Nighttime Sweethearts

by Cara Colter

  "The widow was anxious to see her son-in-law, and one day she waited until he arrived. At dusk, she saw a red bear emerge from the water. He carried a whale on either side and put them down on the beach. But as soon as he noticed he was being watched, he was transformed into a rock. He had been a supernatural creature from the sea."

  Cynthia stared out at the rock, knowing what Merry's next words would be before she said them.

  "Which can be seen up to this day by the person with the right heart."

  Cynthia felt shivers going up and down her spine because of her encounter the night before—kissed by an unknown assailant—who had vanished into the night, with the stealth of a wild creature.

  The silence stretched between her and Merry.

  "So," her companion asked her, finally, gently, "did you like my story?"

  Cynthia hesitated. She could be diplomatic and just say yes. Instead, she heard herself saying, "I found it very unsettling."

  "Really? Why?"

  "He turns into a rock at the end? What kind of story is that?" She heard more emotion in her voice than should have been there. It was only a story! But she looked out at the rock and felt uneasy at how much it did look like a bear frozen in time.

  Merry laughed softly. "Ah, yes, most cultures prefer a linear style to a story. In other words, it follows a line, in order—beginning, middle and end. And naturally the end is supposed to be happily ever after."

  Having been her mother's assistant for so many years, Cynthia knew the mechanics of telling a story. Naturally it had a beginning, a middle and an end! She liked the happily-ever-after part, too, though her mother's missives were generally a little too dry for that.

  "There's another way to tell stories?" she demanded, feeling strangely threatened by this encounter, her second odd one in as many days. She had spent her entire life not having odd encounters, and now she was attracting them like bees to honey!

  "Native people tend to think in a circle," Ms. Montrose told her patiently, "so there is not always a readily discernible beginning, middle and end to their stories."

  Cynthia found herself intrigued. "What do you mean? I don't understand that."

  "The Native people often tell stories that do not give easy answers. Instead, they engage the listener and ask them to find their own truths within the context of the story, to explore their own relationships with the elements that appear in the story, and then either to embrace or reject the lesson."

  "Of course, back then, part of the purpose of the story would have been to define the responsibilities and duties of the people in the tribe."

  "She married a bear!" Cynthia said. "That doesn't seem like a definition of duty!"

  "The natives of that area often have human-animal ancestors as part of their storytelling. They associate profound spirit powers with animals, those powers give supernatural protection."

  "So was it a good thing she married a bear?"

  "Perhaps love always lifts us up to a place of the supernatural," Merry suggested.

  "Then why did he turn into a rock?"

  "If you play with the tale inside your own head, perhaps things will become clearer to you."

  "That seems very complicated. I wouldn't even know where to begin. Or why I would want to."

  "Start with one element of the story," Merry suggested, just as if Cynthia had not questioned why she would want to! "Begin with the bear. Ask yourself what the bear means to you."

  Feeling as if she'd been given an unwanted homework assignment, Cynthia watched, bemused, as Merry got up and walked away, her step the light one of a much younger woman.

  "Weird," she muttered in an effort to brush the whole thing off, one that failed. She waited until Merry was out of sight, retrieved her shoes and then went back to her suite, contemplating the strange encounter.

  What did the bear mean to her? She knew very little about bears.

  But she did know they were creatures of the night.

  And that knowledge made her shiver. What would it hurt to find out a little bit more? To accept this odd challenge she had been given? To stretch a bit out of her comfort zone?

  She spent the afternoon on the Internet, curling her bare feet into the sensuous pile of the room's carpet and finding out more about bears than she thought there was to know. And trying very hard not to do two things: not to convince herself that she had been kissed by a bear the night before and not to fantasize about a knock on the door from a man standing there with roses, apologies and promises lighting the wicked depths of eyes she somehow knew would be dark as night.

  Chapter Three

  The day was fading. Rick sat on the ground with his back braced by the rough trunk of a tree with spreading branches that provided shade for this whole glade. He was sketching furiously, trying to get this latest idea down before the light failed him. He sat in a litter of balled-up sketches that had not satisfied him, and he knew, even as he reached for it, that this last effort would be no better than the ones that had come before it.

  It was a coincidence, nothing more, that he could see the crescent of beach where he had waylaid Cynthia the night before. Still, it was an uncomfortable coincidence. He was not sure what rebel had surfaced within him and made that deal with her, but if he had set out to punish her, to seek revenge for a long-ago slight, he had succeeded only in unsettling himself.

  Every whiff of flower- and sea-scented air made him remember. The strawberry taste of her lips, her alabaster skin, her delectable wet curves pressed into the swimsuit cover.

  So stunned had he been by what her kiss had unleashed in him that he had forgotten his agenda. He had set out on a mission to exact revenge for all the beautiful women who had rejected him and who would reject him in the future.

  He had never expected to be kissed back!

  Now he thought of all the things he wished he had asked her while he'd held her captive. What did she do now? Had she become the great artist that she had once dreamed of being?

