Water From the Moon

by Terese Ramin

  "Maybe," Acasia admitted, not as quick to run from facing this side of herself as she would have been a week ago. "And maybe it’s just that we don’t know how long I can stay, and if I have to leave fast… I’m used to living out of my bags, Cam."

  "Moment to moment. That’s how you face life, isn’t it, Casie? Everyone’s entitled to live for the future but you."

  "What did you think, that a few days and a couple of drawers would automatically make me believe in fairy tales again?"

  "You mean you ever did?"

  Acasia glanced across the room at the bed, at the intimacy of the love–tossed sheets where sharing happened as a matter of course, and where the future was a fairy tale she could almost see. "Yes."

  The simple honesty in the look that went with the answer rocked Cameron, shook him to his toes. He cupped her cheek. "Sometimes you say the damnedest things." He kissed her gently, and Acasia sighed and moved into his embrace. "You’re so tough one minute and so vulnerable the next. What am I going to do with you, lady?"

  "Love me, Cam…."

  It took a while for them to find their way to the kitchen. When they did it was only because Acasia’s stomach began to loudly protest the long absence of food—and because Cameron took a firm grip on himself and left Acasia in the shower.

  When she came down, he was at the stove, stirring something in a pot.

  "What is that?" she asked.

  "Oat bran."

  "Oat what?"

  "Oat bran. You know, hot cereal—full of fiber and vitamins, not as gooey as oatmeal. Put a little butter and wheat germ on it and mmm–mmm! Good stuff. Healthy." Cameron picked up the pan and offered it to her. "Have some?"

  Acasia opened the refrigerator and poked around until she found the leftover pizza she was looking for. "Are you nuts? It smells like cooked sawdust."

  "Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it."

  "I think I’ll knock it now, thanks, and avoid the rush."

  "Cute. You don’t hear me commenting on your breakfast, do you?"

  "What’s wrong with my breakfast?"

  "It’s congealed."

  "It’s not congealed, it’s pizza."

  "Whatever it is, it looks disgusting. Why don’t you at least heat it up?"

  "Because I like it cold."

  "You would."

  "You’re still steamed about that shower, aren’t you?"

  Cameron shuddered. "‘Steamed’ isn’t the word I’d choose for that frigid stuff you call water."

  "If you’d asked before inviting yourself into it, I’d have told you I like cold—"

  "I know, I know… cold showers, hot climates and congealed pizza."

  "And you."

  "Some company I’m in."

  Acasia grinned and moved closer, stretching her arms around his neck. "You chose it."

  Cameron smiled. "So I did." He pulled her to him.

  "Your oat bran’s burning, buddy."

  "So am I, lady. So am I."

  * * *

  There was sound, always sound: crickets calling in the fields; boots catching and tearing at the long grass or crunching on gravel as Acasia and Cameron stepped onto the road. Peace was present here, fresh, clear as glass.

  Jet streams trailed across the sky, a jolt of white against an expanse of clean blue that first drew Acasia’s attention, then a pleased laugh.

  "What?" Cameron asked.

  "I’ve spent so much time working in the dark, I forget how blue the sky gets sometimes. There are too many things I haven’t looked at in a long time."

  Cameron tucked her into his side. "I guess we’ll have to remedy that, won’t we?"

  He kissed her as they walked, and Acasia turned to meet him, pliant, willing.

  Their days together had been so good; they had fallen into a rhythm as natural as breathing. They woke, showered and breakfasted together, then tended to their separate businesses agendas, met for lunch and either returned to work or spent the afternoon relishing one another’s company. Acasia was in daily contact with Futures and Securities, but, so far, things both within and without Rhiannon’s borders had remained quiet. The trail to Byrd’s killers, who were presumably Dom’s men, was getting cold, and that made her uneasy. She was beginning to want things resolved so that she could make some plans, go back to work outside Rhiannon, make promises–to–keep to Cam.

  She was still restless in his house.

