Seidel, Kathleen Gilles (31 page)

"And forty thousand miles." Ward took her hand solemnly. "I meant that, about wanting to marry you. There's no blood test in Maryland. Do you want to go now or wait until after dinner?"

"They've changed the law," his wife told him. "Maryland now has a waiting period."

"Oh, drat... well, in that case, I'd better go work on this charcoal."

"I liked your parents," Jill said as soon as the car doors were shut behind them.

"Of course you do. They all do. It always happens. Girls get all gushy about the way I look, but then they meet my dad, and he's the one they fall in love with... although you're the first one he's wanted to marry."

"Being part of a strong, stable family is not unattractive, Doug."

"Not unattractive? That's fine, if 'not unattractive' is your goal. Some of us aspire to being major sex symbols. So I have a great dad. What's sexy about having a great dad? Does the Lone Ranger have a great dad? Does James Bond? Does Kermit the Frog?" He backed out of the drive. "Now what do you want to do? Would you like to stop on the way home and see the Reynolds House?"

"That sounds great." Jill was so happy she didn't care what they did. "What's the Reynolds House?"

"How can you know that it's great if you don't know what it is?"

"I always like going to new places."
Especially with you.

"Actually, this won't seem new. It's where they filmed the exteriors of
Weary Hearts.
It's Briar Ridge."

The house, Doug told her as they drove south, was still in private hands. "They tried opening it for tours, but people were always disappointed since none of the interiors were shot here. The windows are all in the right places, but otherwise none of the rooms are the same."

All there was to identify the house as Briar Ridge was a small plaque fixed to one of the brick columns that flanked the white gates.

But Briar Ridge it was—the lane rising gently past the stone fences, the kitchen garden on the sunny side of the house, the paddocks in the fields sloping toward the road, and the house itself, solid and brick, with its twin chimneys, pillared porch, and the fanlight over the beautiful mahogany door—the whole scene framed in the background by the dark bulk of Massanutten.

Doug knocked on the door although he expected no answer. "I think Mrs. Reynolds usually stays in town after church to eat dinner with her son's family."

Jill was waiting at the foot of the white steps. "Is it all right if we walk around?"

"Goodness, yes." Then he smiled his naughty-little-boy grin. "She likes me."

He came down the steps and directed Jill toward the south side of the house. "This tree line is pretty interesting. If you remember that shot where Phillip and Mary Deas are talking to Mosby's man, you can still see that little grove of English oaks, but Mrs. Reynolds sold the two black walnuts fifteen years ago. It was a shame, but they probably would have been poached if she hadn't done it, so nobody blamed her." He touched her arm, just a light tour-guide's touch, turning her. "And the big chestnut that was over there; it's gone. Apparently it already had the blight when they were filming, though it looked good enough."

Jill thought she knew her father's work well, but even she had not paid attention to the individual trees, and she wasn't sure how truly interested she was in them now. But it was lovely to be here on this sunny afternoon. The property was not as spruce and trim as in the movie's opening scenes, but nor was it as dilapidated as in the closing ones.

Doug showed her the break in the woods that had been Phillip's path back into Massanutten. "Actually the path doesn't go very far. The clearing that was used in the movie is really a good ten miles from here."

Jill wanted to walk up the path anyway. Two days of working in the sweet limestone soil of the flower garden had made a difference. She didn't feel at home in the Valley—it would not be that easy—but she no longer felt like a stranger. She felt like a welcome guest... or perhaps even more than a guest, like someone who has come to stay, a new bride perhaps, learning the routines of the house as both the house and the routines would be entirely hers.

The path followed a little stream through stands of birch and white laurel, past moss-covered stones, delicate ferns, and silvery lichen. The drooping, bell-like flowers of the wild columbine glowed in the patches of sunlight. The trail narrowed, and Jill had to let Doug walk behind her. In another minute they reached a slender birch that had fallen, its crown having caught in another tree so that it was slanted across the path, its feathery limbs, still green, blocking the way. Jill stopped, turning so quickly that Doug had to apologize and step back.

