The Art of Love (The Windswept Saga)

by Tommie Conrad

  “Uncle Chandler,” Little Chase said, his eyes bright. “I rode my horse yesterday.”

  Chandler smiled back at him. “How far?”

  “Far! Like halfway up the pasture,” he reckoned in his six-year-old brain.

  “I stayed close the whole way,” CJ added with great affection.

  Chandler directed his attention to his niece, who was generally more subdued than her brother. “And what about you, Bree? How is preschool?”

  Blonde curls cascaded over her forehead. “More fun than a barrel of monkeys,” she replied.

  Both men laughed. “And how would you know about a barrel of monkeys?” CJ teased. She placed her lips to his cheek.

  “Monkeys are funny,” she explained quickly.

  “That they are, pretty girl,” CJ agreed. “That they are.” He looked toward his brother. “Alison and I are taking the kids out for dinner. You wanna tag along?”

  He shook his head gently. “Can’t. Got too much work to catch up on. But I appreciate the offer.” He stared into his brother’s pleading green eyes. “Taylor and I are going out on Wednesday.”

  CJ’s mouth aligned happily and Chandler imagined the gears turning in his head, the unspoken expletives of delight clear in every pore of his visage. “Good,” he finally verbalized. “And if you’ll excuse us, we’re headed to see Mom.”

  “Bye, Uncle Chandler,” the kids said in unison.

  “Bye, you two,” he replied with a smile. “Be good.”

  ***

  He breathed in and out a few times, felt a twinge of déjà vu, and knocked on the door. Alice answered quickly and beamed up at him.

  “Chandler Adams, if you aren’t a sight for sore eyes. Come on in.”

  He removed his hat and knelt down to place a kiss on her cheek. The plastic crackled in his hand. “Miss Alice. These are for you.”

  She took the bouquet and laughed. “You remembered that I love daisies.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He nodded and strode inside as she closed the door behind him. He followed her into the living room, where her soap opera was frozen on the screen courtesy the digital recorder. He smiled as a familiar image of the past worked through his head.

  “Would you like to sit down?” she asked, having swiftly retrieved a vase full of water. She placed the flowers atop a table and smiled at him expectantly.

  “Thank you,” he said, his legs turning to jelly as Taylor appeared in the doorway, “but it looks like I won’t have time.”

  She stood there like a vision, wearing the green pullover under a taupe blazer, completing the look with jeans and boots. Nothing special had been done to her hair—it was brushed out, falling over her shoulders—but he thought it looked great. Hat in hand, he ambled toward her.

  “You look great,” she said, pushing out her lower lip. “Very handsome.”

  His eyes dropped—he was wearing jeans and a Western shirt, just like any other day—but he’d take the compliment. “You don’t look so bad yourself,” he said, voice cracking with nervousness between a few of the syllables. She smiled back at him. “Should we head out, then?” he asked.

  “I’m ready whenever you are.”

  Chandler placed a hand against the small of her back but then glanced over his shoulder. “I’ll try to have her home at a decent hour, Miss Alice.”

  She waved his words off with her right hand. “Don’t rush,” she implored. “Take your time.”

  Taylor would have rolled her eyes at her mother’s odd directive had she not been thrown off-balance by the electrifying touch of Chandler’s hand along her spine. They walked to the truck, he held the door for her, and they climbed in together without uttering a single word. And neither of them bothered to make conversation until he’d pulled into the restaurant parking lot, turned off the engine, and rotated toward her.

  “Is this okay?” he asked softly. “I might’ve solicited your opinion earlier, but I was too scared.”

  “It’s more than fine,” she replied, hoping to assuage his self-imposed guilt. “I haven’t been here in years. I will enjoy seeing what’s changed.”

  He grinned crookedly. “The food is still good. Same décor, same ambience—but the prices are higher.”

  “As expected.”

