See Jane Fall (9 page)

When he’d picked her up this morning, he
noticed right away how much a good night’s rest brightened her
eyes. Her hair was still drying from a morning shower which made
her curls look tighter and springier, but he suspected they’d
soften as the day went on. The dark circles under her eyes were
gone, and her lips had tilted up in a polite smile as she made her
way into his truck.

“Morning, Jane!”

“Good morning,” she’d replied, buckling
in.

“You ordered sun and we delivered!”

“Yes. It’s a lovely day.”

A lovely day?
The Jane from yesterday
would have made a snappy comment about how he must have a direct
line to God and could he order a cup of hot coffee to appear in her
hands next.

She didn’t smile at him, or offer any
further conversation, but busied herself with her phone, checking
texts and typing back, two un-manicured thumbs moving like
lightening.

“Did you sleep okay?”

“I did. Thanks.” She didn’t look up.

“Well, I thought we’d start with
breakfast—”

“I’ve already eaten, thanks. Have to get
those bags unpacked, so probably best to get started.” Still glued
to her phone.

Lars had glanced over at her in confusion.
She hadn’t asked about the Beach Boys, but he had them all queued
up and ready to go. He thought about pressing play, but the
potential embarrassment of her not acknowledging them, or worse—
not wanting to listen to them—made him think twice. What was going
on with her?

She finally put her phone down and rummaged
through her bag. Finding the object of her search, she ran a tube
of lip balm back and forth across her lips then pursed them
together. He could smell the tropical sweetness of it…mango or
pineapple, sweet and incredibly distracting.

“So, I guess I’ll drop you at the cottage
and then…”

“I have the list of groceries for you.
Samara likes really high-quality produce, so please take care when
selecting, okay? And if the brand I specify isn’t available, don’t
buy a substitute. Please just mark it on the list and I’ll deal
with it.”

“Fine.” He clenched his jaw. Nothing she was
doing was wrong. She was polite and respectful. She was also in
charge; he worked for her while she was visiting Gardiner. But, all
of her warmth and teasing fun was gone, and he wanted it back.
“Jane…”

She turned to him. “Hmm?”

“Is everything…okay?”

“Sure.”

“Are you…
upset
about anything?”

“Upset?” She shook her head, but didn’t look
at him. “No. Not at all.”

“You seem…different today.”

“Just a lot to do today and tomorrow. Before
she gets here.”

Well, he had tried.
Business it
was.

“Fine. I’ll drop you off, get the groceries,
and then I guess we can go look at the locations?”

“Fine.” She crossed her legs toward the
window, leaning her elbow on the windowsill. “Mind some fresh
air?”

“You’re in charge,” he observed.

She rolled down the window and turned her
head away from him, effectively ending their conversation.

Since he had returned with the groceries,
she’d barely said a word, except to ask politely if he would put
the perishables in the refrigerator and freezer.

He stood up from the couch and walked to the
window. Beyond the dirt and dust that surrounded the cottages,
there was a large patch of green meadow that extended out toward
the park. A small herd of bison made their way into the meadow as
if on cue. Three, four, five, eight, ten, twelve, fourteen, with a
calf among them. He watched them lumber into position, until they
were all munching on the sweet grass in the mid-morning sun.

If
he
wasn’t enough to bring out the
sunny, teasing side of Jane, maybe
they
were…he walked back
to the bedroom and stuck his head into the room.

“Jane!” he whispered.

She looked up at him and grinned, then
seemed to catch herself and hurriedly looked down. When she looked
up again, her face was cool and professional, eyebrows raised in
question.

“I want to show you something.”

“I really have to finish this.”

“Bring your camera.”

He saw the incremental widening of her mossy
eyes, the twinkling she was trying to keep hidden. Curiosity
apparently won out as she opened the backpack hanging on the door
handle of the room and took out her camera.

He put his index finger up to his lips,
indicating that she should be quiet, and she nodded, her lips
tilting up in anticipation, eyes bright and engaged.

There’s my girl.
He led the way
through the living room, pointing to the picture window. She gasped
at first sight of the herd, fumbling with her lens cap, but Lars
put his hand over hers to still it.

