by Theresa Weir
“They love everything,” John said.
“That’s great.”
“You don’t sound as excited as I thought you would.”
"I have kind of a headache.” A heartache.
“Well, call me later and we'll talk more. And Claire—get a phone.”
“Yeah, I will.”
“No you won't.”
“You're right.”
She hung up. Would she ever feel better? Would this huge empty feeling in her stomach, in her chest, ever go away?
Spring turned into summer.
Since Claire only rented the cabin for the cheaper, winter rate, she packed her things, preparing to move. She hadn't heard from Dylan in a month. Trevor—a.k.a. Elliot Lafayette—called Libby almost every night. He sent her flowers and sappy poems. Trevor was doing a lot of winning. But Dylan was in a class by himself. Nobody could touch him.
When Claire's editor from Cardcity heard that Claire was moving, she tried to talk her into coming to New York, where she could work more closely with the card company. Her agent thought it was a good idea too.
Instead, Claire ended up renting an upstairs apartment in downtown Fallon. In three months, when the tourist season was over, she would move back to the cabin. She had to be close to nature. How could she be a nature artist in New York City?
~0~
Dylan pulled up in front of Claire's, jumped out of the rental car, and hurried to fling open the cabin door. Standing inside were two people, a man and a woman, he'd never seen before. Understandably, they both looked quite alarmed.
"Where's Claire?”
"There's no Claire here. You must have the wrong cabin."'
“You have the wrong cabin. This is Claire's cabin.”
The man and woman looked at each other, then at him. “Maybe you’re looking for the person who rents this place in the off-season.”
Before Dylan had left, he’d tried to talk Claire into getting a phone.
“You know where to find me, ” she’d said.
Why hadn’t Claire told him she would be moving in the summer? He hadn’t even thought about the possibility of her not being there when he returned. “Do you know where she went? Where she moved to?”
They shook their heads. “We’re from Omaha. We come here every summer. But the place is always empty when we arrive.”
“I’m sorry.” He backed away. “Sorry.”
He’d only been to Libby’s once so he had a little trouble finding the place, plus he was in panic mode. Was everything okay with Claire’s Cardcity contract? Had she gotten her drawings done? Turned in on time? Had they liked them? Disliked them? Canceled her contract? Or maybe they'd loved them so much that she'd moved to New York.
Why hadn't he come back earlier?
Time had gotten away from him. One game had led to another and another. It had felt so good, so damn right to be doing what he was supposed to be doing that he'd lost track of time.
But Claire. In all the time he'd been away, he'd never quit thinking about her, never quit wishing he could see her, touch her, hold her.
He found the lane that led to Libby’s house. On either side were KEEP OUT, PRIVATE PROPERTY signs. And if that didn’t intimidate anyone, there was a huge locked iron gate at the end of the lane.
He talked to Libby through an intercom that kept cutting out. He was ready to climb the gate when Libby stepped out the front door, barefoot, dressed in baggy camouflage pants and a brown T-shirt.
He jammed his fingers through his damp hair. He was sweating like hell. "'Where’s Claire?”
"'Hi to you, too.”
“Yeah, hi.” Done with that, he got back to the problem, the big problem. “Where the hell’s Claire?” He tried not to shout, but from the look on Libby’s face, he was afraid he hadn't succeeded.
“She’s living in town. Above Electric Iguana. It’s a club.”
He turned and lunged toward the car.
“Thank you!” Libby shouted after him.
He waved a hand in the air, but didn't take the time to look back.
A half hour later he was walking up a narrow flight of stairs to knock on a door painted with heavy green enamel. From inside came the sound of excited barking, then frantic scratching on the door.
Hallie.
He tried to talk to her through the locked door, but that just got her more stirred up. He left, hoping she would calm down after he was gone.
Downstairs he found a guy cleaning the bar. In one corner a band was setting up their instruments. “Cool tattoo,” one of the band members said, inching past him.
Dylan glanced at his arm. “Thanks,” was his distracted answer. “Have you seen Claire?” he asked the guy behind the bar.
“What day is this?”
“Thursday. It's Thursday.”
“I think she teaches painting classes on Thursdays.”
“Painting classes.”
“Yeah.”
All along, Dylan had imagined Claire waiting for him, looking just the way he'd left her, just where he'd left her, doing just what she'd been doing those last days, working on her watercolors for the card company. This threw him. She wasn’t supposed to move. She wasn’t supposed to be living in town, above a bar called Electric Iguana, and she wasn’t supposed to be teaching.
“The classes are out by Fallon Lake. Everybody takes their own easel and sits out there and paints the water and the mountains and crap.”
Dylan drove halfway around the lake before he found a bunch of brightly dressed people in big hats sitting in front of easels. It wasn’t until he got closer that he realized one of the artists was licking the paint off her brush.
And when he stepped from the car, he saw that the students had quite a bit of age on them. That’s when it dawned on him that they were nursing-home residents.
Even though the temperature must have been at least eighty degrees, one of the residents wore a goofy crocheted hat just like Claire’s.
He walked closer and saw that it wasn’t a nursing-home resident, but Claire, trying to maintain control of her students but losing ground fast.