  He laughed quietly, stepped outside and was on her side of the truck, holding open her door, in a flash. He offered his hand, his eyes gentle and sensitive, and she took it, didn’t let go until they were inside the restaurant and seated on opposite sides of the booth. As she sank into the cushions of the bench, she noticed that his eyes hadn’t left her, even though the menus were already on the table.

  “I’m not going to evaporate if you blink your eyes, Chandler. It’s really me. In the flesh. On a date with my boss.”

  He smiled and dropped his eyes. He began to scan the menu, the grin hesitant to leave his lips. “Thing about it is, Taylor, is you’re my only employee, and there’s no HR department to get in the way.”

  “You always were practical, cowboy.”

  “And damn proud of it.” His eyebrows knotted together when he saw the amount they were charging for steak. “Order whatever you like from the menu. Cost is not a concern.”

  She met his eyes quizzically. “I don’t like the way you phrased that.”

  His face went slack with remorse. “I’m sorry, Taylor. I guess…I didn’t think before I spoke.”

  Balancing elbows on the table, she leaned toward him. “If it’ll set your mind at ease, I’m a little rusty at the dating game.”

  “You and me both,” he said glumly. “But maybe I’ll get back into the swing of things.”

  His resulting smile warmed her face, and she rushed to change the subject. “I meant to ask you about your weekend but it slipped my mind. Did you stay on the ranch afterward?”

  He nodded. “I came back to the gallery Saturday evening. I spent most of the day working on my house.”

  Her eyes lifted from the menu and studied his face. “You have a house?”

  He nodded again. “When we added onto the ranch last year, a house more or less fell into my lap. I figured Mark and Christa would move in…anyway, they gave it to me for Christmas with the guarantee they’d help out. It’s their not-so-subtle way of keeping me around the place.”

  The server came and took their order, and Taylor paused the conversation until they were once again alone. “Were you thinking about leaving Wyoming?”

  “I knocked the idea around in my head for a while.” He took a sip of ice water and shot her a rueful glance. “I didn’t think I belonged here. Mainly I was just feeling sorry for myself, but at the time I was really confused about my place in the family.”

  The concern was evident on her face. “Were you having problems with your siblings? With Mark?”

  “Not really,” he expounded. “After Max’s accident I…I did some soul-searching. I took on Mark’s duties as foreman when it was necessary, and I worked on my art. It was a strange time for me. I spent so much energy trying to help everyone else that I forgot to focus on me. I don’t mean that in a selfish way—if I had it to do over again, I wouldn’t change the things I did to help them.”

  “Are you the one who saved their marriage?” she wondered aloud.

  “I can’t, in good conscience, take credit for that. I can tell you, though, that I have never been that scared in my entire life. I did a good job of hiding it, but I thought, for that sliver of time, that I’d lost my life as I knew it.”

  Sensing that the conversation had grown far too heavy for a first date, Taylor nodded sympathetically and redirected like a skilled attorney. “How big is this house?”

  Chandler was relieved to talk about something besides his feelings. “Much too big for one person. It’s not gargantuan but it’s the biggest house on the ranch. Five bedrooms upstairs.”

  “Wow. Does it need much work?”

  “I think it just needs love more than anything else. It’s in good shape. Mark was helping me sand the paint off
the front porch. Little stuff like that.” The food was delivered and they each thanked the server before returning to the conversation. “I’m going to order new appliances eventually. You’ll have to come out and see it.”

  She fought the urge to raise an eyebrow at him. “I did love being on the ranch again. I know Mark and Christa’s house wasn’t there back then but it felt like time had stood still. There’s something eternal about the land, knowing it will be there, unchanged, long after we’re all gone.”

  “That’s one of the reasons I stayed,” he said with a shrug. Afterward they allowed the food to take precedence over conversation. When Chandler did speak, he asked her if the steak was cooked to her satisfaction, and she assured him, in a rather serious tone, that it had been. She didn’t chasten him for lack of words—she, too, was struggling with what to say. Maybe this was a bad sign—or a good one. With no common ground, this relationship that she wanted would be doomed before it ever taxied down the runway.

