She Shall Have Music (Psychic Seasons Page 14

  In contrast to the flare of color on the walls, the bed was nothing more than a simple platform made from polished pine with a thick mattress covered by a crisp, white duvet.

  Unable to help himself, he stepped forward and brushed his hand across the wall, almost expecting the color to feel as liquid as it looked.

  “This—it’s what you see, isn’t it?” He had always wondered but she had never been able to teach him to see auras. “It’s beautiful.”

  Without answering, she brushed past him and crossed to the long, low dresser cleanly painted gleaming white.

  Even though their bodies had barely touched, every point that had made that delicate contact felt energized as she moved through the confined space, she kept her back to him as she yanked out a drawer and began pulling things out to make room for his clothes. Instead of keeping his distance, and letting her maintain the facade that she was unaffected, he stood close, too close and looking down, commented dryly, “This dresser brought to you by the color purple.”

  “Ha ha.” Nevertheless, he was right. In every shade from palest lavender to deepest eggplant, her clothes looked like they had been slapped by the wand of the purple fairy. Slapped hard. Just what she was going for.

  Loathe to try squeezing back past him, she pointed to the drawer and waited for him to unpack his bag, which he did by unzipping it and upending it over the empty drawer. With one eyebrow raised, she watched him jam the jeans and tee shirts down and push the drawer closed. Every tiny part of her wanted to fold his things into neat piles but she resisted.

  Satisfied, he turned and left the room as she watched him walk away. There was something about the curve of his calf that had always gotten to her. The man certainly filled out a pair of jeans.

  In the bathroom, he pulled open the shower curtain, looked at the confined space, and decided he could make do—if he crouched. Ten minutes later, nursing a bruised elbow that had made contact with the back wall, he stepped out of the torture chamber figuring he was at least marginally cleaner than when he’d stepped in.

  The sound of banging pots and pans echoed from the kitchen along with the tearful sounds of stringed instruments. Whistling along, Reid thought, just like old times, and went to rescue her from having to cook. The Amethyst he remembered hated to cook. Clearly, that had changed. His mouth dropped open as he watched those graceful, orchid-tipped hands expertly slice an onion into paper thin rings. The lurch of his stomach marked yet another jarring realization that she’d moved on, changed, and grown during her absence from his life.

  Looking up at him, those hands never missed a beat as she tossed the onions into a sizzling pan, then continued to chop more vegetables. Responding to his obvious surprise she said, “What? I took some classes. Gustavia made me do it.”

  Shrugging he decided to adapt and so moved into the kitchen to help, seeming to know instinctively where everything was. But it wasn’t instinct. It was that even after all this time, their organizational styles still matched so that everything in her compact kitchen was placed exactly where he, himself would have put it.

  Without thinking, they fell into a rhythm. A dance.

  All the tension slid away as the simple task of preparing and eating a meal occupied their focus.

  Maybe this wouldn’t turn into a disaster after all.

  _,.-'~'-.,_

  The smell of buttered popcorn wafted from the bowl between them as Amethyst and Reid struggled to watch a movie. Separate bowls—that would have been a good idea, she thought as electricity shot through the hand that bumped into his for the third time. They were sixteen again, just in the first flush of attraction where every touch, every glance caused a shiver of excitement. Amethyst tried to pay attention to the movie but she was too attuned to his every movement to follow the plot. She kept her eyes trained on the screen but he was there, in her peripheral vision, looking all loose and comfortable.

  Six inches. If she just moved over six inches, she could rest her head in the spot on his shoulder that had seemed made for her. His arm would slide around her and… No, just watch the movie, the angel on her own shoulder admonished. Why? The devil on the other replied. You want him. He wants you. What would be the harm?

  What indeed?

  Unaware of the internal struggle going on beside him, Reid was fighting a similar battle of his own. Everything in him yearned to pull her across that couch, settle her on his lap, and ravish her mouth in a kiss that would bind their fates together forever. The thought of her mouth on his stirred a desire so primal, so deep that he was almost powerless to resist. Staying here and keeping his hands off her would be torture. After all, he was no saint.

  “Were there many other men?” He heard himself ask the question right along with her and cursed himself for a fool.

  “Excuse me?”

  Now that he had opened the can of worms, he might as well fish. “You thought we were divorced, you are a beautiful woman, you must have dated.”

  “I...” She stammered, then decided she might as well be honest. “Yes, I dated other men. Does that make you feel better or worse?”

  He ignored the question. “Anyone serious?” It was the last thing he wanted to know and yet he could not help but ask.

  “What are you really asking me? Do you want to know if I slept with other men? Because that’s what it feels like you are asking me.”

  “Maybe I am.”

  Her eyes searched his face for some indication of what he wanted to hear but his expression was unreadable. Inane dialog from the movie played out for a few seconds before she reached for the remote and muted the television. When she turned back, he was still waiting for her answer.

  “I dated, Reid. I thought I was single and I refuse to apologize for anything I have done. You can’t come back into my life after all this time, dump a huge revelation on me, and expect those years to just vanish.”

  “Did you love any of them?” He hoped the answer was no, any other answer would probably kill him.