“We’ll go outside,” he whispered. “You’ll
get better shots.”

She nodded, curling her fingers around his
hand. He was careful not to meet her eyes, pulling her along to the
front door. He hadn’t expected her to take hold of his hand, but
he’d be lying if he said it wasn’t affecting him, because it was. A
lot.

He felt pathetically grateful that she was
finally letting her guard down again after such a cool, composed
morning. Suddenly he had a slight glimmer of hope that the rest of
the day might showcase the funny, surprising Jane from yesterday
instead of the cool, reserved one from this morning.

Lars opened the front door quietly, stepping
down the two steps. He had no reason to keep holding Jane’s hand,
but he didn’t want to let go. She stepped down beside him and they
stood side by side.

“They’re
marvelous
,” she
breathed.

He glanced down at her and felt his heart
speed up as he stared at her face. Her mouth was slightly open,
soft and surprised, and her eyes were wide and fascinated. He could
still smell that mango or passion fruit, or whatever it was, from
her lips, and wished he could lean down and kiss them. Instead, he
adjusted his hand again, lacing his fingers through hers, hoping
she wouldn’t notice and pull away.

She turned to him and smiled. “
Aren’t
they wonderful
?”

He nodded at her, smiling back. But, he
wasn’t smiling at the herd—honestly, a herd of bison wasn’t very
compelling for him anymore— he was smiling at her. From experience
he knew that tourists were generally blown away by their first
glimpse of a herd. He’d seen the
look
many, many times. But
not on
Jane’s
face, and it just about took his breath away
to see her so unreserved, no trace of the smart-ass from yesterday
or businesswoman from this morning. Just a guileless young woman,
enthralled by the sight of something pure and new in Lars’s world.
Watching her made Lars’s heart swell and thump, drawing him to her
in some otherworldly way he never saw coming. He squeezed her hand
instinctively and she glanced up at him, pink lips still tilted up
in delight, before she turned her gaze back to the grazing
herd.

Finally she loosened her hand from his, and
took the lens cap off, clicking the camera on. Moving stealthily,
she approached them, then turned back to him, whispering, “How
close can I get?”

He moved to stand next to her. “We can move
in a little. Just be really calm. No sudden movements. They’re used
to people, and they’re pretty gentle, but you don’t want to startle
them. The bulls can gore you if they get riled, but honestly
they’re more likely to run than charge. These are females, but with
a baby out there, don’t get too close. Squat down as we get
closer.”

They moved calmly, quietly, until they were
about sixty yards away, and Lars put his hand on her arm, motioning
her to stop.

She raised her camera and started to shoot
and he squatted down next to her, whispering in harmony to the low
whirring of her camera. “There used to be millions and millions of
buffalo out here. But, they were hunted, almost to the point of
extinction. By the late 1880s, there was only a handful left. A
couple hundred.”

“Go humans.” She stopped clicking and turned
to him. “Way to almost wipe out a species. Then what?”

“Well, they took a small herd of forty-one
captive and wild buffalo and moved them here to Yellowstone. Today
there are over four thousand wild buffalo here.”

“Well, at least they tried to fix
things.”

“I love to see the little ones,” Lars
whispered, smiling as he watched the calf trail along, bleating
after its mother.

When he glanced at Jane, she was smiling at
him, but it was small, tenuous smile that wasn’t so sure. Her face
was soft, as it had been in the car yesterday while they were
talking about her father, and her green eyes were serious,
searching. Without thinking, Lars leaned forward, moving his lips
closer and closer to hers.

She looked down suddenly, breaking their eye
contact, breaking the moment. “Thanks for showing me this. I got
some good shots. Time to finish unpacking.”

He considered reaching for her as they stood
up, to connect with her, to assuage the growing tension between
them by kissing her senseless. But she stood up, still not looking
at him, so instead he watched her walk purposefully back to the
cottage without turning around even once.