The light here was muted, green and shadowy. The wind was rustling the leaves, and the air had a damp freshness. Doug reached forward as if to pull back the tree's lower boughs. Jill didn't move. Then he didn't, either.

They had walked single file for long enough. The path was telling them to stop, to turn, to face one another.

Doug's hand was resting on the truck of the tree, just over her shoulder near her hair. She reached up and laid her palm against his face. His skin was warm, still soft after a late-morning shave. She closed her eyes, and all she knew was the smell of the damp moss and the feel of his face against her hand.

He jerked back, stepping away as if her touch were nettle-sharp. "There's no place to go from here," he said abruptly. "We might as well get back to the car."

He started to walk briskly, and Jill followed him, keeping up with his pace. She didn't understand. He had seemed so happy when they left his parents' house. What was wrong? Why had he pulled back?

They went directly to the car, Doug formally opening the door for her. As they were driving down the narrow lane, another car—a large, clean Buick—turned in, then backed out to let them pass.

It was Mrs. Reynolds. As soon as they had turned onto the county road, Doug stopped the car and got out. Mrs. Reynolds unrolled her window and Doug bent down to speak to her. But he didn't hunch over, curving his back, as most men would have. He bent at the knees, balancing with one hand on the car door. His face was level with Mrs. Reynolds, not hung over sidewards.

Jill had never known a man as comfortable with his body as he was. He was fit and strong, moving with an animal's sleek grace. He didn't mind striking awkward poses or twisting himself off balance. He trusted his body not to make a fool of him... or if it did, so what?

"That was Mrs. Reynolds," he said when he got back into the car.

Talk to me, Doug. You like to talk. If there's a problem, tell me.

She was a fine one to urge someone to talk, she who sat in her therapy group week after week, never speaking about herself.

They rode silently into Courthouse.

Then he spoke. "You want to shoot some baskets?"

"Sure." She wouldn't have dreamed of saying anything else.

He pulled into a parking lot near a schoolyard. He went around to the back of his car, taking a basketball out of the truck. Jill followed him past the sprawling brick school to a basketball hoop set at the edge of the blacktop. He dribbled twice and shot.

Jill caught the rebound. Field hockey had been her sport, but she had done her share of running up and down the basketball court. Even after so many years the ball felt familiar to her hands. She dribbled, set, and shot. And missed. Doug caught the ball.

"I'm not going to apologize," she said.

"You've nothing to apologize for," he said. "Your timing's rusty, that's all." He sent her the ball on a one-bounce pass. "Try again."

She did. This time the ball circled the hoop and sluggishly plopped through the net.

"Use your wrists more." He captured the ball again and came over. Tucking the ball between his knees, he took her wrist in his hands, moving it for her.

He came around behind her, following her step by step, motion by motion, retrieving the ball after each shot, flipping it back to her, talking to her all the while, correcting her, praising her. Now he was touching her, changing her grip on the ball, the set of her shoulders, the position of her elbows, but it wasn't about sex, it was about basketball.

And suddenly she understood.

Doug was telling her something. He was using his body instead of his words, but he was telling her that he wasn't Bix. On Phillip's path to Massanutten, he hadn't known whose face she had touched, his or the long-dead face it so resembled. Coaching basketball was what made Doug, and he wasn't going to bed with her until he was sure she knew that.

It's been days since that mattered. When I see you, I see you, not him.

He was behind her, holding the ball out on the palm of his hand, talking about its seams. Suddenly she batted it away from him, pivoted, and shot. Unprepared, he leaped, but not in time to block her shot.

"Try that again," he dared.

She held out her hand for the ball and started to dribble. In a moment he had it. He tossed it back to her. He stole the ball before she had gone a second step. Again and again. She would turn her back, he could reach around her. Sometimes he would wait until she was ready to shoot and he'd block the shot. He could stop it in mid-air, he could snatch it out off the rim. He could, quite simply, do whatever he wanted.

