by Theresa Weir
Olivia? She wondered. Had Olivia like Cohen?
Seeming to come to a decision, Dylan popped in the tape, then pushed buttons until he reached the song he was looking for.
“Stop the Jeep.”
Claire braked, coming to a halt in the middle of the deserted road.
“Cut the lights.”
Not sure of what he was after, she shut off the lights and the ignition.
Darkness had fallen. All the stars were out. Moonlight cast a shimmering trail along the road, like a path to heaven.
He pushed the PLAY, button. The haunting, aching song filled the night, became a part of the moment. Claire stepped from the Jeep and just stood there, hands shoved deep into the pockets of her coat, looking up at the sky. Dylan came to stand beside her. And then, under a cobalt sky full of cadmium stars, he pulled her into his arms. Without a word, he kissed her, and rocked her against him, and just held her, as if he didn’t want to let her go.
~0~
They stopped at a gas station along the Salmon River where Dylan picked up a newspaper.
“Isn’t that the guy who was in the plane crash with you?'" Claire asked, looking at the front page of the paper as he slid into the passenger seat. “The chess player?'"
“I guess he’s winning all over the place. He’s got a match scheduled with the guy who now holds the national championship.”
“He must be really good.”
“Yeah.”
Although Dylan agreed, he sounded preoccupied.
She put the Jeep in gear and pulled back onto the highway. “Chess is cool.”
“I always got the idea that most chicks thought it was nerdy.”
“Oh, I don't know. When I was in high school, I used to know this guy who was on the school chess team. Of course everybody made fun of the kids on the team, but I actually thought there was something sexy about it.”
“About chess?” he asked in total disbelief.
She laughed. “What's wrong with that?”
“Did you ever date the chess player?”
“No. He didn't date anybody, as far as I know. ”
“Would you have?”
“Dated him?”
“Yeah. Or would you have been embarrassed to be seen going into a theater with him? Or riding around in his geeky car?”
“I'd like to say I wouldn't have been embarrassed, but in all honesty, I may have been. We're talking about a sixteen-year-old here. That's one thing I regret about high school. I wish I'd stood up for what I believed in. I wasn't one of those clones who did everything everybody else was doing, but I didn't speak my mind, either.”
“That's the easy thing to do. To watch it all go by.”
“Let's talk about something a little more current.”
“How about the chess thing?”
“That fascinates you, doesn't it?”
“I can't believe you think chess is sexy. Explain that one to me.”
“I guess I'm turned on by intelligence. And people who play chess are smart.”
“What if I played chess?”
She laughed. '‘You?”
“Yeah, me. What the hell are you laughing at?”
“It's just such a far-fetched premise.”
“Oh, really?”
“Dylan, I didn't say that just because you aren’t a chess player you don't turn me on.”
“I'm glad we got that straightened out.”
That night, they lay tangled together in bed, Claire's head against Dylan's shoulder. The day had been so much more than she'd expected.
Rather than going on an innocent drive, it had been a turning point in their relationship. Dylan had opened up to her, and she felt as if she understood him, while certainly not completely, at least a little bit, enough for her to feel she could ask a question that had been in her mind since they first met.
“Dylan ... who is Olivia? ”
She felt him tense, then relax.
“My sister,” he finally said so quietly she barely heard him.
Claire lay there, stunned, silent.
“She died when I was twelve.”
Oh, Dylan. I’m so sorry. So incredibly sorry. Claire touched him, stroking his face, his hair.
The room was silent for a long time.
He made a throat-clearing sound. “After our parents died, I told her I'd take care of her. I guess I didn't do a very good job.”
Her heart was breaking. She pressed her lips against his shoulder, unable to speak.
Chapter 24
Was it the voodoo doll?
No.
Yet Claire had to admit to herself that Dylan hadn’t seemed the least attracted to her until she’d poked the doll with that last pin.
Too much of a coincidence?
Maybe. She hoped not. She prayed not.
There was one way to find out.
For the third time in a matter of hours, Claire opened the antique desk drawer and pulled out the Pillsbury Doughboy voodoo doll.
She grasped the white pin, but didn’t pull it out. Just like she hadn’t pulled it out the other times.
Tomorrow.
She’d do it tomorrow, she promised herself. One more day wouldn’t make any difference. And really, when she thought about it, two more days wouldn’t make any difference. Or three.
What you’re doing is deceitful, said that voice in her head she’d been trying hard to ignore.
“I know,” she told the Doughboy. She was an addict, and like all addicts, she kept putting off going to detox, kept putting off facing the inevitable.
I don't know that it's the doll.
There's only one way to find out.
“Tomorrow,” she whispered to the little guy, giving him a kiss and tucking him gently into the drawer. “Tomorrow.”
~0~
Dylan picked up a stick and gave it a toss in the direction of the house.
Hallie just smiled up at him, not even looking for the stick.
Dylan rubbed her soft head. “We can’t all be geniuses.”
If Claire was an addict, then Dylan was a junkie. He couldn’t get enough of Claire. When he wasn’t with her, he couldn’t get her out of his mind. When he was with her, he couldn’t believe his luck.
