I relaxed myself right to sleep, and started to dream.
I was running down a black snake highway, chased by the big truck that had killed Melody. A dark wind pushed me from behind, set my hair flying about my face, obscuring my vision, stinging my skin.
Then Melody was clutching my arm, slowing me down, begging me to save her. “My children need me,” she cried. The truck kept coming, right behind us now. Mel’s fingers dug into my skin. “Casey, don’t let me die.”
All at once, I was lifted up off the black highway and into the sky. The strength and warmth of the arms around me became familiar and comforting. Ian’s strong arms. His warmth surrounding me. “Shhh,” he whispered, his warm breath close to my ear. “You’re all right. It’s just a dream.”
I slid my arms under his T-shirt, seeking the comfort of his skin. He lay down with me and pulled me close, arranging me into the curve of his body. My head was pillowed on his shoulder, my hands under his shirt, curled against his chest.
I spread my fingers over the rough-smooth feel of his sleek, muscular chest with its covering of springy hair. Turning toward him, I opened my mouth to taste the delicious spot between his neck and shoulder, the clean, soap-scented salt of his taut, warm skin.
Then I moved up, and up some more, until my lips touched his. The inside of his mouth was warm, like the rest of him. His arms tightened around me. He ran his tongue over my teeth and sleeked it inside, stroking my tongue.
I pulled his shirt up as far as I could get it, but his weight had the fabric trapped under him. “Ian, please.”
“Please, what?” He rolled me to my back. He sat astride my thighs, pulled the shirt over his head and tossed it aside. I slid my hands upward from the flat, ridged wall of his stomach to the bulging curve of his pecs.
“Kiss me.”
His wide shoulders shadowed me as he claimed my mouth for another kiss. He caressed my face, sliding fingers along the seam of our kissing lips, down lower, skimming along my jaw, down to caress my breasts. I pushed down the waistband of his underwear, touching.
Grabbing my hands, he held them above my head on the pillow while his body covered mine. The hard heat of him beckoned through unwelcome layers of clothing. Teasing. Taunting. Torturing. I welcomed the pressure, but wanted more. I reached down again, trying to get rid of his damn underwear. “Ian, please.”
“What happened to your hands-off policy?” He brought my hands up again but held them more firmly this time, one strong hand encircling both my wrists.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Maybe I was wrong.”
He stole my words with a kiss, sucking, devouring. His free hand skimmed down a length of apricot silk, pressing hard against my pubic bone. I moved against his hand, seeking the fulfillment his body denied me. “Please,” I said into his mouth.
“God, lass,” he whispered against my lips, “what you do to me...”
“Ian, I want you inside me.” I pulled against his restraining hold, but he held fast. “I need you there. Please...”
He let go of my wrists. Almost roughly, he pulled my panties down. I kicked them off then sat up a little so I could pull my nightgown up over my head. Ian took the scrap of silk and lace and tossed it on the floor. “Yes,” I murmured. This was more like it.
With an arm around my naked waist, he hauled me farther down the bed. His body raked down mine, raining kisses in a burning trail until his mouth finally began to relieve the aching heat between my legs.
“Ahhh,” I drew my knees back. Twined my fingers in his short, dark hair. “Ahhh, Ian, that feels so good... so good...” And yet, and yet. What I really wanted was the pressure of his body inside mine. I grabbed his shoulders, tried to pull him up.
He kissed a line up my stomach. His chest brushed against my belly as he paused to tease each breast with his mouth. He kissed my neck, my jaw, my chin. Captured my mouth with his lips, still holding the tangy taste of my body. I welcomed his kiss, dragged his underwear down, tossed it aside.
He stopped kissing me. His eyes searched mine. “What happened to no-sex-without-commitment?”
“I don’t know. Tomorrow I may change my mind again.”
His arms trembled as he held his weight above me. “Would it help if I told you I love you?”
