by Radclyffe
“I’m sorry, darling,” Melinda said, smiling up at her from the path. “We’ve taken you by surprise. We should have called.”
We. Since when was there a we attached to Melinda and Rooke? And what were they doing together at nine in the morning? For one mind-burning moment, Adrian envisioned Melinda arched in ecstasy, Rooke’s sensuous mouth at her breast and Rooke’s wide, strong hand buried inside her. Fury like none she’d ever known surged through her, and she screamed in silent protest. No, you won’t have her. She’s mine! Just as quickly, the image shattered and Adrian jerked, nearly gasping in shock. She was aware of Rooke regarding her with a worried expression, and she could only imagine how she must look, because she’d felt as if she were about to launch herself off the porch and tear Melinda in two. Desperately, she took a shuddering breath and struggled for calm. This wasn’t her. She didn’t crave this way, she didn’t hunger this irrationally. And she never, ever wanted so completely.
“No need to call,” Adrian said, inwardly ecstatic that her voice sounded cool and composed. “I was just trying to get ahead of the storm while there’s a break in the action. Come inside.”
As she led them back to the kitchen, she noted Rooke easing her arm free of Melinda’s grasp and a tiny bit of the tension gathered in the center of her chest relented. A small victory, but she enjoyed it.
“Please, have a seat. I’m afraid the parlor isn’t habitable right now.” Adrian gestured to the coffeemaker. “Coffee? Tea? Muffins? Fresh baked.”
“No, but thank you,” Melinda purred as she removed her coat and settled next to Rooke at the table. She crossed her legs and draped one arm along the back of Rooke’s chair. “I have to catch the train shortly, but before I do, I needed to ask you a favor.”
“Really?” Adrian hoped her pleasure at Melinda’s imminent departure wasn’t obvious. “What do you need?”
Melinda’s gaze flicked from Rooke to Adrian and she laughed softly. “Nothing very complicated, not right now. I need you to help me convince Rooke to let me have her wonderful sculptures for a show at the end of the month.” She fanned her crimson nails over the back of Rooke’s neck. “They’re every bit as brilliant as I anticipated.”
“You’ve seen them.” A cold hard weight settled in the pit of Adrian’s stomach. Foolish as it might be, the idea of Rooke having shared something so personal with Melinda was almost as devastating as the thought of them sleeping together. Adrian turned away, knowing she couldn’t mask the hurt in her eyes, and bought herself time to regain her composure by stacking blueberry muffins on a plate. She set them on the table along with plates.
“Not all of them.” Rooke answered before Melinda could respond, unsettled by the distance she’d sensed from Adrian the moment she’d started up the snow-covered driveway from the truck. Now Adrian’s hands were trembling. She’d done something to upset her, and she wasn’t sure what. “Just the four that go with the one she already purchased. They’re a series.”
“A magnificent one,” Melinda interjected. “And it so happens I’ve got an opening for a new artist launch in several weeks. I want Rooke for it. The event is part of our regular calendar, so it’s already had significant promotion, and I’m sure it will have an excellent turnout.” She leaned closer to Rooke, one hand on Rooke’s thigh. “Believe me, love, you won’t be sorry.”
“How do you feel about it?” Adrian said quietly, watching Rooke and ruthlessly blocking the sound of Melinda’s murmured love. She wouldn’t let her uncharacteristic jealousy get in the way of something Rooke wanted. Melinda was aggressive, professionally and personally, but her reputation was well deserved. This kind of opportunity might never come along again for Rooke.
“I…” Rooke struggled for clarity, reminded of the twisting chaos of the dream the night before and momentarily swamped by conflicting emotions and foreign sensations. Adrian’s unhappiness, Melinda’s persistent desire, a lifetime of being discounted washed over her, drowning her in uncertainty. She shuddered.
“It’s all right, no matter what you want,” Adrian whispered, torn by the misery she read in Rooke’s eyes. Rooke needed her friendship right now, and wasn’t friendship about putting personal needs second? Had she just been lying to herself when she’d told Jude that’s what she wanted between them? Since when was she afraid to face reality? If Rooke wanted Melinda and what Melinda could offer her, then better to know that now. Better that all of them know. “You can always change your mind later. Either way.”
