Donovan's Child

by Christine Rimmer

  A silence from him. Then, warily, “How many questions was that? Four?”

  She was not backing off on this. “So pick one.”

  He did, after a moment. “There’s no physical problem.”

  “So it’s a psychological issue, then?”

  “Abilene.” He said her name in a weary voice. “Psychological. Emotional. Mental. I have no clue, okay? In the past year, I never so much as thought about it. It wasn’t as if I cared.”

  “Oh.” Disappointment had her shoulders drooping. She whispered, “I see…”

  “At least, not until about twenty-five minutes ago.” Was that an actual gleam she now saw in his eyes?

  “Oh!” She snapped up straight again. Of course. How could she have forgotten? He’d already said it—that he wanted her, in a man/woman way. “So you can, then? You’re…able?”

  “Yeah. I’m able.”

  She found she was grinning. And then he was grinning, too.

  And then they were both laughing, together.

  It felt so good, to laugh with him. As good as she’d dared to imagine it might. She wanted to go to him, to touch him, to lay her hand against his beard-stubbled cheek, maybe bend down and press her lips to his.

  But he had stopped laughing. He was watching her again. And his eyes were wary.

  So she didn’t approach him. She went past him, to the side of the bed, and sat down. The silence stretched out. Finally, she couldn’t bear it any longer. “Well, okay. I’m relieved—not that we couldn’t have worked something out. I mean, there are a lot of different ways to make love.”

  He said nothing to that, only arched a gold-dusted brow.

  What? Had she said something that offended him? She felt breathless all over again. And embarrassed, too. But still, she refused to give up on this.

  She suggested what she hadn’t quite had the nerve to do. “Maybe just a kiss. Would that be all right? We could start with a kiss. For now.”

  He stayed where he was, in the doorway. And he asked, so gently, “Is that wise?”

  “Oh, come on.” She threw up both hands. “What do you mean, wise? Is a kiss ever wise? What kind of question is that?”

  “You just need to be aware that I meant what I said.”

  “About…?”

  “Love. A future for you and me, together. It’s not going to happen. You would have to understand that, going in.”

  She realized she could easily become irritated with him again—she was irritated with him again. “A minute ago, you said there couldn’t be sex, either. But it seems to me that already, you’ve changed your mind about sex.”

  He only nodded. Slowly. “I’m a man. Men are weak. On two legs—or on wheels.”

  She wasn’t buying that lame excuse. “You’re not weak. We both know that. Blind and stubborn and needlessly cruel, maybe. But weak? Never.”

  He held his ground—in the doorway, as well as in his intractable, impossible attitude. “You should think it over. Better yet, you should forget the whole thing.”

  She pressed her palms to the tangled sheets, braced forward on them. And tried, one more time, to get through to him, to get them back to the way it had been between them such a short time before. “Is that what you want, seriously? To forget this morning? Forget what happened? Forget everything that we said?”

  He frowned. And then he said her name, so softly, with tender feeling, “Abilene…”

  And for a split second, she believed.

  She believed in him, in the possible future. In the hope of love. She was certain he would at least admit that there was no way he could forget what had passed between them just now.

  For that beautiful instant, she could see it, all of it, just as it would go. See him shaking his head as he confessed that no, he couldn’t forget, didn’t want to forget. And then she could see herself rising, going to him, bending close to him, claiming his mouth in their first lovely, tender, exploratory kiss.

  But then he said, “Yes. It’s what I want. I think that forgetting would be for the best.”

  Chapter Eight

  And that was it. It was over between them—over without ever really getting started.

  He backed, turned, glanced over his shoulder. “The studio, then?”

  She nodded, pressed her lips together, made them relax. “I’ll be there soon.”

  He left her rooms for the second time that morning, again shutting the door to the main hall quietly behind him.

  “Ho-kay,” she said aloud to the silent bedroom, once he was gone. “So we forget.”

  She rose, went to the bathroom, hung up her towel, dried her hair, brushed on mascara, applied a little blusher and some lip gloss. She took off her robe, hung it on the door, rolled on deodorant, spritzed on scent.

  Back in the bedroom, she got dressed.

  Her stomach was empty and she needed her morning shot of caffeine, so she stopped in at the kitchen to grab something to eat. Anton gave her a big mug of fragrant, fresh-brewed coffee and told her that Donovan had already ordered breakfast for her. It was waiting in the studio.

  She wanted to snap at Anton, to inform him in no uncertain terms that Donovan didn’t get to decide everything, that where she ate her breakfast damn well ought to be up to her.

  But it wasn’t Anton’s fault that she felt like biting someone’s head off. She thanked him and went on her way.

  In the studio, Donovan was at his desk. He glanced up when she entered.

  She gave him a nod—one minus eye contact—and followed her nose to the credenza where Olga had left the food. Under the warming lid were light-as-air scrambled eggs, and the raisin toast she adored. She grabbed the plate and a fork and carried them and her coffee back to her work area, where she ate. Slowly. Savoring every bite.

  Donovan didn’t say a word. Not until she’d carried the empty plate back to the credenza and helped herself to more coffee from the carafe waiting there. She had no idea what he was doing while she was eating. She was very careful not to glance his way.

