Walk in Beauty

by Wind, Ruth

  Dipping his head a little against the swirling snow, he headed toward the coffee shop, moving with the careless grace of a cougar or a gunfighter.

  He looked, Jessie thought, like a legend.

  At her side, Giselle urgently tugged her hand. “Let’s go, Mom!”

  Jessie allowed herself to be led outside. Even then, with the cold wind circling her neck and snow lighting on her cheeks, she couldn’t seem to pull herself together. Especially when Luke stopped a few feet away and simply waited, looking at her with a sober expression. She found herself noting small details about him—the slim, elegantly beaded hatband, the gleam of a silver chain around his neck, the evidence of recent polishing of his long broken-in boots. In those things, she realized he had recovered his careless, small vanities, and it was a good thing that he cared again.

  The strangeness of knowing his secret vanities so intimately struck her forcefully. All at once, it seemed absurd they should be standing here like this, so many years too late. How could she make small talk to a man with whom she’d been wholly intimate? Someone with whom she’d shared not only the deepest secrets of her body, but of her mind and heart and soul.

  “Where’s the car?” he asked.

  “I’ll show you,” Giselle volunteered. She rushed forward, bouncing. “It’s right over here.” It was impossible to miss the worshipful expression on her face.

  Jessie was grateful when Luke reached out his hand to take Giselle’s and bent his head toward her with a gentle smile. “Good morning,” he said.

  Giselle’s eyes shone. “Good morning.”

  Jessie trailed behind them, trying desperately to find a way to put things in perspective.

  At the car, Giselle said, “Pretty gross, huh?” Luke nodded. “Did you call the police, Jessie?” “Not yet. I wanted to wait and see if you thought it was connected to what we talked about yesterday.”

  “Probably.” He rounded the car, his duster catching the wind as he walked. “I’d even venture a guess that that’s sheep blood.”

  “Why?”

  He glanced at Giselle, then back to Jessie. “Long story.”

  She nodded, again grateful for his thoughtfulness toward Giselle.

  “I’ll call the police from the office, but I doubt if they’ll do anything.” He frowned. “Don’t drive it until I’ve had a chance to go over it.”

  “I’d appreciate that.”

  He inclined his head, the skin around his eyes crinkling with his smile. “Still a whiz at engines, eh?”

  Jessie shrugged, steeling herself against the temptation to laugh with him about an old joke. “I can change spark plugs.”

  “It’s progress.”

  “We’d better hurry,” she said pointedly. “Or we’ll be late for our appointment.”

  “Right.”

  The police, harried with minor traffic accidents in the snow, took a report over the phone. That done, the three of them headed for Luke’s truck, a utilitarian vehicle he no doubt used to transport lumber and finished carpentry goods. Jessie noted the fresh coat of paint and the immaculate trim, the cleanliness of the serviceable truck.

  Giselle scrambled joyfully to the middle of the bench seat. Jessie more reluctantly climbed in behind her and closed the door. The scent of the cab caught her unprepared—it was a deeply masculine smell of wood smoke and forest greenery laced with a faint undertone of good tobacco. The essence of Luke.

  A blue jay feather hung from the mirror, the quill end wrapped in a scrap of deerskin. The sight of it, shimmering in the gray light, gave Jessie a sharp jolt. She looked out the window.

  Luke turned the ignition key and the tape player jolted into life, playing Van Morrison, “Almost Independence Day.” One of her favorite road songs. Had he remembered that, or was it just coincidence?

  A swift, sharp pain stabbed through her chest at the wave of memories. She felt dizzy with the melding of past and present, and a little panicky at the innocent assault on her defenses. She wanted to hold her breath, close her eyes and cover her ears. Shut him out completely.

  Nostalgia, she told herself, forcing herself to breathe normally and focus on the landscape beyond the window. Soon the work on the weavers’ project would be finished and she could get back to Albuquerque and her normal, ordinary life. Just for today, she had to endure these nostalgic signposts and the emotions they rekindled. Tomorrow, she could go home.

