” she admitted. “But Vern and I like him. We neither one have an objection to you taking up with him—unless he gives us a reason to change our minds.”
Zola sighed. It relieved her to know her grandparents thought well of Spencer. If they hadn’t, it would have worried her.
Nana pinned her with a disapproving frown. “Right now, I’m more concerned over this business with Aldo Toomey and Madame Renee, and with all the rumors I’ve been hearing about Ben Lee saying you’re going to solve the mystery of his missing daughter.” She shook a finger at Zola. “I don’t like you being involved in danger.”
“Oh, Nana, you know Aldo Toomey is basically harmless.”
“Yes. But Renee Dupres walks on the dark side. I don’t like her mind and words dwelling on you, Zola. She draws ill with her talk and with her words.”
“I’ll start praying more over that, Nana.”
“And so you should. Never underestimate the enemy, Zola.” She turned serious eyes toward her. “Keep your armor on strong. And keep your prayer life up.”
Zola nodded.
Her grandmother stood up. “You go have yourself a little talk with Benwen Lee, too. You set him straight on a few things. With some prayer, you’ll know how to talk to him. This blabbering of his needs to stop, Zola. It’s not helping the understanding of what you are.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Zola knew her grandmother was right. She’d let the gossip Ben generated go on too long already.
Firm eyes caught hers. “I’ll be expecting to hear tomorrow of exactly how that conversation went with him.”
This was the way her grandmother always dealt with her, laying out a clear expectation so Zola wouldn’t procrastinate on the things she ought to do. Her grandmother knew she sometimes avoided dealing with difficult issues, hoping they would resolve themselves without her having to take action.