  He glanced across the table at her, eyes penetrating through the dim ambience of the restaurant. “You look beautiful,” he said softly. “Did I say something wrong? You look upset.”

  Her resolve melted away instantly. “No. You said exactly the right thing.”

  He glanced downward but not before she caught the red shading of his neck. “Would you like dessert?” he asked out of the corner of his mouth.

  “I’m not sure,” she replied truthfully. “Maybe I should watch my calories.”

  Chandler raised his eyebrows in an effort to persuade her. “It’s been a long, long time since you and I shared a sundae.” His lips formed a small smile. “They just added salted caramel to the menu last year.”

  “You twisted my arm,” she answered, feigning reticence.

  A few minutes later they were dipping spoons into either side of a large white bowl filled with scoops of ice cream, syrup drizzled from edge to edge, and two cherries plopped in the middle.

  “So your mom is still writing, even though she doesn’t have to?”

  Chandler nodded, let the ice cream—probably his favorite food in the world—slide down his throat before he answered. “She can’t give up the blog because she has too many devoted readers. And so she blogs enough every six months to fill a book, and the publisher seems to have her on speed-dial.” They both laughed. “Dad’s position is that she should keep doing it as long as it makes her happy. Which it does.”

  “You ever think about writing a book?” she inquired. “Even a book of poetry? I know you have plenty just lying around.”

  He shrugged. “You caught me. But so much of what I write is too personal. I don’t think it’d make sense to a reader.”

  “You’d be surprised, Chandler. You have to know that so much of poetry is personal. It’s downright esoteric sometimes.”

  That drew a surprised, purely masculine laugh from deep in his throat. “Can’t get anything past you, can I?”

  “You never could.” She pulled a cherry from the dish, stuck it in her mouth and sucked the fruit off the stem. “You were never able to hide one single emotion from me, and I was glad of that fact. Teenage relationships are usually…”

  “Melodramatic,” he said, finishing her thought correctly.

  “Exactly. Ours was generally free of drama until after my father died.” She laid the stem on the table, his eyes following every movement of her fingers. “And if I never told you so, allow me to do it now. I was incredibly grateful for your help then, and remain so to this day. I don’t know how I would have gotten through it without you.”

  He shook his head in dispute. “You’re giving me too much credit.” The server left their bill and asked if they needed anything else, but each of them said no. He returned his gaze to her face, his eyes softening. “The girl I fell in love with was pretty darn resilient. She had to be to put up with my…lesser qualities.”

  “Some people might have found your short attention span off-putting. I found it endearing.” Her spoon scraped the bottom of the bowl. “Do you want the last of the ice cream?”

  Chandler lifted the cherry to his mouth and consumed it in one bite. “Finish it,” he replied. “Hard to believe, but I’m full.”

  ***

  “Want me to walk you inside?”

  “You walked me to the door. I can probably manage from here.”

  His smirk was visible in the glare of the porch light. It was a chilly evening, and she didn’t imagine he’d linger now that their date was coming to an end. He stood close, near enough that she watched the shallow rise and fall of his chest beneath his shirt.

  “I had a great time,” he said tentatively. He psyched himself up and tried again. “I loved being around you again, outside of the workplace. It was a lot of fun.”

  “Thank you,” she responded. “I had a great time, too.”

  He reached out and took her left hand before she had a chance to back away. And any thought of doing so quickly fled her mind when his thumb began to make circles on her palm, the warmth of his skin and the motion of his touch awakening a long-dormant seed of desire. His breathing sped up and all at once he lowered his face to hers, their lips meeting with unguarded intensity. His other hand bracketed her cheek and chin, pulling her face to his again and again. But when his tongue pushed against hers and a deep-seated groan escaped his throat, he pulled back, severing the moment.

  Something in his blue eyes frightened her before he tore his gaze away. He stared out toward the road, his ragged breath rolling out in a cloud. “I don’t know what came over me,” he murmured. “It’s like I don’t have any control of myself when I’m with you.”

  “Blame it on the moonlight?” she suggested. His hand jumped against hers and he finally removed it.