  Not, he thought wryly, that she would have answered him. Not the Cynthia he remembered. She would have pointed her little blue-blooded nose at the heavens and told him it was none of his business.

  Her kiss hinted at innocence, as if she had not progressed in passion since the twelfth grade.

  Was that even possible? And why did he care?

  The more pressing question was, would she come back tonight, lured here by a sliver of moonlight and a hint of mystery?

  It was the question he had been trying to outrun all day, but no matter how furiously he sketched, resketched, pondered and sketched again, the question continued to tickle the back of his mind.

  Would she come back to the beach tonight? And if she did, what would it mean?

  And what about him? The truth was he was already here, watching. Waiting? What would he do if she came back?

  "Walk away, if you have an ounce of sense." But he thought it might take a stronger man than him to walk away from Cynthia. He heard again the musical lilt of her laughter as she had cavorted in the water, naked, thinking she was alone.

  "I should have looked when I had the chance," he said. "I might not get another."

  He put a furious line through the roof he had just drawn, changed it, angled it upward and then glared at it. It was so wrong. Too stilted, too traditional, too like every other chapel that had ever been built. While he was at it, he shattered the lines of the freshly drawn walls with his pencil, too. With one last disgusted glance, he crumpled this latest effort at designing a chapel for La Torchere.

  And then he stiffened. Someone was coming. He could hear light footsteps crunching up the rise toward where he sat. He had no wish to see anyone, to answer nosy questions, to reveal his sketches, to pretend he did not see the sidelong glances directed at the left side of his face.

  Had he always been this antisocial? The short answer was no, but now he got a perverse sort of pleasure from his solitude. He resented intrusions into it. He looked about for a place to slip away. Wi
th his newfound eccentricities he was perfecting the art of being invisible.

  But what if it was her?

  What if it was Cynthia? Would she guess he was the man from last night? And how would she react if she did guess?

  A reluctant smile tickled his lips. She probably had snootiness down to an art form by now. She'd had eight years since high school to work on it. When she recognized him as the man from last night—and a man from her past— she'd probably smack him across the face like some regally offended Southern belle.

  A reaction he admitted he deserved.

  And then he'd take her wrists in his hands and lean toward her and inhale the scent of her right before he…

  "Mr. Barnett, there you are!"

  Reality collided with fantasy. For it was not Cynthia who entered his small private world, but Merry Montrose. Lost in his thoughts of what-ifs he had lost his opportunity to escape. He regarded Ms. Montrose with resignation.

  For a homely woman, he thought, she had the bearing of royalty. She was dressed beautifully, in a silk slack suit of the deepest shade of rose. She carried herself with an assurance and grace that belied the way she looked. She carried herself like a damned princess.

  "Well," she said, pleased. "What a lovely surprise to find you here. Is this a spot you're thinking of for my chapel?"

  "I haven't chosen a spot," he said, then sighed. "You've actually arrived just as I'm debating resigning the commission."

  "It's perfect," she breathed, as if he had not said he was thinking of quitting. She looked around, her sharp gaze taking in all the details of the little clearing.

  "I may be the wrong man for the job," he said, because she appeared not to have gotten the message the first time.

  "Of course you aren't." She dismissed him with a wave of her hand. "Only the right man for the job could have found this place. I've walked here from time to time before and never realized its potential. Why, I can almost see the chapel right where you are sitting."

  "It's good that one of us can visualize the chapel. I can't seem to come up with anything."

  She stooped and picked up one of the discarded drawings, uncrumpled it, and studied it carefully. "This is nice."

  He snorted. He was not sure there was a word he describe his much as nice—especially when it was used to describe his work. "Yeah. Nice. Ordinary. Uninspired."

  "I'm sure you are just at the preliminary design stages. Am I correct?"

  "The problem, Ms. Montrose—"

  "Merry, please."

  "—is that I need to understand the function of a building before I can design it."

  "The function seems fairly simple to me," she said. "A wedding chapel is generally for weddings."

  "And an office building is for offices, but there is always something underneath the function, more subtle, harder to grasp."

  "You are more than an architect," she decided happily. "You are an artist."

  He looked at her suspiciously. Had she peered in the window of his suite and seen the carving taking shape in there? A carving inspired by an encounter with a nymph from the sea?

  "What do you think is underneath the function of the chapel, Mr. Barnett?"

  "Rick," he corrected her, then contemplated her question. "Underneath the function of a wedding chapel run the things that I understand the least—trust, faith, love, hope."

  "I don't believe that," she said firmly. She actually shook a finger at him as though he were a naughty boy.

  "No disrespect to you, Merry, but it doesn't really matter what you believe," he said slowly. "I have to feel it, I have to understand those things somehow before I can design a building that glorifies them. Understand them? Merry, I'm not even sure I believe in them."

  "Honestly, Mr. Barnett, I believe there is a romantic hiding under that cynical exterior."

  He snorted. "I hardly think so."