He was so damn confused. He’d never felt this way about a woman. In fact, there had been times when he’d wondered if he could have a real relationship with anyone. He’d wondered if the losses he’d suffered had screwed him up, turned him into some kind of robot, unable to feel deeply about anything. Over the years, he’d been with what he figured was an average number of women. And never had any of them touched him more than physically. Never had he felt that what they'd shared had been more than an act, more than a mutual ... well, kind of handshake.
Two weeks had passed since the night Claire so inventively handcuffed herself to the bed. And in that time his passion for her hadn't diminished, not in the least. In fact, it was the opposite. And ever since that night, he noticed things in ways he'd never noticed them before. Colors were more intense. Smells were more exotic.
At the moment he noticed the way the cold air felt on a face that was hot from cutting wood. The way the ground felt under his feet. The way his body felt, kind of light, kind of electric.
He thought about the way Claire felt.
Soft. Sweet.
Unbelievable.
Things happened for a reason. He firmly believed that. Why else would his plane have crashed in the middle of the mountains? Why else would he have ended up getting into Claire’s Jeep?
It seemed to be his destiny.
Cause and effect. Everything was connected. Even the death of his parents. That horrible night was the beginning of a journey, a journey that had been long and hard and painful. It was too bad people couldn’t see into the future. If he’d known that Claire had been waiting somewhere up ahead, it would have made the hell he thought of as his life a lot easier to bear.
He moved in the direction of the house. He was trying to g
ive Claire space so she could get some work done on her paintings, but it would be dark soon. From the end of the lane, he could see a light shining from the kitchen window, and he pictured Claire, curled up on the couch, sketchpad on her knee.
He moved toward that light.
~0~
Dylan came in from outside, Hallie at his heels, to find Claire sitting at the antique desk, a dreamy little smile hovering near the edges of her mouth. He crossed the room, took her face in his hands, and kissed her long and hard. It had been almost twenty-four hours since he’d held her close, skin to skin, soul to soul.
“Let’s go outside in the sauna,” he whispered, threading his fingers through her shiny hair.
“Don’t you want to eat first? I made a casserole while you were gone.”
“Later.”
In truth, he was never hungry now. Who could be interested in food when there was Claire? Food was fuel, nothing more.
Outside in the sauna, they didn’t even pretend that they were there for any other reason than to make love. They both stripped.
“Wait,” he said, putting a hand to hers as she started to pull off the bit of string she called underwear. “Let me.”
He slipped his fingers under the elastic band, tracing it between her buttocks, then back to the soft mound of hair. He slid his hands beneath the elastic, then pulled the panties down her thighs and legs until she stepped free. He dropped to his knees, his hands kneading her bottom, her fingers digging into his hair, and he kissed her with his lips and his tongue. He loved the taste of her, the salty, erotic taste of her. Already he knew just where to touch her, just what it took to make her go weak. He dragged his tongue across that spot.
She let out a moan and slid to the floor so they were knee-to-knee, chest-to-chest.
“You know me so well,” she said, her mouth finding his, her knee slipping between his thighs until she was riding him. “You know just where to touch me.”
“You're almost there, aren't you?” he asked, newly amazed at how quickly she could reach an orgasm.
“ Yes. ” She let out a little gasping laugh. “I'm trying to hold back, trying to make this last, but I've been thinking about this moment all day.”
“Why didn't you tell me earlier?”
“I was afraid you'd think I was some kind of maniac.”
“We could have been maniacs together.”
He lay her back on the wooden floor, taking a moment to admire her glistening body, taking a moment to savor the heavy-lidded desire in her dark-pupiled eyes. He continued to watch her as she took him in her hands and guided him to her, continued to watch her as he filled her, continued to watch her as she met him, thrust for thrust, continued to watch her as she threw back her head and spasmed around him.
“Oh my,” she said. “Oh my.”
~0~
Claire didn't want to get up, didn't want to move, but she'd totally lost track of time. She had no idea whether or not they'd been inside the sauna too long. They had to go outside.
“We have to get up, ” she said.
Dylan wouldn't move. Well, that wasn't quite true. He kind of moaned in a sleepy, contented way. He began to move his hips. She could feel him reawakening inside her. He pressed a hot, open-mouthed kiss against her neck and said her name over and over.
She slapped him on the arm, just a slight, open-hand kind of thing. “Dylan. We have to get out of here. Right now. ”
“Huh?”
“Now.”
With obvious great reluctance, he drew away from her. She was on her feet, picking up her clothes, when he grabbed her arm and tugged her in the direction of the door. “Forget your clothes.”
They ran outside and tumbled into the snow. It felt cold and glorious against Claire's hot, hot skin. It had been twilight when they'd gone inside the sauna; now the darkness was complete, the moonlight reflecting off the snow making it easy to keep her bearings.
Laughing, Claire picked up a handful of snow and tossed it at Dylan's face. He grabbed one of her arms, then the other. Then he slowly lowered himself on top of her—and filled her.
It was the strangest, most glorious feeling. The cold, the hot. Dylan.
“Are you too cold?” he asked, looking down at her.
She shook her head. “I'm so hot, the snow is melting around me.”
He laughed, a breathless sound.