  Unfortunately, she found fate aligned against her once again. In spite of the fact that they were only a few minutes behind schedule, the man they were supposed to meet at the gallery was not there. His secretary was convincing in her tale of a family emergency, and asked if they could come back the next morning at the same time.

  Luke glanced at Jessie, raising his eyebrows in question.

  She took a deep breath, weighing the continued strain of being in his company against her commitment to the project. “Fine,” she said with a sigh. “I can stay one more day.”

  Back outside, he looked at Giselle. “Have you had breakfast?”

  “Only a muffin.”

  “Do you have plans, Jessie?” he asked.

  She wanted to say yes, but honor outweighed comfort. “No, not really.”

  “Why don’t you come to my house and have some breakfast? I’ll call someone to look at your car—we can take it from there.”

  The thought of being in his company for another several hours sent a fresh wave of panic through her middle. “Giselle, get in the truck.”

  Her daughter heard the tone of voice and obeyed instantly. As soon as Giselle slammed the door closed, Jessie said in a low voice, “Luke, this is just too weird for me. I don’t know how to act or what to say, or anything.” She looked at him with entreaty. “It’s been eight years. I don’t even know who you are now.”

  For a moment, his gaze was fixed over her head. A long muscle along his jaw tightened. He touched his chin, moved his foot, weighed his words. Through it all, she waited.

  “You do know, Jessie,” he said finally, as he looked at her. His dark eyes were sorrowful and beautiful and struck the chords of a thousand memories within her. “You’ll always know me. Just like I know you.”

  That struck the wrong chord. “Right,” she snapped and was about to push past him when he grabbed her arm just above the elbow.

  “Jessie,” he said in a low, harsh voice. “Give me a break, will you? We can’t pretend we never knew each other, but we don’t have to be enemies.”

  So close. Jessie stared up at him, snared by her own stupid nostalgic emotions, by the warm brown of his skin, the cut of his jaw and the gentleness of his mouth. With an almost physical need, she ached to bury her face in the shoulder of his jacket, to breathe that foresty smell of his skin in deeply…

  She remembered how it felt, too, how perfectly her head nestled against his shoulder, how he rested his chin on the top of her head, how even their breathing seemed to synchronize when they were close.

  Tears sprang to her eyes suddenly and she broke away. “Damn you, Luke,” she swore. “I could have done without this.”

  His face hardened. “Me, too.” He touched her back lightly, nudging her toward the door. “Giselle’s waiting.”

  * * *

  She entered his house, Luke thought, as if there were snakes hidden beneath the furniture. It was his own place, bought three years before, and he was proud of it. The simple bungalow had been stripped of its old plaster walls, and Luke had restored the original woodwork.

  Once inside the front door, Jessie stopped in the middle of the living room and looked around. “This is nice,” she said.

  He couldn’t prevent a chuckle. “I like it.”

  On the couch, curled around each other in a mass, were his cats. Nino opened one eye to see what the commotion was all about, then stretched luxuriously. Jessie made a soft, approving noise and went forward. “Oh, he’s beautiful.”

  Luke smiled to himself as she gathered the huge black cat into her arms, stroking his silk
y fur. Nino butted his head against her chin and purred loudly.

  “You’re a sweetie,” she murmured.

  Giselle bent over Sylvester, but it was plain she was only doing it because she thought she ought to. “I have dogs in the backyard,” he said.

  “Can I go out, Mom?”

  “Wouldn’t you rather help me fix breakfast?” Luke asked, feinting a punch to her left arm. “I’m going to make French toast, if that’s okay with you.”

  “I love French toast!”

  Luke grinned. “Thought you might.” He cocked his head in the direction of the kitchen. “Come on.”

  From the fridge he took a bowl of brown eggs and put them on the table, then took another bowl from a cupboard. “Break about six or seven,” he told her.

  “What’s wrong with these eggs?” Giselle asked suspiciously.

  “Nothing. They’re just fresh. I get them from a farm out east.” He stripped off his coat and draped it over a chair. Taking coffee and a filter out, he watched Jessie circling the living room, cat in her arms.

  “What’s wrong with plain old store-bought eggs?” Giselle asked.