Are you stupid? Are you stupid, or just crazy? As a child Rooke had been wounded by the taunts, as an adult she’d learned to ignore them. She wondered if she kept her work a secret because she was afraid of hearing the same words again. What would it matter even if she did? She knew the truth, didn’t she? She thought about Melinda and Adrian, two women who made their way in the world in a way she had never been able to, choosing their own paths, fearless and brave. What had she ever done except hide? What did she have to offer…anyone?
“I want to do it,” Rooke said firmly.
“You won’t be sorry.” Melinda kissed her cheek. “Trust me.”
Rooke tensed as warm, moist lips moved over her skin and Melinda’s fingers played along the muscles in her thigh. Emma had kissed her on the cheek, now and then, but as if by unspoken agreement, Emma had never touched her intimately anywhere on her body. No one had ever touched her that way. Even as Melinda’s soft kiss and faint caress stirred unfamiliar responses, she searched Adrian’s face for a reaction. But Adrian’s eyes were shadowed, her expression closed. The distance she’d felt earlier yawned even greater between them now.
“You must come down to the city early next week,” Melinda pronounced, rising and collecting her coat. “We’ll need a photo shoot and I’ll arrange some interviews and launch parties.” She skimmed her fingers through Rooke’s hair. “Believe me, love, you’re going to enjoy this.”
“I can’t come so soon,” Rooke protested. She wasn’t ready, but she couldn’t admit to these women why. She’d never been to New York City. She’d never been on the train by herself. She’d never stayed in a hotel. “I have work to finish here—” She pointed upward. “Adrian’s roof and her chimney. Plus, I’ve got markers to carve.”
Melinda laughed. “Oh, if I hadn’t met you in person, I’d never believe you were for real. I’m going to have a hard time keeping people from fighting over you.” She glanced at Adrian. “Tell her those things will keep for a while. She listens to you.”
Rooke frowned, feeling as if there was a conversation going on that she couldn’t hear. “I can decide for myself.”
“You can,” Adrian said, refusing to play Melinda’s game. Even though she was hurt that Rooke trusted Melinda enough to share her sculptures and a little bit crazy with Melinda fawning over Rooke, she wouldn’t deliver Rooke to Melinda as if she were simply a piece on a chessboard. She’d spent enough time with Rooke to recognize an undercurrent of unease in her voice. Guessing what bothered Rooke about this seismic change in her world landscape wasn’t much of a leap, and she doubted that Melinda knew of Rooke’s reading challenge. Trying to put herself in Rooke’s place, she pictured what it would be like being transported from a small village of a few thousand people, where everything was familiar and safe—at least on the surface—to a teeming city of millions where simply negotiating the streets to find her hotel would be a challenge. Rooke would need help, and she doubted Rooke would ask for it. She respected Rooke’s need for independence—she certainly guarded her own, but she couldn’t let concern for Rooke’s pride place Rooke in danger. And she had a feeling if she didn’t offer her assistance, Melinda would be all too eager to help. As it was, Rooke would be spending most of her time in Manhattan in Melinda’s world, under the full force of Melinda’s seductive influence.
Thinking fast, Adrian said, “You told me there’s no huge rush on the roof, so you can spend the rest of this week taking care of the jobs you have lined up at the cemetery.” Hurrying on bef
ore Melinda could jump in, she added, “I’ve got to go back to the city soon to take care of some business. Why don’t we go down together next Monday?”
“Perfect,” Melinda said. “You can bring Rooke by the gallery. She can stay with me while she’s in the city.”
Rooke stood up, shaking her head. “I don’t think so. I’ll go to a hotel.”
“How about staying with me,” Adrian said quietly. “I have a condo within walking distance of Melinda’s gallery. I’ll be doing research on my new project while I’m there, and you can help with the background work. It looks like you’re going to be too busy the rest of this week for us to spend time on that.”
