A Rainbow in Paradise (7 page)

"No, that's fine," Logan answered, so she
showed him down the hall to the room where she was sleeping, glad
she'd made her bed and tidied up that morning. "The shower's right
in here and clean towels are over there."

"No problem," he answered, but the doorway
was so narrow that their bodies touched as they brushed past each
other. The brief contact left Eden nearly gasping.

Towel in hand, she fled from the
bathroom—face flaming—and grabbed a clean cotton shirt from her
closet on her way out and shut the bedroom door tightly behind her.
She did a cursory job of washing up at the kitchen sink and changed
into the clean shirt. Then went about the business of starting
water to boil, cutting up a salad, and regaining her waning
composure. By the time Logan came out—crisply clean, smelling
deliciously of fresh soap and healthy man—she had warmed some
bottled spaghetti sauce, jazzed it up with a few things from her
cupboards, and started the frozen ravioli boiling. "Dinner'll be
ready soon," she said, barely trusting herself to look at him. "You
can pour some ice water if you like."

Logan sat at the table and poured for each of
them while Eden blanched the pasta and set the meal on the table.
For a time, they ate quietly. Then Logan spoke, his tone casual.
"Eden? I've been thinking about us."

She tried not to choke on her ravioli. "Is
there an us to think about?"

"Sarah tells me your business is in
Phoenix."

"Right. Day care. The Old Woman's Shoe. You
knew that."

"Right," he agreed. "And you're going back
there in a few weeks, as soon as you put this house on the market,
right?"

"Right again."

"I've been wondering how you'd feel if we
spent some time together for the next few weeks, just while you're
in the area."

Eden just looked at him, wondering if she was
hearing him correctly.

He stumbled over the next words. "I know, I'm
the one who said maybe we shouldn't see each other—"

"I remember that part. You talked about some
kind of commitment."

"Yes, but I'm not talking about any kind of
commitments now, not between us, I mean. I'm talking about two
grown-ups who enjoy each other's company just sharing some time
together. No strings."

She licked her lips, put her fork down.
Something in the way he said it piqued her ire. "Did you think I
had something else in mind?"

Now it was his face that darkened with
embarrassment. "No, it isn't that. I just didn't want there to be
any misunderstandings between us—"

"So, gentleman that you are, you decided to
protect me by setting the record straight right from the start, is
that it?"

He couldn't have missed her sarcasm. "Uh,
something like that, I guess."

Eden was on a roll. "But you hesitate to
spend time with me because of some other commitment you've made
that you don't want to tell me about."

"I... I guess you could say that."

"And yet you want me to agree to spend time
with you, anyway? No strings attached?"

He felt the heat in his face. She was holding
up a mirror to him and what he saw shamed him. "Uh, well, yeah. I
guess."

"Logan, do you think that's wise?" She wasn't
being sarcastic anymore, or evenly viciously sardonic. He could
tell from the intensity in her expression that she was absolutely
serious, that in trying to avoid hurting her he had hurt her worse
than he'd ever imagined.

Her searching honestly demanded no less from
him. "I can't seem to be wise when I'm around you, Eden."

She made a sharp, high sound then, a quick
burst that might have been a laugh or a sob. "And you still want to
spend time around me?"

"More every time I'm with you."

She drew a long, slow breath while she
studied her fingernails, picking at the paint that still speckled
them. "It seems to me," she said after a while, "that we've come to
a bit of an impasse."

They sat in the kitchen—Eden staring at her
hands, Logan watching the floor. The kitchen wall clock sounded
thud, thud, thud
—each slow beat clicking off another second.
There were many thuds before Logan spoke again.

"It seems to me," he said carefully, "that as
long as we both understand it isn't going to go anywhere..." The
sentence trailed away.

"You're setting ground rules," she said,
getting his drift.

"I guess you can call it that."

"Ground rules," she repeated, as if adjusting
to the thought. She looked up. "What you are telling me is..." She
paused, coming to terms with all she had learned, piecing the bits
together. "You have another commitment that will keep us from ever
becoming serious about each other, so you want me to understand
from the outset that you will never marry me and I shouldn't expect
that, but you want to spend time with me while I'm here." She
looked up. "Am I getting this so far?"

