Dances of the Heart

by Andrea Downing

  And then she decided he hadn’t signed off with ‘love’ as yet and wanted to wait to see… Yes, she reflected, that’s a good excuse for letting it continue and waiting to see if it will happen, if he would ever dare.

  But as a few weeks went by and the messages continued, she realized that slowly, subtly, she began to look forward to them, she began to check for them, to expect them, to be disappointed when there weren’t any, or when they were from someone else.

  Mabel is complaining I let you go. Come back and make us both happy. Ray.

  Crockett wants to slobber over you. Can I say, me too? Ray

  Carrie had to laugh; it was his sense of humor, but she preferred the one that said, Texas is incredibly big without you.

  “What are you doing?” asked Paige, coming into the kitchen one day late in January, home for a weekend. “Diana and I are waiting for you. I thought you were making hot chocolate and we were going up to the roof?”

  Carrie slipped the phone away onto the worktop and pursed her lips, trying to hide the guilt from her face. “Milk’s just boiling,” she said, attempting to distract her daughter unsuccessfully.

  “You got another one?”

  Paige sidled over to the counter and reached for the cell phone, beating Carrie to it and holding it aloft.

  “Hey, give me that!” She was torn between the milk about to boil over and the incriminating phone. The milk won.

  “Ooooh,” drawled out Paige. “Is this a new one? I didn’t hear it beep.”

  “Give me that! It doesn’t beep if it’s already on the message page.” Carrie made a grab for the phone, but again, her daughter whisked it out of reach.

  “‘Surely that bed is too big for you. I know mine is. Ray.’ Wowie, things must be heating up. I don’t get texts like that from Jake.”

  Carrie carefully poured the hot milk into waiting, chocolate-filled mugs. “I didn’t know you had any reason to expect texts like that from Jake.” She raised her eyebrows inquisitively.

  “Wait a minute! You had it on the message page then. You keep checking or re-reading or what? What, Mother?” Paige waved the phone in Carrie’s face.

  “Oh, shut up,” she advised playfully. “Give me my phone and help me carry this lot out to the roof.” She snatched the phone and tapped out of her messages, then stuck it in her pocket.

  Her daughter grinned and bent to get a tray out of the hutch. She placed the mugs on it before turning. “Why don’t you go back? Why don’t you just go back?”

  Carrie tilted her head in consideration of her beautiful offspring. “Come on,” she said, “Diana is upstairs freezing.”

  Outside on the roof, a watery sun made little attempt to have any calefacient effect, but for late January, it was certainly warm enough to bundle up and enjoy being in the fresh air for a short while. Diana lay on one of the chaises that braved the weather all year on Carrie’s roof terrace, a broad space overlooking Central Park with privacy from onlookers below thanks to its height, and shielded by its potted trees and plants. Suitably cocooned in woolens and cashmere, her friend snuggled under a tartan blanket.

  Carrie scraped a chair out from the ornate caste iron table she had there as her daughter set the tray down and went to hand her mother’s old friend her mug. A heavily be-ringed hand snuck out from under the protection of the blanket, and Diana shuffled carefully to try to sit up.

  “Here, I’ll prop you up, old lady,” Carrie teased as she came round to fix the chaise into a sitting position.

  “Listen,” her friend threw back as she bent forward for Carrie’s adjustment, “if I’m old, what the hell are you?”

  As if in reply, the phone snapped out its telegraphic response. Carrie instantly yanked it out, read the message and laughed.

  “Come on now—share. Be good, tell Diana.” She exchanged a look with Paige who scraped another chair from the table, held her coat close to her bottom, and sat down, arms crossed with a demanding raised brow.

  “What is that? The third today? He must be getting desperate, Mom.”

  Diana giggled. “It must be his New Year’s resolution to win you back.”

  “Oh, shush, the two of you.” Carrie had to press her lips from smiling as she finally sank onto the waiting chair. She glanced from one to the other. “It says, ‘I want to grow old with you and watch every single one of your wrinkles appear. Ray.’” She put a hand to her stomach to calm the butterflies there and gulped in the cold air.

  “Gosh, is he a mind reader?” Diana sipped her cocoa. “We just finished saying we were getting old and that comes through. That’s positively weird. He’s not outside, is he? Downstairs?”

  Carrie panicked and actually peered over the roof’s edge.

  “Oh, Mother, for heaven’s sake.” Paige shook her head.

  “I liked Ray.” Diana settled back to her pronouncements. “I know what you saw in him. He was so upfront. He had no guile and was so honest.”

  Carrie flinched slightly. “Honest” was not the first word that came to mind when she thought of Ray now.

  “Oh, come on, Car—did you really think he was going to get back together with that woman? The way you described her? No way.”

  “He married her, didn’t he?” Carrie took a petulant sip from her mug while her gaze shot arrows at her friend over the top of it.

  “At first I thought, ‘cowboy,’” Diana continued. “I thought you’d lost your mind. Really. But then when I spoke to him, he was so honest—and intelligent. There was no hidden agenda, no deviousness or sense of alternative motives I thought. He certainly wasn’t after your money. He wasn’t impressed by any of it, any of us. He was just really easy to get along with. He didn’t mind speaking his mind, yet he was so damn likeable. Even Tom liked him—and, believe me, that’s saying a lot.”

  “Well,” she countered, “he wasn’t quite honest enough. He said he was divorced.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Carrie, come on,” Diana growled in response. “So what? You made a mountain out of a molehill. You saw the ex-wife and you panicked, left before he could leave you. Why?”

