by Janzen, Tara
They had something going. There was no denying it, and it wasn’t a client-contractor relationship, or a teacher-student relationship. It was a relationship-relationship, the last thing on earth she’d been looking for in her life.
They’d had a date, complete with good-night kiss. He’d taken her out to the fanciest restaurant in town. She’d invited him in for coffee—with Irish cream no less—and they’d ended up on the couch with her sweater partially unbuttoned.
She groaned and buried her head in her much-molested pillow. What made Jack Hudson so damned irresistible? His smile? His eyes? His body? She squeezed her eyes shut and thought for a moment. He had a great body, which was not exactly the revelation of the century, but there was more, much more, to the man.
Looking at the facts, he seemed no more than average. Brown hair, hazel eyes, six feet tall, self-employed carpenter. The most unusual thing about him, his dyslexia, wasn’t what she’d call an asset.
Yet the man remained special, and it came from deep inside him. His offhand remarks made her laugh. His kisses made her melt. The best thing about his great body wasn’t how it looked, but how she felt when he held her in his arms. She felt excitement, to be sure, but she also felt comfort. She didn’t understand it. He didn’t read books, and his idea of a good time was welding. What in the world would they do after making love?
Who cares? a little voice asked.
“I do,” she whispered. She wouldn’t allow herself to make another mistake out of loneliness.
Sighing, she rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling. Everything had been so easy with Danny, so simple. They’d met, fallen instantly in love in one of those classic “eyes meeting across a crowded room” scenes, and been married inside of two months. Everything had been perfect, until he’d died in a stupid car crash.
It had taken her years to forgive him for leaving her alone. She hadn’t thought it possible to love someone and yet hate him, to be so angry and full of despair all at the same time. Some nights she’d wanted him back just so she could yell at him. Most nights she’d wanted him back just so she could hold him and be held by him . . . held by him the way Jack had held her that very night when he’d whispered he was falling in love.
It was impossible. Lust she could accept, maybe. Affection and attraction were reasonable. But love was what she’d had with Danny. Love was what she’d fooled herself into believing she might have had a year earlier, before the dream had been shattered at the Silver Bell Ball.
Lila knew she’d have to step back into the man-woman stream sooner or later. She didn’t see herself alone for the rest of her life. But her emotions and her pride still smarted from the memories of the Silver Bell Ball.
The night had been magical, filled with holiday spirit and good tidings. The man escorting her had been classically handsome, exceptionally intelligent, wildly successful, and, much to her disbelieving surprise, married. The wife, understandably, had looked a little haggard by the time she’d tracked her wayward spouse to the Washington Center, site of the annual Silver Bell Ball, but then, she’d come a long way on a snowy night, and Lila suspected she’d been drinking.
Three weeks of illusory bliss had come to a screeching halt among all the glitter, dazzle, and silver papier-mâché bells hanging in the lobby. Mrs. Robert Stanford, wife of the distinguished engineer who’d been called in to consult on a NASA project being researched at the university, wife of the handsome, intelligent, successful, conniving, low-down jerk holding Lila’s arm, had all but ripped Lila’s dress off, and this after nearly doing the same to her face. It had been a mortifying debacle of the highest order. Lila had never seen anything like it before, nothing close to the cowardice displayed by her date, her “newfound love,” nothing close to the shrieking harridan he’d married and betrayed, nothing close to what the woman had done to her dress. She’d thought clothes ripped like that only in the movies. At two hundred and fifty dollars, she’d expected more integrity in the seams.
She hadn’t vilified Robert; she’d left that for his wife to do. But neither had she forgiven herself for being fooled. She was smart, one of the smartest people she knew, and she hadn’t seen through a two-timer. Loneliness and longing had clouded her judgment.
She was still lonely, and she still longed for the emotional and physical intimacy she’d had with her husband. But she no longer trusted herself in matters of the heart. It had been so easy with Danny, so very easy. There had been no other loves, no lies, no complications, no pasts. Nowadays, it seemed everyone she met had a past. She did, too, as of last year, and only by the grace of a miracle had that messy past left her still holding her job.
Robert had not only failed to mention he had a wife, he’d failed to mention his wife was the daughter of a congressman. A very messy business that, Lila had discovered, acquiring the enmity of a congressman’s daughter. In the same way the congressman had gotten Robert on the team of the NASA project, he’d tried to get Lila out of her professorship. He’d almost succeeded, if only because the head of her department had his own political aspirations and feared the congressman would somehow hold him responsible for Lila’s bad judgment. She’d held on to her job, but the head of her department had made it clear that tenure or not, as far as he was concerned she was on probation.
She wondered if Jack Hudson had any idea how risky love could be at their age. He must not, or he wouldn’t be bandying the term around quite so freely. It wouldn’t trip off his tongue with such lightness. She was mere months away from thirty, and he probably was a few years beyond her. Those first romances, the true loves filled with promise and purity, were behind them both. She didn’t know if she could ever accept less, though.
Her gaze settled on the novel she’d brought in from the living room. Maybe her mother was right. Maybe it was time to put a little fantasy into her life. Reality, in the long, tall form of Jack Hudson, was getting too hot to handle.