Melinda’s eyebrows rose and she studied Adrian pensively. All of Melinda’s attention had been focused on Rooke since they’d arrived, but now Adrian felt the force of her gaze. Melinda’s full lips lifted in a knowing smile and a whisper of heat fluttered along the pulse bounding in Adrian’s throat, as if a warm mouth had deposited a trail of kisses. Adrian fought back, determined not to be aroused against her will, and although the room remained silent, soft laughter echoed through her mind. Deliberately, Adrian turned her body away from Melinda and concentrated on Rooke. She immediately felt more centered, more balanced, despite the fact that any time she looked at Rooke she experienced a frisson of pleasure. This was pleasure she welcomed. Pleasure she chose.
“What do you say?” Adrian asked, not wanting to push Rooke but knowing Melinda would if she didn’t.
“I need to think about it,” Rooke said. If she talked to her grandfather, she could figure out how to manage traveling by herself. She didn’t need someone to help her. But when she thought about the possibility of being in Manhattan with Adrian, her head swam with excitement. She was going to let Melinda display some of her sculptures because she didn’t ever want to wonder if she’d resisted out of fear. Fear of being exposed, fear of failing, fear of discovering once again that she didn’t fit anywhere. Her head said she should try, but even the slim possibility of the success Melinda kept promising didn’t excite her as much as the idea of spending time with Adrian. Ever since she’d met Adrian, when they were apart she thought about her. When they were together, she didn’t want to leave. When Adrian smiled at her, she felt braver, stronger, and less alone. She’d do anything for Adrian’s smile.
Almost as if she had been reading her mind, Adrian smiled. “Just say yes, Rooke.”
“How could you possibly resist,” Melinda murmured, regarding Adrian through heavy-lidded eyes as she brushed her hand over Rooke’s shoulder.
Rooke inched away. Adrian’s face was flushed, her eyes the blistering blue of the sky after a hard summer rain. Her lips were slightly parted, that same smile flickering there, teasing her. If Melinda hadn’t been so close, so close Rooke sensed tendrils of heat stretching out from her, wrapping around her like an embrace, she would have closed the distance between her and Adrian and…and what? Held her? Kissed her? She didn’t know what she was doing. She’d never been so out of her depth before in her life—not even when she’d sat in a classroom full of children her age and understood for the first time they could do things she couldn’t. They could see things, interpret things, understand things, that she could not. All her life, she’d not understood the simplest signals that existed everywhere in the world around her. All her life she’d been apart, unable to read any messages except those in the stone.
Now she could run. Or she could risk being wrong. Disappointment versus loneliness.
“Yes,” Rooke said. “I say yes. Monday. We’ll go Monday.”
Adrian’s heart leapt even though it was just a simple trip on a train. She wanted to show Rooke the city. Her condo. Some of the photojournalism articles she’d done with Jude. She wanted…she caught herself. Oh God, she wanted things she’d never wanted with another woman before. With superhuman effort, she clamped down on her excitement. Keep it simple.
“I’ll make the train reservations today,” Adrian said. “I’ll call you with the details.”
“Okay.” Rooke jumped when Melinda grasped her hand.
“Time to take me to the station, love.” Melinda winked at Adrian. “I can’t wait to see you both next week.”
Adrian walked them out and stood in the doorway, watching until Rooke’s truck disappeared. She refused to contemplate if Melinda would kiss Rooke good-bye at the station. She refused to voice the question she had not asked, but ached to have answered. Did you sleep with her?
Chapter Nineteen
Rooke set the final few nails into the top of the packing crate, loaded the box onto the hand truck, and delivered the item to the waiting FedEx driver. Together, they lifted the last of her four sculptures into the truck. She signed for the pickup and, watching him drive away, hunched her shoulders inside her denim jacket against a sudden blast of frigid air and shoved her hands in her pockets. The storm had finally ended two days before, and the blue sky overhead blazed with sunlight and not a whisper of clouds. The grounds at Stillwater sparkled under a blanket of diamond-bright snow. Rooke scarcely noticed the perfect morning. She was asking herself for the hundredth time that week if she might’ve made a mistake. She felt the loss of her work keenly, and the empty spaces in her shop where the sculptures had stood echoed in the hollow place in the center of her chest.