“Please, Mrs. Dottingham. Paint the paper, not the easel. And Henrietta, don’t eat the paint. When we’re done here, we’ll get ice cream.”
“At the drugstore soda fountain?'"
“We’ll go to Dairy Delight."
“I like the soda fountain.”
“It’s not there any—“ She stopped midsentence, her gaze freezing on Dylan.
She looked good in summer clothes, he decided. He was even getting used to the goofy hat.
“Dylan...”
She was wearing beige shorts and a white sleeveless top. On her feet were hiking boots. She was tan and healthy-looking. It didn't look as if she'd been pining away for him.
“I went by your cabin and found out you don't live there anymore. Why didn’t you tell me you'd moved?”
“I didn't have any way to get in touch with you.” Plus, I wasn't sure you’d care, seemed to be her unspoken words.
This wasn't going at all the way he'd imagined. He'd expected her to throw herself into his arms. He'd expected her to kiss him, be glad to see him. Instead, she wasn't even looking at him. Instead, her head was bent and she was fiddling with the paintbrush in her hand, seeming to find it more fascinating than his return.
He took a step back, not knowing what to say. Maybe she'd met somebody else. Or maybe she'd lost interest in him. He didn't know how to react. The future without Claire . . . it wouldn't be a future at all.
“Maybe I'll see you later,” he said, stupefied. He'd lost everybody he ever cared about. Why not Claire, too?
Hurt.
God, he hurt like hell. Claire. Claire, I love you.
She finally looked up. “You’re leaving? But you just got here.”
“You’re busy. I’ll catch you later.”
“When? Where?”
“I don’t know.”
Al he knew was that he had to get in his car a
nd drive. Away from there, away from the pain. “At your apartment,” he lied, knowing he couldn’t go back there, knowing this was it. It was over. He started to walk away, when she called after him. He slowed and turned around.
“I don’t want to hold you down,” she said, catching up with him. “I’m so afraid I’ll hold you down.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You’ve just gotten your life together. I don’t want to mess you up.”
Was that what this was all about? “What I have out there—none of it means anything without you. You. You are my life.” He didn’t get it. How could she have thought any differently? “I told you I was coming back.”
“You were gone so long.”
He should have come back sooner. He should have written more. He was so certain of their love that he hadn’t questioned their time apart and what it might mean to Claire. “Three months. I was gone three months.”
“I know.”
He’d spent almost a decade in the desert. To him, three months wasn’t even something that could be measured, it was that small. But for Claire . . . He could see that for someone who lived in the moment, three months might as well have been a lifetime.
“Men have walked out of my life before,” she explained. “I used to tell myself, He'll be back. But then I learned to tell myself, He won't be back, so quit moping around. Get on with your life. And as time passed, my memory became fuzzy and I realized that I was better off by myself.”
This didn't sound good.
“But it was different with you. The ache never went away. It just kept getting worse.”
“That's what I like to hear.”
“That I've been in pain?”
“That you missed me. It's so weird. It's like you're everybody and everything I've known and loved. Yet at the same time, there are so many things about you that are uniquely you. Your sense of humor. The way you just dive into life. Where some people would stand around, analyzing things from every angle, checking out the pros and cons while the years dwindle away, you jump. You have this wonderful ability to live in the moment. And when I'm around you, I can be a part of that. I can live in the moment, too.”
She shook her head, her eyes glistening. “I'm not that person,” she confessed. “I wish I were, but I'm not.”
“You are. You live life the way I only imagine, the way I can only do through chess. With reckless abandon. With unrequited joy.”
He could tell she was thinking, looking back.
“Don't you see?” she said, “I'm that person when you're around. When I'm with you, I'm stronger. There’s more life in me. It's not me. It's you. “
He understood what she was saying, because he felt the same thing. He was more when he was around her. He was more alive. He was smarter. Funnier. More.
“Together,” he said, smiling, “We're one damn bright star.” He pulled her into his arms and kissed her right there in front of her entire art class.
Nobody even noticed.
“I know this isn't really the place to ask—” He glanced around at her students, then back at her. “Well, maybe it's the perfect place. Will you grow old with me?”
Chapter 32
“I feel just silly as hell holding this flower.”
Dylan was lying in a meadow, bees buzzing around a wildflower in his hand, while Claire sat a few feet away, sketchpad on her bent knees, drawing pencil in hand. To her left was a picnic basket with the remnants of their half-eaten lunch and what was left of Grandma Maxfield's bottle of plain white grape juice.
It had been two weeks since Dylan's return, and in that time they'd discussed many things, one of them the possibility of buying the rental cabin. Whatever happened, they knew they wanted to stay in Fallon. Their work would take them both away at times, but Fallon would be a place they could come back to, a place untouched by four lanes and discount chains. It was a place where people stared at you because you were a stranger, not because you'd had lunch at the White House. Dylan had sought anonymity half his life; in Fallon anonymity had found him.
“I should have had you take off your shirt,” Claire said, exaggerated regret in her voice as she moved the pencil lightly across the paper.
“There's no way I'd pose with my shirt off, holding a damn flower.”