* * *
The great thing about a shower, Jack thought, was the near impossibility of running out of cold water. Hot water was short-lived, fickle, unreliable, but good old cold water never let you down. It was always there, ready to freeze your body into immobility and your brain into a new set of desires, mostly to get warm again.
He opened his mouth under the stinging spray and shook his head, letting the shampoo lather sluice down his chest. Knowing he was in for a long night, he’d decided to start fresh with a head-clearing shower. Then he’d go to work and see if he could channel his sexual energies into something creative. Sexual energy ought to be good for something, he figured, especially since using it for actual sex didn’t seem to be working out. Lila Singer would be the death of him, if pneumonia didn’t get him first.
Half an hour later, blow-dried and bundled up, he stoked the potbellied stove in one corner of his custom-designed, three-bay, two-story garage. Rolling his oxyacetylene welding rig out across the concrete floor, he stopped beneath an expansive half arch of hard steel. He looked up at the structure through the web of surrounding scaffolding. Chains and pulleys held much of the sculpture in place, waiting for Jack’s torch to meld the massive pieces into a whole, into art.
“Right, Jack. Art,” he muttered, smiling wryly as he lowered his goggles and struck a spark. He didn’t know about art, not the kind they taught at the university, but he knew when he got something right. He knew the emotional impact of line, the strength of material. He knew where to put space and where to put solid to build the vision in his head and heart.
He’d done metal sculpture since high school, but hadn’t worked on a grand scale until after his divorce. He’d started for the sheer challenge of trying to balance the tremendous weight, make it do what he wanted. Over the course of the ensuing months, he’d discovered a personal harmony with the big pieces, a sense of power nothing under six feet in height had ever given him.
After melting his first rod, Jack walked over to a bank of stereo equipment protected inside a metal shelving unit. Speakers
hung from six places high on the walls of the garage.
He pulled off one heavy leather glove with his teeth and pressed a series of soft-touch pads. Within seconds the aria from Madama Butterfly “Un bel di” filled the large building. He usually wasn’t so emotionally sentimental, but then, he usually wasn’t in love.
* * *
Lila reached for the book and settled herself back against a pile of pillows. The cover held her attention even longer than the first time she’d seen it. The Hawk did bear a striking resemblance to Jack. They both had the kind of average looks that were somehow made extraordinarily appealing by the personality behind them. They both had sandy brown hair and a lean muscularity. She scrutinized the cover more closely and began to wonder if Jack had the same enticing pattern of chest hair narrowing to a sleek band down the middle of his abdomen. She wondered about it for nearly five minutes before she snapped out of her daydreams and turned to the first page.
Fifteen minutes later she knew she was in for the long haul, and forced herself to put the book down so she could make a snack run. Fortified with cookies and a big glass of milk, she arranged herself back into the cozy warmth of her bed. Poor Jack, she thought, all alone in his bed without a good book to keep him company.
Poor Jack . . . she thought again, a little more slowly, with a little more feeling. All alone in his bed. She raised a cookie to her mouth and nibbled off an edge. She wondered if he was sleeping. He might be watching television, or a movie, or doing anything.
He suddenly seemed very far away. Every time he left, she missed him more than the time before. She didn’t know what his home looked like, or if he’d even gone there after leaving her. She had his phone number, but calling him was out of the question. She couldn’t remember ever having called a man for purely personal reasons, simply because she missed him, except for Danny, of course.
What if she called and he wasn’t home? She’d only feel worse, which was a terrible thing to have to admit to herself. Jack Hudson was taking up far too much of her thinking, and he was turning it all upside down.
Calling him was out of the question.
* * *
Jack pushed his goggles to the top of his head and used his sleeve to wipe the sweat off his brow. A cup of coffee rested near his elbow, precariously balanced on a slight wedge of steel twelve feet above the floor. He took a sip.
It had been a good idea to spend the night in the garage working, figuring, meeting the challenge of getting a lot of big pieces of metal to look like one piece. He’d almost forgotten about Lila once or twice, especially since he’d changed the music to hard-driving rock and roll. He’d used the energy of the music to pull him through the more technically difficult welds, but he’d had enough energy and needed to listen to something of substance, something he could think about instead of just feel.
Of course, there was danger in thinking, because he inevitably ended up thinking of her. Was he really in love? he wondered. Or were his hormones doing a number on his brain?
Nice try, Jack, he thought, quietly laughing at himself. Nice try, but it’s love, you fool.
He finished his coffee in one swallow and lowered his goggles back over his eyes. After a moment of summing up his next move, he struck a spark and flamed his torch.
* * *
Lila, hung up the phone by her bed for the third time and calmly told herself she wasn’t upset. It was none of her business what he did when he wasn’t with her. It was none of her business what he was doing at ten-thirty on a Saturday night. It was none of her business whom he was talking to, smiling at, laughing with. None of her business at all.
She fluffed up her pillow behind her back and buried her nose in Night of the Hawk, where no matter how dangerous the situation or troubled the relationship, love always conquered doubts. The book was sexy too. Probably too sexy for her state of mind.