  Not even once.

  But the moment she set the plate back on the credenza, he said, “Come here. Have a look.”

  A sharp retort rose to her lips. She bit it back. Forget, she reminded herself. We are forgetting….

  She went to him, circling around the giant desk, until she stood at his elbow. The drawings were spread out in front of him.

  For a moment, she refused to look down. She sipped her coffee. She gazed in the general direction of the door she had entered through, thinking how she almost wished she could go out that door and keep walking.

  Never come back.

  “Abilene.” He had tipped his head back, was looking at her.

  She went ahead and did it, let herself look at him.

  Zap. Like a bolt of lightning in the desert, visible for miles. Heat flared across her skin.

  How stupid and pointless, to feel this way.

  It had been better when she had been in denial about it.

  Forgetting, she reminded herself. Again. We are forgetting.

  She tore her gaze from his and turned her focus to the sketches.

  And instantly, she felt better. Her injured fury faded to nothing. Because she had something else to think about. Something important.

  Something that mattered as much—no. More, she told herself silently. Insistently. The work matters more than whatever is never going to happen between this impossible, exasperating man and me.

  She leaned closer.

  How had he done it? It was perfect. It was exactly right—a series of wide, overlapping skylit arches high above the entrance, like the wings of transparent birds, spread in flight. From the front, it almost seemed that the building itself was about to take to the air.

  And from inside, in the entry and welcome area, the arches were wings, too, but now, wings seen from below, wings three stories up, wings spread wide, wings already claiming the endless sky.

  She said, “Oh, Donovan, exactly. It’s exactly righ
t. Astonishing. Perfect.”

  “You think?” He sounded young again. Hopeful. Proud.

  “I know,” she told him. “It’s what we’ve been needing, what we’ve been waiting for.”

  And she really did feel better about everything then.

  After all, hadn’t he said at the beginning that he would never work again?

  And yet he was working.

  The proof of that was spread on the big desk before her. He was working. He was changing. No matter how hard he tried to deny his own awakening, he was beginning to care how the whole thing turned out.

  What was it Luisa had said? He will come back, to himself, to the world.

  Abilene could see that now. He was already coming back.

  And even if there was never any hope for the two of them, as lovers. Even if there was no future for them, together.

  Well, she could live with that. It would be something, at least, to know that she’d helped him a little, that she had contributed to his finding his life and his work again. It would be a fair trade. More than fair—for the chance she was getting, this fellowship that had miraculously become her own project, only better. It had become a cocreation, both hers. And his.

  She said, “These wings…”

  “Yeah?”

  “The image should be everywhere. In the bottom of the pool.”

  “I like that.”

  “In the play yards, embossed in the concrete. In the floor of the cafeteria and the multiuse room….” She was already reaching for more drawing paper.

  He handed her a soft marker. She began to draw.

  It was a good week.

  They did fine work. Now that they had the heart of the design down, they found a thousand ways to use it to enrich the rest of the building, so that the center really started to work as a structure with a specific purpose, a place where children who had started out without a lot in life would be free to learn and to grow, to reach for the sky.

  They also had another guest.

  Tuesday afternoon, one of Donovan’s former climbing partners came to the door. Donovan could have had Olga or Helen, his new assistant, send the visitor away. But he went to answer the doorbell himself.

  He even let the guy in. His name was Alan Everson. Alan was long-faced, lean and weather-beaten, a very serious man. He’d driven all the way from Albuquerque to see Donovan.

  After dinner, Abilene left the two men alone. They went to the game room, where there was a pool table and a bar and tables for card games, very much like the game room at her family’s ranch, Bravo Ridge. It was the first time, as far as Abilene knew, that Donovan had entered the game room since she’d been staying in his house.

  She hoped they played pool, or maybe chess. And that they talked about old times, about who was attempting which mountain and when.

  Alan left after breakfast Wednesday morning. Abilene asked Donovan if he’d enjoyed the other man’s visit.

  “Yeah,” he said gruffly. “It was good to see him.” But he didn’t elaborate. And she didn’t push him for details. Really, if he was willing to let his friends come around again, that was enough.

  At least for now.

  Thursday, in the early morning, just as they started working in the studio, Donovan got a call. Instead of telling Helen to deal with it for him, he took the phone.

  Abilene was at her own desk, on the computer there, using the CAD software to get going on the key technical drawings the engineers were going to need. Later, more architects would be hired to produce the endless number of necessary drawings. But she needed to get the basics down—as well as a simple schematic CAD rendering of the center, which had advantages over manual study and presentation models. With computer-assisted drawings, the views could be expanded, manipulated, made to show any aspect of the design from within, below or in aerial views.

  Yes, when Donovan answered the buzzing phone on his desk and said, “I’ll talk to her, Helen,” Abilene could have taken a break, given him a little privacy.

  But hey. She was curious. Was it Luisa? And if not, who else, beyond Luisa and Alan, was he willing to speak with, at last?

  Her name, as it turned out, was Mariah. And Donovan didn’t sound especially happy to hear from her.