  She owed him honesty and that is what she gave him, “No. I didn’t.” Total honesty. “None of them was you.”

  A weight fell from him. He would not ask anything more of her on the subject.

  After a moment of awkward silence, she didn’t know what else to do so picked up the remote and went back to watching the movie with absolutely no idea what it was about anymore. This time, she kept her hands out of the popcorn bowl—less chance of accidental touching and she needed the distance.

  Then he quietly asked, “Don’t you want to know if I looked for someone else?”

  Since honesty was the theme for the evening, she treated him to a wry smile. “What makes you think I didn’t keep tabs on you? Or to be more honest, there were plenty of people in town who made it their business to tell me any little piece of gossip. So unless you had a clandestine series of girlfriends, I would have heard.”

  “Oh, I never knew.”

  “Yeah, well, the perks of suburban living. So, did you?”

  “Did I what? Have a clandestine series of girlfriends?”

  She shrugged.

  “No. I never had the time or the inclination. I’m the one who chose to stay married, remember?”

  That was the conversation she wanted to avoid and there was nothing constructive she could say, so Amethyst turned back to the movie, surreptitiously rubbing at her throbbing temple. The discussion had given her a headache.

  _,.-'~'-.,_

  Banished to the kitchen while Amethyst was busy doing an early morning reading, Reid could see the sofa from where he was sitting. Two nights spent on that torture device had his left shoulder aching like a rotting tooth. He rotated the joint to release some of the stiffness. Not that ha had slept much with her in the next room. Every movement she made rustled the sheets and the noise tightened his body with the need to join her there. He wondered if she was feeling the same.

  After his first night there, they had managed to avoid further awkward conversation and begin the process
of feeling more comfortable with each other. As it was now, they could talk about anything unrelated to their relationship with easy openness. If they both ignored the sexual undertones, they could get along fine.

  Determined to remain optimistic, he pulled out the box of cereal he had bought the day before after he had opened her cabinet to find his options were limited to a box of something that looked like twigs and nuts with a few berries thrown in. A man just could not survive without a few essentials like sugary cereals. Not just for kids, he thought.

  The local market had been out of the plain version of his favorite brand so he’d ended up buying the one with berry-flavored bits added in. When Amethyst walked into the room twenty minutes later, he was seated at the table, two bowls in front of him, separating the colored balls from the yellow pillow-shaped pieces.

  “Do I want to know what you’re doing?” Amusement fought with derision and the two called a truce; both appearing on her face, as she turned wide, skeptical eyes on him but grinned at the same time.

  “They didn’t have the plain kind so I’m making my own.” He popped a yellow square into his mouth. “Bah, they’re tainted. Tainted, I tell you. They all taste like berry.” He poured all of the cereal back into the box, shook it to mix them back together, and poured a bowlful, which he proceeded to eat with great gusto.

  “I’m not sure whether to laugh at you or have you committed. Crazy man.”

  “Want some?”

  “No, I’ve eaten a balanced, adult breakfast.”

  “Of twigs, nuts, and berries?”

  These moments of teasing were a comfort to them both as long as the elephant in the room stayed in his designated corner.

  “What’s on your agenda for the day?” She changed the subject.

  That was a loaded question since there were things he would like to add to his agenda that she clearly wasn’t ready for. Ever since the session in his car, he’d had trouble thinking of anything other than a repeat of that moment in a less confined space. Two steps and he could have her in his arms. Fewer than twenty and he could have her in the bedroom. It might as well be twenty miles, though.

  “I’ve got some job offers to look through.”

  “Anything promising?” Maybe if he went back home she could get him out of her head.

  “I guess that depends on your definition; I’ve got headhunters chasing me about CEO positions in the industry but that’s not what I want to do.”

  “You want to go into non-profit work.” It wasn’t a question. No matter what had happened between them, she knew his dream job was to help people. It was one of the things she loved most about him.

  “Absolutely. When Dad started pushing me into the insurance business, its only appeal was that I would be helping people but that turned out not to always be the case.” For the first time since he had arrived, he felt he could open up to her. “In the beginning, it seemed like a reasonable compromise but it didn’t take very long to see that finding ways not to help was the directive. It was killing me.”

  “Then why did you stay?”

  “I applied for other positions for the first six months but never got an interview.”

  “Do you think Lionel had anything to do with that?” She wouldn’t put it past her father-in-law to manipulate his son into staying with the company.

  Reid shrugged. He hoped not.

  “Have you talked to Tyler about it? He has contacts just about everywhere.”

  An odd look fitted itself on Reid’s face. “I tried but he brushed me off.”

  Amethyst frowned, “That doesn’t sound like Tyler. At all.” She could tell that Reid’s feelings were hurt but there was nothing she could do about that, though the next time she saw Tyler, she intended to corner him and find out what was going on.

  Chapter 10

  Two weeks passed before Logan had his next moment of clarity. Weak with cold and hunger, he stumbled from his cave sanctuary and made his way back to the road leading out of town. By now, the roadblocks had long come down and he needed to get back to the city where he still had at least one safe house left and there was a chance of blending into the crowd.