***

Two hours later, Jane glanced over at Lars,
who was driving them to the first of three location shoots so she
could photograph them and send pictures to Samara. She checked her
phone, even though Lars had warned her there wouldn’t be reliable
cellular service for as long as they were in the park. No signal.
No bars. More’s the better. She rolled down her window, which added
white noise to the otherwise quiet of the car. Lars had seemingly
given up all attempts to charm her out of her grumpy funk and drove
in silence, which Jane hated as much as she suspected he hated
grumpy Jane.

Not liking Lars was proving to be just about
impossible, and the effort it was taking to be aloof and
professional was draining, especially when he seemed so thoughtful;
bringing that CD for the ride to dinner last night and showing her
the bison this morning. But, whenever she felt her resolve
slipping, she would think about Paul’s words from last night—
the
girls from the park
—and the coolness would return quickly. She
felt sure that if she had let him kiss her earlier, that’s all
she’d be: a temporary distraction left in the dust once Samara
arrived.
Just another girl from the park
. Jane didn’t want
that.

Well, she didn’t
think
she wanted
that.

Or
did
she?

Their chemistry was not just in her head
anymore, not that she had ever
really
believed it was
totally in her head. She felt Lars watching her yesterday, taking
her hand, touching her curls. She could see how pleased he was to
see her this morning.

She thought of him asking her if anything
was wrong, and how he had laced his fingers through hers as he led
her out to the meadow earlier; she knew there was something between
them, something crackling and interested, simmering just beneath
the surface.

Jane peeked over at him.

Smokin’ hot
. Like, double-take on the
street, tongue rolling out of your mouth, rugged, western-model
perched on a horse with a cowboy hat and a lazy smile hot. And Jane
was pretty sure that if she wanted a fling with Lars, it was hers
for the taking…at least until Samara arrived.

That was the rub. No way Samara
wasn’t
going to hit that. Jane would be surprised if Lars
wasn’t
her first order of business. And Jane knew her place.
Every day, every moment of her life so far had impressed upon her
that she couldn’t possibly compete with Samara.

From a young age, Jane had believed what she
had been told in a myriad of unspoken ways; Sara was vapid, but
pretty and Jane was smart, but plain. Unfortunately for Jane, her
smarts had never been a match for her cousin’s beauty in the eyes
of her guardians.

By high school, Jane’s whole existence had
been overshadowed by the breathtaking, luminous Sara. Graduating
from high school, Sara was almost six feet tall, willowy and
confident with a perfectly formed body, long, silky onyx hair and
lavender eyes fringed with long, black lashes.

It was as though she had skipped puberty
entirely, neatly developing within the time span of a mild New
England summer before her freshman year with nary a blemish on her
porcelain skin, and no need for the awkward machinery of braces.
Her breasts followed a perfect trajectory from an A cup freshman
year to a full B cup by the end of high school, ever accentuated by
her increasingly tiny waist and adorable backside.

The beginning of the high school senior
superlatives list was a veritable homage to Sara: Prettiest, Best
Eyes, Best Smile, Best Hair, Best Figure, Most Likely to be in a
Movie, and—especially baffling to teenage Jane, who shared a room
with spiteful Sara—Best Personality. Indeed, Sara’s true nature
asserted itself privately. Her early insecurities at Jane’s
unexpected intrusion in her life imposed an unfortunate edge to
Sara’s demeanor that foreshadowed the demanding, difficult woman
she’d become. Had, in fact, foreshadowed the international super
model, Samara Amaya.

Jane, who barely bothered looking in the
mirror by high school, wasn’t exactly
jealous
of Sara,
although she had many wistful moments wishing she was prettier.
Alas, she was assured by her uncle’s sympathetic glances that her
own looks would always fall short beside Sara. It was the way of
things. It was Jane’s world.

And she knew without a shred of doubt that
her cousin would choose Lars to be her “local flavor” of the week,
just as she had with Ben Abaz on the Egypt shoot. So, here was the
million dollar question: Could Jane just enjoy today and tomorrow
with Lars, and be okay if he turned his back on her once Samara
arrived? Could she risk the hurt to her heart? Could she bear
watching Samara take what had been hers for a few short, sweet
days?