  His side of the conversation was mostly in the negative. “No, Mariah. I’m fine, Mariah. I’m sorry…. I know. I should have gotten back with you long before now…. No, I can’t. I’ve got a lot to deal with at this point and…” The woman must have really started in on him about then, because he fell silent. He made a few impatient noises. And then he finally said, “Look. I don’t think so….” Another silence from him, then, “Take my word for it. Move on. I meant what I said, and I said no.” He hung up.

  Abilene tried to decide whether to remark on his curtness. Or get back to work.

  He made the decision for her by accusing, “I know you were listening.”

  She peered around the side of her computer screen. “Uh. Well. Yeah. Guilty.”

  He rolled out from behind his own wall of computers so he could see her while he lectured her. “You’re always accusing me of being rude. But somehow, the rules are different for you. You could have given me a moment or two alone, to take that call.”

  “I considered it. But then, well, I was curious, so I stayed.”

  “You were curious. And that makes it okay to listen in on my private conversations?”

  “Donovan. Do you really want to lecture me about respecting your privacy?” She gave him her sweetest smile. He glared back at her. But he didn’t argue. She said, more gently, “Come on. If it was so private, you could have left the room—and I’m guessing that Mariah will not be coming to dinner?”

  He stared at her, narrowed-eyed, from across the room. And then he grunted. “No, she won’t.”

  She couldn’t resist asking, “An old girlfriend?”

  He actually volunteered a little information. “Mariah lives in Dallas. She’s a successful interior designer. I met her when I was working on a project there. We went out, last year, for a couple of months. It ended abruptly.”

  “After the accident?”

  “It seemed as good an excuse as any to say goodbye to her.”

  “Not a happy relationship, huh?”

  He was glaring again. “You ask too many questions.”

  She widened her smile. She was thinking of Luisa right then, of how Luisa had told her that somebody had to stick with Donovan, had to drag him out into the world again.

  “Here’s another question for you,” she said. “Will you please come with me to Luisa’s bar tomorrow night?”

  He made a humphing sound. “Didn’t I already say no—and more than once?”

  “What can I tell you? I’m an eternal optimist.”

  “Lot of good that’s doing you.”

  Still craned around the edge of her computer screen, she braced her elbow on the edge of the desk and rested her chin on the heel of her hand. “Actually, in spite of everything, I do believe I’m making progress with you.”

  “Oh. Now I’m a job you’ve taken on, is that it? Something that either goes well, or doesn’t?”

  “Hmm. It’s an interesting way of putting it—but no. You’re not a job, Donovan. You’re just someone I like. Very much. No matter that you act like an ass a lot of the time.”

  He grunted. “I’m an ass—but you like me.”

  “That’s right. And deep inside you, there’s a good man. A good man trying very hard to get out.”

  “Don’t bet any hard cash on that.”

  “Come with me. Tomorrow night. It will be fun.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “Come anyway.”

  He slanted her a sideways look and muttered, “I’ll drive.”

  “Am I awake? Or is this a dream? I could swear you just said yes.”

  Friday night, Abilene wore jeans that clung to every curve. The jeans were tucked into calf-high boots. Her silk blouse was the exact golden-green of her eyes. And he
r jacket was the same camel color as her boots. Metal-studded leather bangle bracelets, several of them, graced her slim arms.

  Donovan thought she looked great. Sexy as hell and ready for anything.

  They went together into his underground garage. He wheeled along beside her down the ramp toward the van, still not quite believing that he’d let her talk him into going with her tonight.

  “Need any help?” she asked when he stopped several feet back from the rear of the van, took a remote from his pocket and pushed the button that unlocked the doors.

  “No. Just get in.” He pushed another button and the back doors swung wide. The lift extended out from the van floor and lowered itself to the concrete.

  She was still at his side. “Wow. I guess you have it all under control, huh?”

  He only wished. He sent her a quelling look. “Get in.”

  She did, striding away on those amazing legs of hers. He waited until she pulled open the passenger door and swung herself up into the seat. As she shut her door, he rolled onto the platform and let the lift take him up to the floor of the van. From there, he wheeled along the cleared space between the seats and in behind the wheel. He drove from his chair.

  They rode in silence most of the way. That was fine with him. Conversation with her could be dangerous. The past few days, he never knew what she was going to talk him into next.

  Plus, he kept thinking about sex now, whenever he was around her—okay, maybe he’d always thought about sex when he was around her. Subconsciously, anyway.

  But since Monday—specifically, since he’d seen her in the shower—he could no longer pretend that sex wasn’t on his mind when he looked at her.

  And to be brutally frank about it, he didn’t even need to be looking at her. She didn’t need to be anywhere nearby.

  Suddenly, he was thinking about sex all the time. About having sex. With her.

  Twice in the past few days, in the studio, he’d gotten hard. He was lucky both times, since he was sitting at his desk. All he had to do was to keep on sitting there until the problem subsided.

  Still, he found the situation humiliating. All those months and months without a twitch. And now, all of a sudden, he couldn’t sit at his own damn desk without a raging woody.