She had no way of stopping him, but she did not feel humiliated. Doug wasn't asserting himself over her. He was asserting his identity to her.

They played on, the light changing from the bright afternoon glare to the slanting rays softening behind the trees. Jill was tiring, but she felt lovely, light and loose, as if Doug had passed to her, along with his knowledge of the game, some of his effortless grace. He was tireless; he sprinted after each ball, never winded, never flushed.

Finally he stopped. He trapped the ball against his hip, one hand dangling free. Still holding the ball, he came to her, and leaning forward, without touching her in any other way, he kissed her. They remained like that, her head lifted, his bent, their kiss glowing, all else motionless, until at last the ball dropped, falling to the blacktop with a small bounce, then rolling off into the grass, and Doug's arms came around her.

It was an embrace that answered the important questions, and in a moment Doug stepped back. With an arm around her shoulders, he led her back to the car and asked the one question that remained. "Is the Best Western all right?"

"Do you mind if people see your car parked in front of my room?"

"No."

There was no ambivalence in that answer.

He opened the door on her side of the car. Jill slid in, fastened her seat belt, and through the windshield watched him come round the front of his convertible.

As infrequent as Jill's affairs were, she knew that her job would start the minute he opened the car door. That was the point at which she had to start working to make the man comfortable. The minutes between reaching the decision and arriving at the location were often awkward, and Jill knew the whole episode would be far more satisfactory if she smoothed the transition.

But Doug didn't open his car door. The top was down, and he put a hand on the frame and vaulted lightly into his seat. He pulled out his seatbelt with one hand while turning the key in the ignition with the other.

This man did not appear to be in the least way uncomfortable. When he turned to back out of the parking space, he rested his hand on the headrest of Jill's seat. Then he took her hand, holding it in a firm, warm grip. He was whistling softly, a little smile on his face. No, he didn't find anything about this awkward at all.

Which left Jill with nothing to say, nothing to do. It was enough to make her feel awkward. She let the quick ride back to the motel pass in silence. Doug took her hand and pulled it over to his leg, flattening it against the sun-warmed denim of his jeans.

It was her experience that upon entering the motel room the two participants retreated to neutral corners and removed their clothing before meeting again in the vicinity of the bed. She started to do that, then noticed Doug watching her, the expression in his blue eyes so interested, so bemused that she suddenly had trouble remembering how buttons worked.

"Do you need some help over there?" he inquired politely.

"I can usually manage."

"Good, then I'd rather watch."

And he sounded so like himself when he said that, so like the man that she was truly fond of, that she then had no trouble at all.

She turned toward the nightstand to take off her watch and earrings. One of the earrings caught in her hair, and it took her a moment to untangle it. As she was laying it down, two strong arms closed around her waist, pulling her against a warm, muscled body. Her shoulders, her spine, the back of her legs basked against his glowing length. The hair on his chest was a soft mat, and where he pressed himself against her, he was hard and velvety smooth.

"You don't have any clothes on," she said, remarking on the obvious.

He kissed her neck, running his hands up and down her arms. Then he turned to strip the spread off the bed. He was clearly at ease with himself, he was comfortable being nude. It made sense. He was, after all, an athlete, used to walking around a locker room clad in a slipping towel.

He was an athletic, imaginative lover. He made love with his whole body. Jill knew that sex could be two pairs of lips touching, followed by one hand on one breast, isolated bits of physical activity following one another in sequence. But when Doug's hands were on her shoulders, his strong fingers searching out the muscles of her upper arms, he was also moving her so that the tips of her breasts would graze against his chest, and his leg was massaging hers and he was kissing her all the while. Or when his lips traveled down, finding her breast, one hand would explore the outer curve of her thigh while his other hand caught in her hair, holding her head firmly, a gesture that made her feel important, even treasured.

Jill found it all wonderful, and yet, as they lay drowsily in bed afterward, watching a narrow strip of sunlight lengthen across the Best Western's royal blue commercial-grade carpeting, she also realized that it was very surprising.