  Carrie took in another deep breath of the chilled winter air. She played with the phone in her hand for a moment, then tapped it on and read the message once more. There suddenly came to her a sense of belonging, this man was actually hers, there waiting for her. Free and clear. She knew she could go—no, she yearned to go to him, have him, be with him. Her gaze went to Paige.

  “Go grow old with him, Mother. Get shagged to death, or at least kissed ’til your lips hurt. You can work out the distances, the places. Go on and tell him you’re coming. Or don’t as the case may be.” Paige wiggled her eyebrows.

  “And what about you, darling? What will you do?” She looked tenderly at her only child. A line of worry pulled between her brows as she bit her lip.

  “Me? At some stage, I’ll get a kind, sweet step-brother in Jake, no doubt, who’ll drive me crazy but I’ll put up with at Thanksgiving and Christmas. And probably, eventually, marry off to a friend.”

  “I thought…”

  “Who knows?” Paige smiled. “But it is a bit weird, don’t you think? For me to be in love with Jake and for you to be in love with his father?”

  Carrie’s eyes went wide. There, her daughter had said it at last. It was out. Deal with it. Deal with it, Paige.

  “You’re talking in riddles, the two of you,” pestered Diana. “Make sense.”

  But Carrie’s phone beat out its announcement. She picked it up, gazing at it for a long time.

  I want my own happy ending. I love you. Ray.

  Her smile slowly spread out like the sun on the late afternoon horizon.

  ****

  Slants of light fell through the blinds, laying a linear design on the papers as Ray went over his figures once again, trying to concentrate and think about anything except Carrie, anything except her. The smooth hum of a motor approached and, grateful for the diversion, he lifted the slats apart to see a car he didn�
�t recognize come to a halt out front. He figured it might be a potential client who didn’t see the road sign pointing to the main office. He momentarily straightened his desk, pushed a hand through his hair and grabbed his hat.

  The screen door slammed behind him at the same moment Carrie shoved the car door closed and turned, surprise written on her face at finding him there in front of her. For a moment, they stared at each other across the expanse of Texas earth. He tried to suppress his own smile slowly sneaking out while her smile widened, as if invisible hands were simultaneously painting them both on.

  Ray leaned back against the porch door in the same easy way she had found him at East Hampton station that day, hands across his chest, hat slouched slightly forward.

  “Can I help you, ma’am? Are you lost?” His humor and his pleasure at seeing her there were barely suppressed, but he was playing for time to give himself a moment to adjust to her return, to this best of all possible events in his day.

  “I’m here to do research, mister,” she explained, her own happiness sparkling in her eyes.

  “Research, huh? Research?” He scratched his head with a small intake of breath. “Just what kinda research would that be, ma’am?”

  “Research for a book I’m writing.” She took a hesitant few steps toward him, tilting her head in an enquiring manner.

  “Now, just what kinda book would that be? One about…hunting? Horses? Texas? One of those?”

  “Nope. ’Fraid not.” She put on a fake drawl, “It’s a love story…”

  “A love story!”

  “…’Bout an older woman who falls in love with a cowboy here in Texas.”

  “Is that so?” Ray scratched his head again, a bubble of anticipation, joy at seeing her, making him catch his breath. He came down the porch steps before stopping and looking across at this woman he hadn’t been able to get off his mind, this woman who drove him to distraction, this woman he loved so much. “See now,” he went on, “I’d really prefer it if you were to say ‘rancher’ instead of ‘cowboy.’ Even better, I’d prefer it if you were to say ‘falls madly in love.’” His hands rested lightly on his hips now to keep them from grabbing her and crushing her with his desire.

  Carrie crossed her arms. “All right then, madly in love.”

  “And I would like it even more—much more in fact—if you were to say she fell madly in love with the ‘best-looking damned rancher in the entire state of Texas.’”

  Carrie giggled. “Okay. There’s no doubt about it. To her eyes, he certainly is the best-looking damned rancher in the entire state of Texas.”

  “Is that so?” Ray rubbed his chin for a moment, contemplating the answer. “Now, this here research you’re doing? Just what kinda research would that be again, ma’am?”

  At this, her giggles evolved into an outright laugh. “Intensive research,” she replied. “Thorough and exhaustive.”

  “Thorough and exhaustive, huh?” he repeated quietly. “Well, you better get on over here, darlin’, and start that research right away.”

  Carrie’s smile stretched wider as she came up to him, but he put his hand out and stopped her. “Hang on, hang on.”

  “Now what?” she asked. Her gaze met his with the same impatience he’d not been able to overcome.

  “This here book, does it have a happy ending?”

  “Oh, you bet, mister. You bet!”

  A word about the author...

  Andrea Downing likes to say that when she decided to do a Masters Degree, she made the mistake of turning left out of New York instead of right to the west, and ended up in the UK.

  She eventually married there, raising a beautiful daughter and staying for longer than she cares to admit.

  Teaching, editing a poetry magazine, writing travel articles, and a short stint in Nigeria filled those years until in 2008 she returned to NYC.

  She now divides her time between the city and the shore and often trades the canyons of New York for the wide open spaces of Wyoming.

  Loveland, her first book, was a finalist for Best American Historical at the 2013 RONE Awards. Lawless Love, a short story, part of The Wild Rose Press ‘Lawmen and Outlaws’ series, was a finalist for the 2014 RONE Best Historical Novella award.

  Dances of the Heart is her first contemporary novel.

  Thank you for purchasing

  this publication of The Wild Rose Press, Inc.