My heart stopped. The blood in my veins stopped moving. Every cell of my body stood still, waiting. “Do you?”
“Yes, God help me.” He kissed me once, hard. “I do. I love you.”
“Oh, Ian.” My heart expanded in my chest from the sheer joy of hearing those words. “I love you, too.”
*
Back at home a few days later, I set aside my dog-eared copy of Dragonfly in Amber and dragged myself up off the couch. Even my imagination’s conjuring of Jamie Fraser couldn’t compete with my conflicted thoughts today.
Ian had brought me home on Monday then gone back to South Carolina alone the next day. All my doubts and insecurities had returned to take his place.
To have a relationship with Ian, I’d have to be willing to leave everything—my parents, the business I’d built—and follow him to South Carolina. Maybe I could, but he wouldn’t be staying in South Carolina, either. For all I knew, his next move might be to Alaska.
Ian’s nomadic existence of buying, selling, and moving on wouldn’t allow me to have the sort of studio I wanted, where I could build relationships with my students and their families, and watch my students grow and learn and become proficient dancers. It wouldn’t provide the stability to raise a family, and even though I didn’t want children right away, one day I would.
My own children.
Mine and Ian’s.
But unless he decided to stay, either here or somewhere else, I feared that Ian and I had no future together, and those maybe-children would never be born.
“Come on, Lizzie girl. We’re getting too lazy.” Days of rain had imposed laziness upon us, coming down with a vengeance without stopping until it was good and done. But now the sun was out, and any laziness from this point on would be self-imposed. “We need to go for a walk.”
At the magic word, walk, Lizzie lit up like I’d plugged her in. She could hardly contain herself while I put on my hoodie. In two days, it would be Thanksgiving, but it was warm enough to go without a heavy coat. She hurtled down the porch steps and waited on the street corner while I locked the door.
We jogged toward the river, turned at The Riverboat, passed the tennis courts, headed away from town along River Road past the big old antebellum houses that lined the river bluffs. A few minutes later, Lizzie and I walked through the tall cemetery gates.
Melody’s grave was almost all the way to the back, a shiny pink granite headstone topped with an angel statue. The angel’s Madonna face looked down, her wings spread out to the back. I knew Melody wasn’t lying under that pink marble marker. I knew she’d be with us all wherever we needed her.
She’ll be with Maryann on her first date. She’ll be with Jake when he goes out with friends and does stupid things he knows he shouldn’t. She’ll be with Amy at night, when she stares into the dark and waits to fall asleep.
“Melody.” I rubbed Lizzie’s ears back down when they pricked up from the sound of my voice. “I’m sorry, but I can’t do what you asked me to.” I stroked Lizzie’s ears again, watching her eyes sparkle in the lowering sun. “I’ve realized that the thing they need most is for me to leave them alone and let them find their own way. I did try to help. But with me there, Ben didn’t have to be around. And it’s him the kids need most. They all need each other now, without interference from an outsider.”
As I heard myself say that word, I realized that was exactly what I was. An outsider. No matter how hard I tried to be what they needed, I would always be an outsider. I knew they loved me, and I loved them, but that didn’t matter. I was still just an outsider.
The air cooled while I talked to my friend. The sun edged below the treetops along the river, turning everything yellow, then orange, then
pink. “I should go, Mel. I just wanted you to know I won’t be able to do what you asked. I’ll still be part of your kids’ lives, but I won’t be there every day, or even every week, maybe. I have to keep my distance so they can work out their own way as a family.”
Then I realized something I hadn’t thought of before. “I’ll stay here in Angel Falls, just in case they need me.” I couldn’t follow Ian to South Carolina. Thinking about giving up everything to be with him was one thing, but actually doing it would be impossible. Not because of the ballet studio. Not even because of my parents. Even living in the same town, we didn’t see each other every week. But I had to stay close enough that I could come running if Mel’s kids needed me.
Until Ben met someone who could take Melody’s place in their lives, I had to stay here.