  It didn’t fit her; she didn’t fit it. Despite his growing insistence on giving her space in it, she felt like a visitor who didn’t want to leave any evidence of her visit. No good guest ever did. She didn’t even feel comfortable taking books off the shelves or rearranging the pillows on the library couch. She felt as she had when, as a child, she’d been left to visit indefinitely with one or another of Simon’s friends. She felt as if she were intruding on some inner sanctum where she didn’t belong. Though she wouldn’t have risked admitting it to herself, Cameron was filling an empty space in her life. She wanted to nest. She needed a home, one of her own making.

  Cameron felt her thinking and turned her toward him for a deeper kiss. There was an extra jolt that went with kissing her out here in the open, an electric charge that came with laying public claim, with being claimed. He eased himself out of the kiss, pulling back far enough to watch Acasia’s lazy eyes find him, focus and smile with secret knowledge. He wanted her. Body, mind, heart and soul, he wanted her.

  "Come on," he said, releasing her. "There’s something I haven’t shown you yet."

  Three–quarters of the way up the mountain, along a rough road hewed from among the trees, stood a cabin, apparently abandoned, though relatively new. The triple–paned windows still had the manufacturer’s stickers stuck in their corners; the porch was layered with wood shavings and sawdust; the door had no handle or knob, only a padlock, for which Cameron produced a key.

  "What is this place?" Acasia asked, stepping inside after him, then stopping in a shaft of sunlight to watch dust particles dance and settle. The cabin boasted a single large, deep–ceilinged room with a sleeping loft and a row of cupboards that jutted a few feet into the room to mark the kitchen. There was a sink there, but no doors on the cupboards, and an area had been laid in the center of the cabin for a wood–burning stove but was, as yet, sans stove. A fieldstone fireplace cozied up the living area. Dust and sawdust lay everywhere.

  "Welcome to the only project I ever started that I haven’t finished," Cameron said with a broad sweep of his arm.

  Acasia breathed deep and sneezed dust. "Why not?" Without awaiting an invitation, she prowled from window to window, lifting locks and turning cranks to let in air. She brushed each sill free of dust, then sneezed again and moved on. When she was done, she stood in the center of the room and shut her eyes to feel the wind flow through. This was right; this was home. This was what her imagination pictured when it dared to picture anything—openness, seclusion, security. A place to hide and relax and belong. A place, she suddenly remembered, not unlike the home her mother had provided until she was three. "Why isn’t it finished? How can you just let it sit?"

  Her tone was incredulous, and Cameron viewed her with surprise, catching his first glimpse of a need he’d never realized she felt, grasping, for an instant, what he’d been unable to lay a finger on down below: she didn’t fit in there as she did here. "I guess I just… got too busy."

  He watched her shake her head in disbelief, then turn to mount the stairs to the loft. There was something incredibly sensuous in the way she dragged a hand along the banister at the top, caressing the wood as she moved, and Cameron felt the stab of an unfamiliar emotion. He’d brought Acasia here for privacy, simply to lie and love with her, not to find a rival for her affections. He was jealous of the cabin.

  A few crude phrases directed at himself accompanied this realization. He missed seeing Acasia wander back downstairs and approach him. Her hands slid beneath his sweatshirt and left hot fingerprints on his skin and her tongue was moist in his
ear. Cameron’s lips sought her neck, and his body stirred traitorously.

  He no longer wanted to do this here.

  He wanted her, but somewhere else, where he could have her to himself for a little while longer. Until he could be sure of her.

  Acasia’s fingers worked the buttons of his shirt with undeniable familiarity. With the same familiarity, Cameron’s tongue sought access to her mouth.

  Damn it all, he didn’t want to do this. Not here. He didn’t want to share her.

  "Thank you," she whispered. "I need… I like this place. It fits. I fit. Here…" She bent her head to kiss his throat. "There…" Her mouth moved to fit the V made by the open buttons of his shirt. "Everywhere." She raised her head so that her tongue could trace his lips. "Always."

  Love consumed jealousy, let Cameron return kiss for kiss, touch for touch. Acasia bent, taking them both to the floor, and all Cameron wanted was to feel her beneath him.