Claire's confidence was growing. She still had moments of self-doubt, times when her heart would fill with panic and she wondered if she could draw another picture, if she had any talent at all. When that happened, Dylan would hold her and kiss her and tell her that self-doubt wasn’t all that bad, that it made a person try harder. And he would point out that it was better than thinking she was the greatest thing that ever happened to the art world. Self-doubt kept a person humble, and he was a firm believer in humility.
“Are you almost done?” he asked again. “I can't hold this pose any longer.”
She made a final sweep across the paper. She would detail it later, back at the apartment. “That’s good enough.”
He let out a tired sigh and fell back on the ground, his hand to his stomach, one leg bent, one straight.
“Don't you want to see it?”
“I don't know why you insisted on drawing a picture of me. I didn't think you drew people.”
“I don't.”
He took the tablet from her hand. He stared at it for a long time, then tossed it gently aside. On the tablet was a drawing of a solitary bee, nothing more.
“Brat.”
She laughed. She was still laughing when he attacked her, throwing himself on her, rolling her to the ground. “I have shit big love for you,” he said.
“You are so romantic.”
His mouth found hers. His kiss was deep and sweet and tender.
“It's finally gotten warm enough for less clothing,” he said in between kisses.
“I thought you didn’t want to take off your shirt,” she reminded him.
“I changed my mind.”
“And now you want me to draw you nude? That's an idea. I’ve been looking for a subject so I could use this new shade called In the Buff.”
“I don't think that’s what Cardcity meant in your contract where it says ‘drawings of the natural kind.'”
“It doesn't say that.”
“Sure it does. Right after it says that when you draw, you have to leave your underwear at home.”
“How do you know I'm wearing any now?”
“I'll let you know in just a minute.”
He smiled at her in that sexy way of his, then kissed her and said, “In chess, there’s something called pure mate.”
“Chess is so much multidimensional thinking. I’ll never fully grasp it. I can only focus on one thing at a time, on what’s happening at the moment.”
“That’s what I love about you,” Dylan said. “I’ll never be able to draw like you, but that’s okay. It’s just that sometimes things are easier for me to explain in chess terms.”
“Are you trying to tell me something?” she asked, smiling.
“Pure mate is when every piece makes sense, when every piece has a reason for being where it is. It's something that doesn't happen very often, and when it does, it’s profound.”
There in the middle of the lush meadow, an ultra-blue sky as his backdrop, Dylan broke her heart and put it back together again, all in a space of two seconds.
“Like this?” she asked.
“Exactly like this.”
~o0o~
Theresa Weir (a.k.a. Anne Frasier) is an award-winning, USA Today bestselling author of twenty-one books and numerous short stories that have spanned the genres of suspense, mystery, thriller, romantic suspense, paranormal, and memoir. Her titles have been printed in both hardcover and paperback and translated into twenty languages. Her memoir, The Orchard, was a 2011 Oprah Magazine Fall Pick, Number Two on the Indie Next list, a featured B+ review in Entertainment Weekly, and a Librarians’ Best Books of 2011. Going back to 1988, Weir’s debut title was the cult phenomenon AMAZON
LILY, initially published by Pocket Books and later reissued by Bantam Books. Writing as Theresa Weir she won a RITA for romantic suspense (COOL SHADE), and a year later the Daphne du Maurier for paranormal romance (BAD KARMA). In her more recent Anne Frasier career, her thriller and suspense titles hit the USA Today list (HUSH, SLEEP TIGHT, PLAY DEAD) and were featured in Mystery Guild, Literary Guild, and Book of the Month Club. HUSH was both a RITA and Daphne du Maurier finalist. Well-known in the mystery community, she served as hardcover judge for the Thriller presented by International Thriller Writers, and was guest of honor at the Diversicon 16 mystery/science fiction conference held in Minneapolis in 2008. Frasier books have received high praise from print publications such as Publishers Weekly, Minneapolis Star Tribune, and Crimespree, as well as online praise from Spinetingler, Book Loons, Armchair Interviews, Sarah Weinman’s Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind, and Ali Karim’s Shots Magazine. Her books have featured cover quotes from Lisa Gardner, Jane Ann Krentz, Linda Howard, Kay Hooper, and J.A. Konrath. Her short stories and poetry can be found in DISCOUNT NOIR, ONCE UPON A CRIME, and THE LINEUP, POEMS ON CRIME. She is a member of Sisters in Crime and International Thriller Writers.
www.theresaweir.com
Title List
Writing as Anne Frasier
Hush, USA Today bestseller, RITA finalist, Daphne du Maurier finalist
Sleep Tight, USA Today bestseller
Play Dead, USA Today Bestseller
Before I Wake
Pale Immortal
Garden of Darkness, RITA finalist
Once Upon a Crime anthology, Santa’s Little Helper
The Lineup, Poems on Crime, Home
Discount Noir anthology, Crack House
Deadly Treats Halloween anthology, editor and contributor, The Replacement (September 2011)
Once Upon a Crime anthology, Red Cadillac (April 2012)
Writing as Theresa Weir
The Forever Man
Amazon Lily, RITA finalist, Best New Adventure Writer award, Romantic Times
Loving Jenny
Pictures of Emily
Iguana Bay