  “Maybe.” He smiled anxiously at her. “Goodnight, Taylor.” His lips landed so gently on her forehead that she thought for a second it was a product of her imagination.

  “Goodnight,” she said quietly, and watched as he stepped uneasily from the front porch. He glanced back over his shoulder twice before climbing in his truck. She didn’t watch him drive away. She unlocked the front door and headed for the living room, where the flicker of the TV made shadows on the walls.

  “Mom?” Alice sat in her usual wingback chair, wearing a robe and covered in a patchwork quilt. She stirred after a moment, the lines in her face shifting into a smile.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I fell asleep during a movie.”

  Taylor smiled. “Which movie?”

  Alice stifled a small yawn. “North by Northwest. I’ve seen it a hundred times but I can’t resist when it’s on.”

  “No woman should ever fall asleep on Cary Grant.” Taylor winked at her mother. “But it’s late. Do you need any help getting into bed?”

  “No,” she replied. “How was your date?”

  Taylor considered the proper course of action—the date had been wonderful, and her face was still burning from the heat of Chandler’s kiss. “It was wonderful. And, Mom?”

  “Yes, sweetheart?”

  “You were right.”

  Alice began folding the quilt and asked a question she already knew the answer to. There was a twinkle in her tired eyes. “About what, dear?”

  “Everything.” Taylor met her mother’s eyes as she spoke the syllables. “I want Chandler.”

  Chapter 13

  Chandler took a sleep aid, which helped insofar as he didn’t have to deconstruct his dating mishap until Thursday morning. Where was the sense, he wondered, in enjoying the hell out of a date and then pretending it had been a disaster? Taylor’s lips and mouth responded to his at every turn, and if he hadn’t been a coward, he likely would have found her body doing the same. His palm burned so hot against the back of her hand that he’d been loath to touch her anywhere else, to run his fingers along the curve of her hips, to press himself against the flat plane of her stomach.

  Horn dog, his conscience intoned.

  He’d be remiss if he didn’t at
least attempt an apology. Not that she’d looked upset by what he’d done. In fact, those green eyes had done everything but beg for it. He could’ve slipped an arm around her waist, plaited his fingers through the tempting strands of hair, pressed his mouth to the pulsing skin of her neck…

  He headed straight for the fridge, his mouth suddenly dry as parchment. His heart pounded in his ears like he’d been in bed with her, not simply fantasizing about it. He drank the water straight down and placed the cold, empty glass against his forehead. His eyes remained closed while his inner chastising words drifted away. He was calm again, relaxed, not thinking about sex at all.

  Oops.

  “Chandler?”

  His eyes flew open but he didn’t move to turn away from the short row of cabinets. Taylor had just entered his office and it would take him a few seconds to work up the courage to meet her eyes.

  Or maybe half a minute.

  She didn’t wait for him to greet her. She strode up beside him, floating there like a specter, her footsteps making no sound. “I wanted to thank you again for last night. I had a great time with you. I can’t remember when I’ve had so much fun in one evening.”

  His eyebrow lifted. Neither can I. “Sorry that I had to cut and run on you like a wounded deer.” His voice came out unexpectedly rough and he cleared his throat before the inevitable crack. “I figure any more kissing, and Miss Alice would flick the porch light on and off for us.”

  There was no trace of reluctance on her part as she raised her right hand and rested it against the tight muscles in his back. “She was asleep, cowboy, and none the wiser to what we’d been doing out there.” A small laugh escaped her mouth. “Besides, I’m an adult. So are you. There’s no one to correct us.”

  What about self-correction? He set the empty glass in the sink and met her gaze for the first time. She still had those lush, green eyes, a holdover from last night. A man could get lost in those green pools and never come up for air. He turned his body slowly, like the mechanism of a clock changing one minute to the next, and was startled when she instantaneously slid against him. “You’re so beautiful, and you could have any man. So why did God pick me out of the whole bunch and say, ‘Go after her, boy—make her yours’?”