Logan had been listening, his eyes dropping
as she spoke. "It sounds pretty awful when you boil it down like
that," he said, "but yes, I guess that's what I'm trying to
say."

"I didn't come up here looking for a
husband," Eden began, and she saw Logan twitch as she said it. "But
I think I might enjoy spending some time with you, too. What did
you have in mind?"

"My time is fairly free just now with the
goat project going so smoothly. Maybe I can help you out around
here some weekdays and free you to take time off on evenings and
weekends to spend with me, if you'd like."

"And when we're together? What will we
do?"

"There are some things I'd like to show you
out on the rez. We could make a day trip every now and then, maybe
have an occasional picnic, and just enjoy some time together before
you have to go back to your life in Phoenix."

"That's it?" she asked, feeling a touch
bemused.

He shrugged. "That's it."

“This isn’t some kind of ‘friends with
benefits’ proposition?”

He blanched. The poor man actually blanched.
“No. Oh no! Nothing like that. I respect you too much even to think
that…not to mention Chris would kill me. I’m just talking about
hanging out, sharing some time together, maybe some kisses--if we
both want them.”

"Logan, if that's all you had in mind, why
has it been so difficult to say it? And why were you so sure we
shouldn't see each other again?"

Because I'm afraid a few weeks in paradise
will spoil me for the life I've always planned to live. Because I'm
afraid of you, of the magical power you have over me.
He
dropped his eyes when he said, "I always seem to be tongue-tied
around you, Eden."

She made another quick sound then, but this
time he was almost sure it was a laugh. "Yes, I certainly know how
that feels. I'm not exactly Miss Glib when I'm with you."

He smiled. "So I guess we'll spend lots of
quiet time around each other. What do you think?"

This time Eden did laugh, and then she drew a
deep breath
.
It sounds like playing with fire in a
dynamite factory.
"I think that sounds like fun."

"Great, then. Since tomorrow is Saturday,
would you like to go up to Many Farms? Meet our goats?"

She smiled at that. "I'd love to, and thanks
to your help, I'm ahead of schedule on the painting. Tomorrow
sounds good."

"Can we start early? Say, six-thirty?"

That's inhumane! I'll have to be up at
five
! "Sure. I'll be ready."

He stood, crossed the distance that separated
them, and laid his hand on her shoulder. The warmth of his touch
shot through her, permeating right to the bottoms of her feet and
the depths of her thoughts. "Eden, are you okay with this?"

She stood.
Okay? I'm confused and
frustrated and a little hurt, but
... "Yes, I'm fine."

He held her by both shoulders. "I'm glad,"
Logan said, and the power between them whirled like a vortex,
sucking all the air from the room. "I will enjoy spending some time
with you."

"I'll enjoy it, too," she answered
breathlessly.
Right up until I drive away from here and leave
you
. She looked into his eyes, smiling a warm invitation.

The kiss, though expected, still caught her
by surprise. She had rationalized that first kiss, assured herself
it was only the newness of touching Logan that had moved her so
deeply. She'd have bet money that she couldn't be moved like that
again. She'd have lost.

When he finally drew away, she clung to him,
fearful that if he let her go, she might simply crumple to the
floor.... "Logan?"

He took his hands away; she instantly felt
the loss. "Yes?"

"You know I wouldn't ask you to stop if I
didn't like it so much."

He smiled, a wry look. "I know," he said.
"Me, too." He kissed his index finger, then placed it on the tip of
her nose. "See you tomorrow."

She smiled back. "Right. Bright and
early."

Chapter Four

Well, it's early, but
I'll be darned if it's bright. Then again, neither am I
. Eden
almost grumbled aloud as she faced the bathroom mirror, cringing at
the red eyes and bloated face that were reflected back at her. What
with the incessant dreams of Logan and the hours of wakefulness
mixed in, she hadn't had much of a night. Now it was going to take
some fine alchemy to get herself into a condition that wouldn't
send people running in panic if they looked at her, and to
accomplish that before Logan got here? She looked at the clock on
the bathroom wall, and groaned.