  She plucked another crumpled paper off the ground and looked at it. "What's wrong with this one? It's beautiful. Oh, my. Better than anything I could have imagined. Why you rascal, lying to an old woman."

  "Lying to you?"

  "Only a romantic could design a chapel that looked like that."

  She used her hand to smooth out the worst of the wrinkles and put the drawing in front of him. "Don't throw it out."

  It was his least favorite from the work he'd done today. It reminded him of a chapel you might find at Disneyland, all soaring roof lines, castlelike turrets, and intricate gingerbread design details. It was gorgeous and glamorous and not quite real.

  "Ah, yes," he said cynically. "The fairy tale. Hopes, dreams, happily ever after. All that kind of nonsense."

  "You've captured those very things quite well for a man who doesn't believe in them." She reached out a knobbly finger and traced the soaring arch of the entryway to the chapel.

  He pressed his own finger to the knot of tension he could feel growing on his forehead. "As I said, I'm not at all certain I'm the man for this job."

  "And I'm more certain than ever that you are."

  He snapped his book shut and got to his feet. "I won't make a decision about it today. It's getting too dark to do any more tonight, anyway."

  "I hope you won't give up," she said gently, and he looked at her sharply. She seemed to be referring to much more than the chapel.

  "Pardon?"

  "Just give it a bit of time," she suggested. "You'll be amazed what comes to you."

  "I suppose," he agreed, but with reluctance.

  "What a lovely view of the beach," Merry said, changing the subject, wandering over to the edge of the small knoll they were on. "The sun's going down."

  He joined her and watched the sun turn to fire then paint the ocean in ribbons of yellow and red and orange and gold before it dipped into the sea and was swallowed.

  In one last fiery glow it illuminated a rock in the bay.

  "Funny," he said, more to himself than to Merry, "I've never noticed that rock before. It looks astonishingly like a bear."

  "Doesn't it?" she said, pleased for some reason. "You rather remind me of a bear yourself, Mr. Barnett."

  "Wasn't I a closet romantic a moment ago? That's quite a leap," he said, and then realized, faintly astounded, he was teasing her.

  "I'm sure there can be romantic bears," she said, her tone deliberately and dramatically doubtful.

  He laughed, enjoying this strange woman for a reason he didn't quite understand. "Now you're being gracious," he said. "I probably reminded you of a bear because I'm crabby as hell."

  She smiled. "And reclusive. And very, very powerful."

  "I don't always feel powerful," he admitted. "Not anymore."

  "A person's power is not in his appearance, Mr. Barnett. It is in the discovery of his spirit. Or hers."

  He looked at her and realized she had probably been very beautiful once upon a time. She also looked as if she might be the type of woman who mourned the loss of her looks every day. And she had lost them naturally, to aging. She'd had time to get ready.

  "If I take this diamond off my hand," she fluttered a ring the size of a golf ball in front of his face, "and rub it in the dirt, it doesn't change what it is."

  What if half of it was shattered, like his face, he wanted to challenge her? Would that change what it was? Would that change its value?

  But she looked like the type of woman, by turns annoying and amusing, who had an answer for everything, so he moved the subject away from the discomforting arena of what he had become since his accident. "It's interesting that I remind you of a bear. An old Native elder once honored me by telling me I had bear energy around me."

  "Really?" she said, but somehow her tone of delighted surprise was feigned. It was as if she already knew. But how could she? That encounter had happened many years ago. Only two people had been present. As far as he could remember, he had never told anyone.

  "It'll be totally dark in minutes," Rick said. He turned away from her to gather up his things—tape measures and sketchbo
oks, a camera, the discarded paper balls that littered the clearing. Night fell with incredible swiftness once the sun had done its spectacular swan dive into the sea.

  "Oh, look, Rick, someone is coming to the beach. Odd, you'd think they would have arrived in time for the sunset."

  He was at her side in a flash, but the person settling on the bench at the edge of the beach was not Cynthia.

  "Oh, it's that poor young man. Baron Gunterburger."

  Don't bite, he ordered himself. She obviously wanted to draw him into some delightful piece of gossip about the "poor" young man. A less poor-looking individual Rick could barely imagine.

  The man carried himself with that faint standoffish arrogance of the very rich. He draped his arm possessively over the bench, regarded the sea. In the last of the light Rick could see the set of his face, the confidence in it.

  Had he been that sure of himself once? Acted as though he owned the earth because he had a nice face, an athletic body, money, success?

  He found himself disliking the man on principle. "What's so poor about him?"

  "Sweet Wilhelm is used to getting his own way, especially with members of the fairer sex."

  Another similarity between the man and his former self, Rick thought bitterly.

  "And?"

  "And he seems to have set his sights on a young lady who is not too interested in him. Unless she's changed her mind. Perhaps they are planning a romantic tryst on the beach. I do love a romantic tryst. Don't you?"

  "No," he snapped grimly, but his mind was whirling.

  A romantic tryst on the beach? This beach? But it was his beach! His and Cynthia's.

  "In fact, it seems to me you said you knew the young lady in question."