  Jessie looked up, and for the first time she smiled at him. No scowl or suspicion, just genuine amusement, an acknowledgment of his beliefs about food and the ways it should and should not come to the table. He lifted a rueful eyebrow and looked back to the child awaiting his answer. “Let’s just say for now, these taste better.”

  Giselle’s mouth pursed in doubt, but she dutifully broke a couple, then stared hard into the bowl. “They look the same on the inside.”

  “Yep.” He measured coffee and ran cold water into the pot. “They taste good, too. You’ll see.”

  In the living room, Jessie paused by an antique trunk, on which Luke had displayed a collection of photographs. Most of them were family pictures—his mother and father and Marcia. He watched as she picked out one of Marcia, shook her head with a smile and replaced it.

  “Okay, what next?” Giselle asked.

  “Vanilla, milk and salt,” he instructed, crossing the linoleum to the table. “Then we’re ready for the cooking.”

  “I hope you haven’t made any for me,” Jessie said from the doorway.

  “Mom,” Giselle scolded with severity, “you have to eat breakfast. You can’t get your vitamins from coffee.” With a saucy roll of her eyes, she confided to Luke, “I can never get her to eat enough breakfast.”

  He chuckled and glanced over his shoulder. “I never could, either.”

  “At least Giselle doesn’t try to get me to eat rabbit stew in the morning,” Jessie returned dryly.

  “You loved it.” He took a hefty stack of bread from the wrapper. “And we did make some for you, so you’ll have to eat it.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  Which turned out, Luke noticed later, to be quite well. She ate easily as much as he did. “Pretty hungry after all, weren’t you?”

  “Unfortunately, yes.” With a rueful smile, she patted her tummy. “I’m finding out all those people who told me your metabolism changes after you’re thirty were right.”

  Luke followed her gesture and found himself admiring her round curves. Looked okay to him.

  “Can I go see the dogs now?” Giselle piped up.

  “Sure. Get your coat,” Jessie replied.

  She ran to fetch it, then bounced back through the kitchen. “I still can’t believe you have dogs and cats,” she said, buttoning her coat.

  “Luke’s home for wayward animals.” With a self-mocking grin, he added, “I’m also running a home for abandoned console radios in the basement, if you hear of any strays.”

  Giselle gave him a perplexed little smile, but Jessie chuckled in her rich, husky voice. He glanced at her quickly, surprised how good her simple laughter felt in his hollow heart. “Watch the big one, honey,” he told his daughter. “He’ll lick you half to death.”

  She giggled. “Okay.”

  When he turned back to the table, Jessie’s clear topaz eyes were fixed on him. The last of her smile lingered around her full lips and there was friendliness—maybe even a little more—in her expression. For a minute, the past didn’t matter, and he was admiring a very attractive, sexy woman across the table. The rush of desire surprised him. He wanted to kiss her, to fit his palms to the swell of her round breasts…

  He closed his eyes, clenching his teeth against the powerful vision. Too much time had passed to heal the wounds between them. Too much time and too many betrayals. Hers, by leaving him when he needed her and hiding his child. His, by leaving her in an entirely different way, the way he’d known even then would be most painful for her.

  Shame at what he had become in those dark days sent a spiral of regret through him. He reached for the bag of tobacco in his pocket. “So, whoever is doing this harassment has targeted almost all the key players, except Marcia. You should be careful.”

  She frowned. “I guess so.”

  “It worries me.” He quickly rolled a cigarette. “Did you see anybody at the hotel that you might have seen in Albuquerque?”

  She shook her head.

  “It’s got to be an Indian.” He took his time settling the cigarette just so in his mouth, then scratched a match with a thumbnail. He held the flame to the end of the cigarette, watched it flare softly orange. He shook out the match, exhaling. “An Anglo couldn’t have gotten to Daniel’s food or George’s brakes without somebody noticing.”

  “Why does that tobacco smell so much better than regular cigarettes?” she asked with an edge of irritation.

  “The way it’s cured.” He looked at the blue curls of smoke, remembering that Giselle told him Jessie quit smoking. With a grin, he asked, “You want one?”