Carefully, lest she break something while
still in this fragile-as-glass morning mood, she began to prepare.
She had chosen blue jeans and a comfortable, striped "big shirt"
with short sleeves. These she had laid out, together with a clean
pair of cotton socks and her sneakers, on the chair beside the bed
before she'd retired last night. In case the day grew cool or
clouded over, she had selected a sweatshirt with the ASU Sun Devils
logo. Then, because she was heading out onto the desert, she had
packed a second pair of shoes, two extra pairs of socks, a canteen
of water, and several small items she might need if she were
stranded—toothbrush and toothpaste, a hairbrush, a small package of
energy bars—into an old book pack she had found in the closet of
her former bedroom, left over from her high school days. The
backpack and sweatshirt she now set in the hallway by the front
door. Then she hurried to shower and scrub, brush and groom, eat a
small breakfast, and make up her face.

Years of hurry-up practice paid off for her
this morning, and she was feeling more or less put together by the
time Logan knocked, not even so fragile anymore.

"Hi," he said as she opened the door.

"Hi yourself," she answered.

"Ready?"

"Ready." She picked up her sweatshirt and
backpack, locked the front door behind her, tucking the key into
the pack's outside pocket, and followed Logan to the truck.

"I apologize for the early hour," he offered
as he held the door for her.

"No need," she said, silently congratulating
herself that he probably couldn't even tell she was definitely not
a morning person. "It's pretty out this morning, isn't it?"

"Umm," he answered. She assumed it was an
affirmative. "We're seeing the White Dawn now."

"White Dawn?"

So he told her the story of how Changing
Woman, the first woman that ever was, who bore all the human race,
had married Sun and taken him to live with her in her hogan. Then,
seeing that her sister, Turquoise Woman, who lived at the other
side of the world, was alone and lonely, Changing Woman had
encouraged her husband to marry her sister as well. Every day, Sun
made the journey across the sky from the home of Changing Woman to
the home of his second wife.

"As he goes out," Logan finished, "he puts on
his gray fox fur to protect him from the morning chill. Later, when
he is farther on his journey and the day is warmer, he puts on a
yellow fur and brings the Yellow Dawn."

"That's a charming story," Eden said, looking
around her. "I think he's getting ready to change furs about
now."

"Any moment now," Logan answered. "Look to
the east. The color is beginning to spread."

It was indeed, the pale, pastel colors of
White Dawn growing richer as the sun rose nearer the horizon, soft
mauve warming to rich coral, buttery yellow melting into liquid
golden light.

"Ah, there he is," Logan said as the sun
crested the horizon. Then he began to speak, soft Navajo words that
fell in a chanting pattern.

"What is that you're saying?" Eden asked.

"House made of pollen, house made of dawn,
house made of morning light," Logan quoted, translating into
English. "It's the beginning of a chant that Navajo children learn
early."

"Like a prayer to the sun?"

"Something like that. It's part of a longer
ceremony." He turned back to the road.

"Is it part of the Beautyway?" she asked.

Logan's eyes widened. "You know the
Beautyway?"

"Oh, no! I don't pretend to know it. It takes
days and days to perform it correctly, yes?"

"Yes, many days," Logan agreed. "I guess I'm
just surprised that you'd know anything about it all."

"I read a lot," Eden answered, "and I've been
interested in the ceremonies that were native to this land ever
since I was a little child."

"I'm impressed."

"So am I," she answered. "Some of the
ceremonies are filled with fine poetry, beautiful lines, inspiring
thoughts."

"I always thought so."

For a while they traveled in silence. Then
Eden shivered and pulled her sweatshirt up around her, exposing the
university logo. "You went to ASU?" Logan asked her.

"Um-hm." She pointed at the mascot. "Just
call me a Sun Devil."

"Me, too," he said.

"No kidding? When were you there?"