  The trip out of the woods was long and arduous for someone with depleted strength. Twice, he fell. Twice, he forced himself to rise and continue on. It was only his highly developed sense of self-preservation that kept him going.

  Mile after mile, he trudged until the movement was no longer directed by thought but became automatic and mindless. Logan stumbled through a shallow ditch, onto the pavement and into the path of an oncoming vehicle. The screech of the brakes was the last thing he heard before he fell.

  Instinct had him folding his arms over his head for protection but at that moment, he was too spent to do anything more.

  _,.-'~'-.,_

  “Mike. Stop.” Dolores punched the imaginary brake on the passenger side floorboards and yelled at her husband.

  “I see him, woman.” His reflexes had already kicked in as he simultaneously slammed the pedal to the floor and reached a hand out to brace her from impact. If the pavement had been wet, it would have been all over for the young man lying in the roadway but Mike managed to bring the car to a stop mere inches from the prone body.

  As one, the couple leapt from their car and rushed to help.

  Logan was already struggling to regain his feet when Mike reached out a hand to steady him. The older man’s hand was none too steady and his heart was still beating a hundred miles an hour from the adrenaline. Dolores could barely catch her own breath in the aftermath of fear. She looked around her. What had the young man been doing out here, there wasn’t a house for miles and miles. She didn’t remember passing any breakdowns on the road, either.

  “Close call there, I darned near hit you. What’s your name, young fellow?”

  “Peter Jenkins, sir. I’ve been lost in the woods for a few days. Is there any chance you could give me a ride?”

  Mike looked the young man up and down. Giving rides to strangers these days was a dicey business. He watched the news, saw the stories and they never ended well for the innocent driver. Still, Peter looked half-starved and weak as a kitten. Dolores, standing behind Peter, was shaking her head and Mike sent her a quelling look.

  “You’ll ride up front with me so I can keep an eye on you, but first, you turn out your pockets so I can see you’re not carrying a weapon of any kind.”

  Logan was unarmed and in his present state, not much of a threat to anyone so he complied. For once, instead of getting angry, he was just thankful for the help.

  “I promise, I won’t be any trouble. I just need to get back to the city.” He pulled his pockets out to prove he was unarmed and climbed into the passenger seat. He looked half-starved so Dolores offered him the granola bar she always carried in her purse, then watched him suspiciously from the back seat as he practically inhaled the food then fell asleep.

  Chapter 11

  The solstice was coming up quickly and with everything happening at once, everyone had all but forgotten about the key and whatever it might unlock. The clues Julius had given to Amethyst seemed like vague nonsense. Something about looking where the light bent, and something about it being in the last place they looked, whatever that meant. Without him constantly prodding, the time slipped away quickly.

  As daylight fell like a curtain through the skylight above her bed, Amethyst had the uncanny feeling, even in her sleep, that she was being observed. Prying one eye open, it was met by the withering stare of a cat in a mood. Tommy sat on the duvet, his face no more than two inches from hers as he tried to communicate whatever deep-seated feline emotion he was feeling at the moment. He felt entitled to them, after all, with his strenuous life of sleeping and keeping his toes meticulously clean.

  Casting her sleep-drugged mind over the options, Amethyst knew he had been fed and watered the night before and it was too early for him to be prowling for food now, anyway. Preferring to do his business outside, he rarely availed himself of th
e indoor commode so it was unlikely to need a cleaning.

  “What?” She asked him not expecting an answer.

  “He’s trying to warn you that you have a visitor.” Julius spoke from the doorway where he stood, his eyes respectfully averted.

  “Oh for the love of…don’t you have descendants you can haunt? I need my beauty sleep.” She wrinkled her nose while asking the rhetorical question. “Go on into the kitchen, I’ll be there in a minute,” she ordered. “Oh, and put the kettle on for tea.”

  “Funny,” he retorted then grumbled under his breath, “I could if I wanted to. Useless waste of energy, though.”

  Dressed and mostly awake, Amethyst wandered into the kitchen to find Reid wearing nothing but the jeans he had hastily pulled on. His bare chest drew her attention but it was the cup of her favorite tea in his hand that she wanted most at that moment. Inhaling the scent of mint, she woke up just that little bit more and decided he made a pretty picture standing there while he and Julius made small talk. By now, the presence of ghosts and angels were as commonplace to him as they were to her.

  Amethyst reached for the jar and used the honey dripper to sweeten her tea then gulped down a mouthful. “How was the trip to—where was it Galmadriel sent you?” She frowned as she tried to remember. It was too early in the morning for rational thought.

  Julius ignored the question for the moment and asked one of his own.

  “What have you done about those clues I gave you? The solstice is coming up and it’s imperative you find the key.”

  His words pinned her to the spot; she felt like a schoolgirl called to the principals’ office. She slid a glance over at Reid who shrugged, grinned, and shook his head to indicate she was on her own. Way to be helpful, she thought as she blinked and tried to form a coherent answer.

  Clearing her throat, she answered, “Well, with everything that’s happened, we just…” She couldn’t meet the ghost’s eyes, “forgot about it.” The excuse sounded as lame as she had known it would and Julius was unimpressed.