She hoped Jack wasn’t smiling at another woman. His smiles were lethal, charmed, unsafe at any speed when it came to the female heart.
She flipped back a couple of pages, realizing she’d been thinking of Jack again instead of reading. She hoped he was having the same problem getting her out of his mind. She hoped he remembered their last kiss with the same unnerving clarity she did. She hoped she was driving him crazy.
By midnight she knew who was driving whom crazy, but she decided to avoid the fact by going to sleep. When she woke up at two o’clock, she chastised herself for senseless infatuation and rolled over. At four o’clock, she admitted to having a real problem and maybe something more than infatuation. At six o’clock she got up and fixed a big pot of coffee, and every time she paced by her telephone bulletin board, she looked at his business card and the address printed across the bottom.
Eight
The sunrise spread a tapestry of orange-pinks and robin’s-egg blue across the eastern sky and cast a blanket of frozen crystal diamonds across the snow-covered landscape. Lila slowed to a near stop on the icy country road and checked the business card and her county map again.
Sure, she felt foolish, driving out to his house at dawn on a Sunday morning, but between six and six-thirty that morning she’d worked herself up into a real case of the worries, especially when he hadn’t answered his phone for the fourth time. The man had said he was falling in love with her. He’d said, “Call me.” He hadn’t mentioned anything about disappearing off the face of the earth.
Slick roads, a moonless night, below-freezing temperatures . . . She’d thought of them all. Anything could have happened to him, the same way something had happened to Danny. She wanted to check on him, make sure he was in one piece. Then she’d return home and go back to bed.
A windbreak of pines pinpointed a house on a ridge, and she knew it had to be his. There was nothing else for miles around. As she drove closer, any doubts she might have had dissipated. A large deck on the western side of the house was unfinished, and the front of the house looked as if it had been under construction for years. The carpenter who had built most of her office inside of a week didn’t have time to finish his own porch.
The long, straight driveway led from the county road to a graveled area between the side of the house and the garage. And that garage was bigger than any Lila had seen before. It had a wide door twice the height of the average garage door. More unusual yet, the two windows cut into either side of a person-sized entrance glowed and flashed with a strange light.
She stopped her car and sat staring at the showers of sparks interspersed with darkness. What in the world?
His truck was parked next to the house, alleviating her initial fears, but those fears had been replaced by a curiosity powerful enough to change her original plans. Not that she needed much nudging to grab any handy excuse for seeing him. She wished she did. She felt slightly brazen, showing up uninvited to check on a man who had lived his whole life so far without any help or interference from her.
But he’d said he was falling in love, and the words had kept her awake most of the night. She was curious about the strange light coming from his garage, yes, but not nearly as curious as she was about how he’d come to be falling in love. Truth be told, she had a sneaky suspicion the same thing might be happening to her, and she didn’t have a clue as to how it might have begun or how it might end.
What drew two people together? Unexpected kisses on moonlit autumn nights? Unexpected kisses in half-finished office additions? Or was it the total polarization of education, experience, goals, and interests?
Nothing made sense. He had her breaking rules faster than she could remember them: dating him, kissing him, calling him, practically following him home.
Her car door creaked with the cold as she pushed it open, then she stepped onto the gravel drive. A gust of wind caught at her hair, blowing dark curls into her face. She brushed them back with a gloved hand and slammed the door shut.
Furthermore, she added silently, he had her doing things she’d never even thought to make rules against—like knocking on frozen wooden
doors to metal garages at dawn. She didn’t get an answer, and after another moment in the frigid air, she twisted the knob and pushed.
She immediately understood why he hadn’t answered. The building was alive with music. Wagner’s Valkyries thundered to the rafters and beyond on their way to Valhalla with their fallen warriors. It was heroic music to match the heroic sculpture half assembled and rising high from the middle of the garage floor.
The size and power inherent in the sweeping steel arches drew her gaze ever higher and caught the breath in her throat. Stunned, she took a step forward, but when sparks showered down from above, she hurriedly took a step backward. Keeping her eyes averted from the welding flame, she closed the door behind her and walked over to a table where she’d spotted an extra pair of goggles.
He was high on the scaffolding, balanced in the web of supporting steel rods with a safety harness around his waist. His torch burned and flamed along a juncture of two of the steel pieces. She didn’t have any trouble recognizing him, not even in a backward baseball cap, goggles, and less-than-form-fitting denim coveralls. She’d spent enough of the last few weeks watching him work to know the unique authority he had in his hands, to know his special sureness of movement.
It was Jack all right, and he was sculpting steel with a welding torch, melting some pieces together, cutting through others, and turning the whole majestic melange into a soaring vision of strength, into a physical expression of emotion. The man who could do that with his hands didn’t need to read books.
She walked around the scaffolding in a daze, careful to stay away from the sparks falling from above, but touching the metal where she could. The sculpture invited touch, from where it rose from its molten lavalike beginnings to the spiraling arches and half arches reaching toward the dawn-lightened sky she glimpsed through a skylight.