  * * *

  The cabin drew her like a homing pigeon to its roost. It became her haven, a private nook where she could escape everything: doubt, need, fear—and Cameron. It demanded nothing from her but the kind of physical labor she understood without thought. She demanded nothing from it but solitude. For the first time since she was seventeen, she lost herself somewhere, let herself dream.

  Every minute that she wasn’t working or with Cameron, she was up the mountain working on the cabin. She swept it out, aired it, dusted it, took the manufacturer’s stickers off the windows, then washed them inside and out. She fitted and hung the cupboard doors, and she used her imagination. In the corner she pictured as most likely to suit Cameron’s uses, she set a drafting table, with shelves on the wall beside it. For herself, she fitted a window seat under the front window, where she could best see Rhiannon. When she looked at Cameron across the dinner table each night, she glowed.

  She didn’t talk to Cameron about the cabin, though, instead hoarding this last bit of independence for herself.

  He smelled the sawdust in her hair and guessed what she was doing, but didn’t ask her about it. At the same time that he found himself bothered by the fact that she didn’t ask him to help her with the cabin, he understood her desire for private time, private space. The more natural it became to expect her continued presence in his life, the more he craved these things himself.

  Paradoxically, the closer they grew, the more distance he wanted between them. The more time they had together, the more separation seemed to become inevitable. He almost wished it would happen so that they could get it over with and go home. Or go on.

  He looked down at Acasia, sleeping lightly beside him. He really wanted this to go on.

  * * *

  Three days later, first light was gray in a sky laden with clouds.

  Staring at the light through the half–open curtains, Acasia stretched and plucked her watch off the nightstand. 5:00 a.m. Why was 5:00 a.m. always the hour her thoughts stirred and forced her to face them?

  On the other side of the mountain thunder grumbled, and she shrank from it reflexively, back into the warmth that was Cameron. He shifted in his sleep, accommodating her, positioning his arm more securely about her waist, and Acasia felt the familiar glow of awareness buzz through her. For two weeks they’d shared his bed, his rooms, his life. Two weeks, and he was becoming a habit as necessary as breathing. Fourteen days, and she sometimes didn’t remember who she was anymore. Sometimes she looked out at the mountains and forgot she’d ever been anywhere else, forgot how fragile now was, how easily she could lose her place here, lose Cameron. Not remembering was dangerous. It could make her complacent, careless. Carelessness was the key to loss. And she badly needed to stay in contact with who she was, to know the woman who peered back at her from the morning mirror…

  Even during the too–frequent moments when she didn’t like that woman very much.

  The thoughts poured on, disrupting her attempts to return to sleep. Carefully she moved Cameron’s arm, scooted to the edge of the bed and swung her feet to the floor. If she lay here any longer listening to her thoughts she would become prey to the fear that always seemed to lurk underneath them. She leaned toward the end of the four–poster where she’d hung her shirt the night before, and behind her Cameron stirred, reaching for her.

  "Casie?"

  Acasia bent to kiss his groping fingers. "It’s all right. Don’t wake up. I’ll be right back."

  "Mmm," Cameron murmured, and subsided back into the mattress.

  A wayward strand of hair brushed his forehead, and Acasia smoothed it back into place. Repose emptied his face of years, left in their stead the youth with whom she’d first fallen in love. She watched him sleep, seeing the hand that curled on her pillow. A couple of pale scars on his face were the only physical reminders of his brush with death. Even the emotional wounds had begun to heal. There would be scars, but the same sort of pain that had weakened Acasia for too many years would strengthen Cameron, let him grow. She envied him that, his ability to shape something positive out of what was worst in life. For all the frenzied activity that she’d chased through the years, she’d never really done anything more than learn to survive. Just.

  Cameron shifted again in his sleep, and his forehead creased, as though Acasia’s scrutiny disturbed him, and she leaned gently away from him, picking up her shirt, sliding it on. Socks followed, then underwear and jeans, with running shoes last. She had just finished tightening the bow on the second shoelace when her phone rang. She snapped it open and listened to Paolo without a word, then shut it with regret.