They came together, rolling and tumbling and breathless, until they were both depleted, until the cold air began to remind them both where they were. Dylan kissed her hard and rocked her against his chest, saying, “I think I'm in love.”
Claire stopped breathing.
Love?
Under normal conditions, his sweet confession would have sent her blood singing. But all she could think about was the voodoo doll.
What if it wasn’t real? What if he really didn’t care anything for her?
“I guess that wasn’t quite the news you wanted to hear.” He moved away from her, got to his feet, walked back to the sauna. He returned, their clothes in his hand. He tossed hers at her, then disappeared into the house.
~0~
He hadn’t meant to say anything. It certainly wasn’t like him to blurt out declarations of love. And now that he thought about it, he hadn’t actually said, I love you. He’d said, I think I’m in love. There was a big difference between the two, the latter giving him a way out.
By the time she showed up to eat, he’d recovered from the shock of his blunder and her subsequent rejection.
Claire sat at one end of the couch, her feet tucked under her, eating the tuna casserole she’d fixed earlier.
Did hers taste like sawdust too? Dylan wondered from where he sat in an overstuffed chair, his bare feet sticking out in front of him, plate in hand. “I didn’t really mean it,” he assured her. “I mean, I like you, of course. But I don’t feel that way about you. It was just kind of an expression. Like saying, Wow.”
She had no answer for him. She kept staring at her plate, shoving in forkfuls of food as if eating was something she had to get done and over with in a hurry. Suddenly she jumped up and ran to the kitchen, plate in hand. He heard a cupboard door open, heard what sounded like the wastebasket being slid across the floor, then the sound of someone puking.
She could have just said she didn't think of him that way.
~0~
That night Dylan didn't sleep in her bed. Claire stayed awake, staring into the darkness above her head, waiting until she heard the sound of his even breathing.
That didn't happen until after three in the morning.
She tossed back the covers, then tiptoed into the living room. Once there, she slowly pulled open the desk drawer, wincing at every little sound.
“Claire?” came Dylan's sleepy voice out of the darkness. “That you?”
“Yes,” she whispered, her heart pounding, her fingers wrapped around the stuffed doll. “I didn't mean to wake you. I'm just looking for something.”
“Did you find it?”
She closed the drawer and clutched the doll tightly to her chest. “Yes. Yes, I found it.”
Back in the bedroom, under the moonlight streaming in the window, Claire pulled out first one pin, then the other, dropping the pins in the wastebasket near the bed.
What was she supposed to do with the doll now? she wondered. Should she take off the hair she’d glued to it? What if that had some negative effect on Dylan? And she certainly couldn’t throw it away, certainly couldn't risk damaging the doll in any way. Who did a person get in contact with about such things? Was there a voodoo hotline? Maybe the library could help her find a voodoo expert, someone who could tell her how to deactivate the doll.
For the time being, she put it in her top dresser drawer for safekeeping. If it were the voodoo doll that had made Dylan fall in love with her, then when he woke up in the morning, she would be old Mrs. Mothballs again.
I think I’m in love.
And she’d told herself one more day wouldn't ma
ke any difference.
Chapter 25
The next morning, Dylan stuffed his last shirt into the black plastic trash bag, pulled the yellow strings tight, and knotted them. He'd waited until Claire got up, waited until she was out of the bedroom before packing his stuff.
Becoming famous was like winning the lottery. Suddenly you had a lot of friends, people who wouldn't have looked at you twice before. He hadn't told Claire who he was because he wanted to make sure she liked him, Dylan, not the chess player. He'd almost told her that day they'd gone for a drive, but then she'd brought up all that stuff about how she was attracted to chess players, and all of his old insecurities had come tumbling back. He'd decided then and there that he had to find out how she felt about him first, before he told her who he was. That was the only way he could be certain of her true feelings. He just hadn't bargained on her not having any feelings for him.
He was stunned. He was hurt.
And now he thought, To hell with telling her anything.
“Wow.”
He turned to see Claire standing in the doorway.
He looked around the room, making sure he had everything. “Why wow?”
“That was fast. One day you’re staying, the next you're leaving.”
“I've been thinking about it quite a while.”
“What made you choose today? Just the day after you said you loved me?”
“Claire, let's get this straight.” his pride had suffered. He couldn't leave with her thinking he was running away, that she'd broken his heart or something. “I said I think I'm in love. That's different. And don't worry. I was just caught up in the passion of the moment. That's what it's called, isn’t it? The passion of the moment? It didn't mean anything. It was like yelling, All right. Touchdown!”
She flinched, and he instantly regretted the callousness of his words. But it was too late. Once spoken, words couldn't be taken back.
He couldn’t stay. That was all he knew. Here he thought he'd found the person he'd been searching for his entire life. But it was like everything else that had ever happened to him. He found the promise of happiness, only to have it taken away.
“Are you leaving because of yesterday?”
She came and stood directly in front of him, demanding an answer. For a moment he was afraid she was going to block his way. He didn’t know what he’d do if she blocked his way. Because at the moment, he was close to breaking down, close to falling apart there at her feet, dangerously close to confessing his damn love, his damn, damn love all over again.