The thought felt like a weight on my soul, but another weight had lifted.
I knew now, as clearly as if Melody had said the words herself, that my jealousy hadn’t caused her to die. I had sacrificed twelve years of my life wishing I could get back the man she’d stolen from me, but it hadn’t hurt her at all. The only person I’d really harmed was myself.
But I owed those three kids something, and not only because I’d promised Melody to take care of them. Because I loved them.
I stood and put my hand against the cooling marble of Melody’s headstone, then traced the letters of her name with my finger. “I’ll be here for your kids when they need me, Mel. I’ll cuddle them until they’re too old to let me. I’ll scold them when they’ve gotten too big for their britches. I’ll pick them up when they call me from a party because they’ve had too much to drink and they’re afraid to call Ben. I couldn’t do what you asked. But I think I can do what you’d want me to do. I hope that’ll be enough.”
I sighed and shoved my hands into my pockets, wishing I’d brought a more than a light jacket after all. “I love you, Melody,” I said, then turned to go.
I walked quickly, hoping the movement would warm me. The sky blazed violet and magenta along the horizon. The streetlights sent a circle of haze into the darkening sky.
Blue-day was the time of day my mama called it. The dusky blue of twilight just after sunset and just before full dark. As a child, I’d always been told to be home before blue-day. Woe be unto any child of my mother’s who wasn’t through the front door five minutes after the streetlights came on.
Several children ran screaming in a last-minute game of tag. Farther down the street, a crowd of sweat-shirted teenage boys played a rowdy game of basketball in someone’s driveway. Life went on all around me.
No matter who died, no matter whose dreams died, life went on.
When Lizzie and I got home, I made hot tea and bundled into a fleecy robe and slippers. I had just put a frozen dinner in the microwave when the phone rang. I grabbed my tea and ran to the living room to pick up. “Hello?”
“Hi, love. What are you up to?”
At the sound of Ian’s voice, I settled into my reading chair and drew my robe over my updrawn knees. “Waiting for the microwave so I can eat a starch-filled tasteless box-dinner by myself. What about you?”
“Feeling sorry for myself because I’m too far away from you.”
Several good responses flitted through my mind. Well, it’s your choice so live with it, or maybe, join the club. I went with, “Me, too.”
“What are you planning for tomorrow?” he asked, keeping the conversational ball rolling since I wasn’t helping much.
“Thanksgiving dinner with my folks.” There was a moment of silence then I added, “What about you?”
“I was planning on going with a tasteless, starch-filled box-dinner.”
“Oh.” I had to laugh. “Good. I hope you enjoy it. Just remember that you could be at my parent’s house, eating turkey and answering all my mom’s questions about everything you’ve done in your life up until this point.”
He chuckled. “I’m not sure if that would be good or bad.”
“Better than a box dinner.”
“Maybe I should just drop everything and drive down there.”
I sat up. “Could you?”
“I really have too much to do here. The sale’s a done deal as of today, and this long weekend is the perfect time for me to go through files and inventory. That way we can hit the ground running when everybody gets back to work on Monday.”
“Okay. I guess I’ll see you weekend-after-next, then.”
“Definitely.”
Yeah, unless something else comes up.
We talked for another fifteen minutes, but the whole time, all I could think was, there’s no way this is going to work. We’d limp along for a while, making do with daily phone calls and every-other-weekend visits, until eventually the phone calls came only once-a-week, and the visits dropped to once-a-month.
It was only a matter of time until we had to admit there was no future in this relationship.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
Classes started back the Monday after Thanksgiving, and I was glad of the distraction. Days and nights without Ian moved slower than a salted snail, and I was so lonely that staying away from Ben and his kids became a constant effort.
A dozen times I stopped myself from picking up the phone just to be sure they were all doing okay. But I knew how bad it was to be second choice. I wasn’t going to use them that way, no matter how lonely I got.