  She moved across the room to slide open one of the two drawers Cameron had lent her. He sat up in bed as Acasia purposefully began to remove her clothes and put them in her duffel bag.

  "I have to go," she said.

  "Mansour?" Cameron asked.

  "No, just an advisory appointment. I’ll be back in two or three days, no more."

  "Where?"

  "Caribbean. We’ve got some clients there with a problem. Jules is coming for me."

  "It couldn’t wait until a reasonable hour?"

  "Evidently not."

  "You’re sure Mansour isn’t involved?’

  "Paolo says no."

  "And you trust him implicitly."

  Acasia finished with the first drawer, closed it and opened the other. "I’ll trust him with your life while I’m gone. My trust doesn’t get more implicit than that." She turned and looked at him. "The risk is reasonable."

  Cameron threw the sheets away from him and rose to advance on Acasia. "I’ve seen what you regard as reasonable risks and I—"

  "Two or three days, Cam. Trust me that long. This is strictly hands–off—negotiation, not intervention."

  "Then let someone else do it. I don’t want to let you go."

  "Let?" Acasia paused on her way to the closet to retrieve the two suits she owned. "This is not a question of my asking permission, Cam. This is me going. This is my job. This is what I do."

  "Come on, Casie, someone else can do this." He was frustrated, angry. She didn’t need to prove anything to anyone, least of all him. "Someone must have done it before you came along."

  "That’s right, someone did." Acasia’s lips twisted. "And someone will do it when I’m gone. But right now I do it. Within a few years I’ll have to drop back and let someone younger and more agile do what I’ve always been best at. I’ll still be able to travel and negotiate and engineer retrieval plans—probably even participate in a few to some extent, but mostly the follow–through will get left to someone else. With the kind of work you do, you don’t have to worry about being eased out. Your work grows with you, it doesn’t leave you behind. Knowing one day I’ll be obsolete is not a comforting thought."

  Damn it, he understood and didn’t want to. "And if it ended for you now, today, what would you do?"

  "I have no concrete plans yet, Cam. I have some ideas. One of these days I’ll even sit down and iron the logistical problems out of them. Don’t worry, I’m lik
e a professional athlete. I know someday I could take a shot to the knee and not get up from it. I can accept that."

  "You could also quit now and avoid the possibility of ‘someday.’"

  "And if I told you that I wanted you to quit Rhiannon and give up Wall Street and boardrooms because being who you are is dangerous, too, what would you do?" She watched Cameron’s eyes flick quickly around the room, stopping at the windows where the bulk of Rhiannon’s research center was just becoming visible in the gray dawn light. "Tough call, isn’t it?" she asked quietly.

  Cameron brought his gaze back to her. "Sometimes I forget how rough you play," he said.

  "I don’t play any rougher than you."

  "No, I suppose you don’t." He ran a hand through his hair. "Look, I know I’m violating my own ground rules. I’m not going to apologize for it. I worry—no, I’m scared to death for you. And I’m no good at playing martyr and keeping it to myself in front of you."

  "Oh, good," Acasia said, slightly prickly. "The one thing I’ve always wanted to be is the angst in someone else’s life."

  Cameron smothered a grin. "Tell me I’m not the angst in yours and we’ll talk."

  "Angst? You?" She gave him an innocent look. The one thing she knew with certainty was that, if she was going to share her life with anyone, it would be with Cameron, because she wanted that enough to work for it. She also knew that certainty was a tentative thing. A moment of goodbye, even if it was only a short term goodbye, was not the time for protestations and promises, no matter how badly she wanted to make them. She looked at Cameron, at the image of her thoughts mirrored in his eyes. "Even if I could delegate this, I’ve got to do it. And come back, if you’ll let me."

  "I’ll let you. You were my first lover. I want you to be my last, too." He reached for her, pulled her close, held and was held. "I don’t want you to go, but go anyway." He rubbed the back of her neck, then laced his fingers in her hair. "Stay safe," he whispered, and eased her away. "Keep in touch if you can, huh?"