“You get everything sent off okay?” Pops asked as he walked up behind her. Hatless in a red sweatshirt and his neat khakis, he seemed oblivious to the sharp, subzero temperatures.
“Yeah. It was just the four.” Rooke was glad she’d decided to hold back the others, at least for a while. Melinda had urged her on the phone just the day before to send them all. Rooke had compromised, promising photographs of the others for Melinda’s catalog instead. She hadn’t told Melinda about her current work, the largest piece she’d ever done. She wasn’t sure why, but she knew instinctively Melinda would want it if she knew about it. And the way things had been going for the last week, she wasn’t likely to finish it anytime soon. She’d spent hours in her shop, hammer and chisel in hand, but the figure in the stone remained unchanged. She hadn’t heard the call, hadn’t felt the pull, hadn’t sensed the life brimming just below the surface—waiting for her to cut it free. The last two nights, when she hadn’t slept, she’d searched her memory for a time when she hadn’t been able to hear the voices, sense the beings in the stone, and she couldn’t. She’d never known a time when the stone didn’t speak to her. She’d never known a time when she felt quite so lonely.
“Haven’t seen much of you this week,” Pops said.
“Had a lot of stuff to finish if I’m gonna be away for a while,” Rooke said, following him back to the house. He’d been cooking something, chicken, it smelled like, and the windows were so steamed up that once inside, she couldn’t see through them. She pulled off her jacket and dropped it over the back of a chair.
“Early for lunch, isn’t it?” Rooke asked.
“Your stomach’s probably on dinner time since you missed it last night.”
Rooke wasn’t hungry, but arguing wouldn’t get her anywhere.
“All set to leave, come Monday?” Pops handed her a glass of iced tea, and she drank it without tasting it.
“I think so. Adrian said nine o’clock.” And that’s all Adrian had said during a brief conversation three days before that left Rooke feeling as if she’d been talking to a stranger. Adrian had been pleasant, her tone casual, without a single hint of banter or tease. None of the temper she’d displayed the first time they’d met, either. Rooke much preferred Adrian with her edges, because the softness that surfaced on the wings of her smile always felt like a gift. Rooke swiped her palm across the window and stared out through the blur at the driven snow.
“Worried about the trip?” Pops asked.
Rooke shrugged. “Not really. If I get into trouble, I’ll call you. I know how to use a phone.”
“You know how to do plenty.” Pops sighed. “I should have taken you down there before this
.”
“Why?” Rooke turned and braced her back against the window frame.
“Because the world’s a lot bigger than Ford’s Crossing, and you ought to say for yourself how much of it you want to see.”
Rooke laughed. “You think you would’ve stopped me if I wanted to go?”
Pops grinned. “No, but maybe you should have had that chance before now.”
“I never thought I wanted anything bad enough to go somewhere else looking for it.”
“Do you now?” Pops slid the chicken out of the oven and set the tray on top of the stove.
Rooke’s first instinct was to say she wasn’t looking for anything, but she didn’t think that was exactly true. She’d always known something was missing by the quiet ache that followed her around all the time, as if there were an empty place inside her where something belonged, but she couldn’t say what. Most of the time she filled that space with the solid comfort of the figures she carved, and sometimes when she needed more, with the sounds of Emma’s pleasure. She hadn’t been able to find solace in the stone all week, and even if Emma had come to her, she would not have been able to lose herself in the simple comfort they’d once shared. She feared if she touched Emma now she would not be able to bear the loneliness of remaining untouched.
“I don’t know what I want,” Rooke said hoarsely, wondering if she would find the answers in New York City. Melinda seemed to believe she would. She’d called every day, checking on the plans to ship the sculptures, explaining to Rooke some of the events she had lined up to promote the launch, and teasing Rooke about becoming a star. Melinda kept telling her she was special. Sometimes the way she said it, her voice husky and slow, made Rooke tighten inside.