  She smiled, again reluctantly. “I gave up all my bad habits.”

  He exhaled sharply. “Yeah,” he said in a voice rough with shame. “Me, too.”

  “How long has it been, Luke?”

  “Seven years and four months.”

  Still, there was no change in her expression What had he expected? A broad round of applause?

  Bitterness swirled with his shame of moments before. As if the pair of emotions were an unstable chemical formula, he felt pressure build in his lungs and gut. Abruptly, he grabbed plates and silverware and carried them to the sink. They landed with a clatter in the old porcelain basin.

  Behind him, he heard Jessie gather more dishes and bring them over. Luke felt her next to him, warm and smelling of shampoo. He stared rigidly through the window, watching Giselle dance with Tasha, his wolf mix. Quite a pair they made, both sable and cream, with their golden eyes. “Jessie, did you know you were pregnant when you left me?”

  It was her turn to avoid his gaze. Long lashes swept down to hide her eyes. “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me? At least give me a chance to pull my act together?”

  She crossed her arms, head still bowed. “You were so damned set on destroying yourself, I didn’t think it would make any difference.” Defiantly she looked up, cocking her chin at that I-dare-you angle he remembered so well. “I didn’t want to have to go through it all again.”

  “All what?”

  “My mother quit drinking at least thirty times. She’d do okay for a while, then fall off the wagon again. And every time it was harder and harder to believe in her.” She shook her head, glancing out the window toward Giselle. “I couldn’t let my child go through what I did:”

  “She’s mine, too!” A painful burst of anger swelled in his chest. “You could have given me a chance.”

  “Maybe somebody else could have,” she said. “Not me.”

  He gave her a bitter smile. “Yeah, there was always that piece of you that you had to keep safe. Something nobody could ever touch. Not even me.”

  “I thought we agreed to leave the past alone.”

  “Maybe it’s not that easy.” He sighed and looked at her. Drawn by the wintry light washing over her face, he took a step closer. “Maybe it i
sn’t really dead.”

  For a moment, she didn’t move, just stared up at him like a deer frozen in the headlights of an oncoming car. Her body was only inches from his own, her lips a simple stoop away. Even through his regret and anger, he wanted to kiss her like he used to, hear the soft sigh of her breath as she released herself to him, taste the sweet velvet of her mouth…

  As if he’d spoken his wish aloud, Jessie reacted. Her gaze flickered over his face and lit on his mouth, then flew back to his eyes, a little less afraid. Without thinking, he lifted his hand and brushed the translucent curve of her cheek with the tips of his fingers. Her lips quivered a little.

  “God, Jessie,” he whispered, “I can’t believe you’re still so beautiful.”

  With a small cry, she broke away. Slamming forks against stoneware as she stacked the dishes, she said harshly, “Don’t.” The word was almost strangled.

  He closed his eyes in swift sorrow, then grabbed his coat from the chair and went outside with his daughter and his dogs, who offered what Jessie had never been able to give him—a whole heart.

  * * *

  Jessie cleaned up the kitchen automatically, pouring herself into the simple task in an effort to get a handle on her roaring emotions. It wasn’t easy. The window over the sink faced the backyard, where Luke and Giselle scampered with three dogs and a Frisbee. With her hands sunk deep in hot, sudsy water, Jessie watched them. Under her breath, she was humming, something she did automatically when she washed dishes.

  She shifted her attention to the suds, and the song in her throat became recognizable. “I’m On Fire,” by Bruce Springsteen.

  In spite of herself, she chuckled. The sound unknotted some of her tension. Ruefully, she had to admit to herself that there was something still smoldering on the hearth of the past. There was a restless, aching wish in her to feel Luke’s burnished skin skimming hers, to feel his cool, heavy hair between her fingers, to feel him linked with her in the most ancient way.

  And not just anyone. Luke.

  Only Luke.

  It had always been this way—and she knew from a moment ago that the chemistry hadn’t changed for him, either. It didn’t matter how much time had passed or what else had gone on between them, there would always be this thrumming, physical connection.