Coming up with new choreography for all the classes kept me busy—not busy enough—but at least remembering the new combinations provided a challenge, especially during the advanced class at the end of the day. Still, my students and I had the chance to talk to each other while everyone changed into their pointe shoes.
“Hey, Miss Casey,” Claire said. “My Uncle Wilson said your boyfriend sold us down the river.”
“You mean, Ian?”
“Yeah.” Claire nodded, blond curls bobbing, eager to spill the juicy gossip. “My Uncle Wilson said—”
“Wait a minute,” Keely interrupted. “Wilson... you mean Wilson who works at the newspaper office? He’s your uncle?” Keely put both hands over her heart and sighed. “He’s so cute.”
Claire laughed at Keely’s dramatic gesture. “Yeah, but he doesn’t work there anymore. The new lady fired him, and then he quit.”
“What?” I asked. “Why?”
“She’s firing everybody.” Claire made quotation marks with her fingers. “Reorganizing.”
I couldn’t believe Ian would sell to someone he knew would fire everybody. He had said Bianca was a colleague of his, but he must not have realized what she’d planned to do. “But, I thought she was going to be the new editor.”
“Uncle Wilson said she and her husband own a lot of newspapers, but they don’t run them. They send in their own team to hire and train new people. Anybody who wants to keep their job will have to interview for it, just like everybody else.”
“Oh.” I didn’t know what to say. I felt somehow responsible. Ridiculous, but feeling responsible for the entire universe is something good southern belles, even modern ones, are raised to do. “I’ll talk to Ian about it.”
“Uncle Wilson already tried to call Mr. Ian. He hasn’t called back.”
I knotted the ribbon on my pointe shoe and tucked it in. “I’ll call Ian. We’ll see what this is all about.”
As soon as I got home, I called Ian’s cell. When he answered, I jumped in with both feet. “What on earth is your lady-friend up to?”
“Lady-friend?”
If he really didn’t know who I was talking about, I was going to inform him before he got any older. “Your colleague.” I made it sound like a dirty word. “The woman you sold the newspaper to.”
Silence.
“Ian?”
“I’m here.”
“Did you know you were selling out all the people who worked for the newspaper? Did you even care? Where is Grace Lambert going to get another job, as old as she is? She needs that job. And what about Wilson? Have you return
ed his calls yet?”
“Whoa, lass. Wait a minute. What calls?”
“Claire said Wilson tried to call you, several times.”
“As far as I know, Wilson hasn’t called me, unless he called the house in Angel Falls. I haven’t checked those messages in a while.”
“Well, you need to get in touch with him, because all hell is breaking loose here since you sold the newspaper to that bitch from hell. I thought you said you knew her. Is this what your friends are like?”
Ian sighed, a sound of frustration. “Sweetheart, I never said Bianca was a friend. She and her husband are colleagues, nothing more. We used to work for the same newspaper a hundred years ago.”
I snorted at that one.
“They were willing to pay my asking price for the Informer. That’s all I know.”
“Did you know their modus operandi was to send goons down to fire everybody and then make them interview for their own jobs?”
“No, I didn’t.” Ian sighed. “All I knew was that they were willing to pay the price I set.”
“I can’t believe you would be so cold.” My own voice was dripping icicles.
“Casey, I will look into this and see what I can do. I really don’t have any power to change things, but I’ll talk to Bianca, I promise.”
“Okay. And call Wilson.”
“I will.”
For a heartbeat neither of us said anything. “I’m sorry I jumped on you,” I said.
“I’m sorry about the newspaper. I didn’t know they would fire anyone.”
“Thanks for checking into it. You will do that tomorrow, right?”
“I said I would, and I will. First thing.”
“I miss you,” I whined. “Everything seems to take forever when you’re not here. I used to think there weren’t enough hours in each day, and now they drag on forever.”
Angel Falls (Angel Falls Series, #1) Page 25
