Authors: L.L. Muir
Still, her eyes remained closed. She paused a second between breaths. Jamison did the same.
Behind the wall of men standing along the bank came Junior’s pitiful wail.
The wall turned to see the calf squirming around on the grass, complaining like a spoiled and pissed off brat.
The men scattered as a determined, muddy cow pulled herself up out of the ditch—with very little help from behind—and came to stand over her calf.
“Morris? We're going to need a lot of gravel to line this ditch.” Buchanan frowned at the deep valley of mud. “I guess she's not Dutch.”
“Done.” A short man walked toward the barn.
“Jamison?”
Jamison started. “Yes, sir?”
“Your grandfather would be proud. Quick thinking.”
“Inspired,” someone shouted, and the rest of them laughed.
“Sir?”
“What?”
“What did you mean, she's not Dutch?”
Buchanan smiled. “In Holland, cows won't cross water, so they don't use fences; they just dig small ditches and keep them full. The cows stay in their fields.” He reached between his hip waders and pants and pulled out a familiar key ring, then tossed it over.
“What? All I had to do was save a cow?” Jamison grinned.
“Nah. Skye's ready to go. I'd wash real good before you let her see you.”
***
“Unbelievable.” Jamison assumed he was in mild shock, since he'd said it half a dozen times and he and Skye hadn’t gone yet a mile from the ranch house. An army in white had taken great pleasure in washing him down, with a hose powerful enough to clear dried mud from a four-by-four in ten seconds flat. Only after a few Somerleds had taken their turn and Shawn was reaching for the sprayer did Jamison protest. Then someone had had the brilliant, although belated idea that Jamison be given clean clothes to wear home.
So there he sat, driving calmly out of the Twilight Zone, girlfriend intact, wet clothes in a sack in the trunk which was nearly rusted through already so a little water wouldn't hurt much, and wearing a designer ensemble, straight from the runway of Somerled and Somerled.
It was so not fair that such perfectly fitting clothes could never be worn again—outside his own bedroom, of course. He was definitely going to be sleeping in these.
“Unbelievable.” He took a deep breath and noticed there'd been little comment from the one playing the role of girlfriend since they'd gotten in the car. After all, she was only playing a role.
Or was she?
The road straightened and he was able to take a good look at her.
Her eyes were on the road, unblinking. Her arms were folded with her hands in her armpits, as if she was cold, like Jamison often sat. But she couldn't be cold. She didn't get cold.
He checked the road, then checked her again. She mumbled something.
“What? Skye, what did you say?”
“Unbelievable.”
Skye wasn't mocking him. She didn't even smile. And he suspected she hadn't heard one 'unbelievable' word he'd spoken. When she came out of the house, alone, carrying a box full of bottled pumpkin, she'd noticed his clothes and stopped dead in her tracks.
“Relax,” Buchanan had told her. “He got dirty, not religion.”
She'd looked relieved, smiled in a dazed kind of way when Buchanan had told her he'd be seeing her, then gotten into the car without noticing Jamison opening or closing her door for her. He would have at least liked a smile from her.
Now, he'd settle for a blink.
“Skye, honey? Are you all right? Are you ready to talk about it?”
She shook her head.
“But you're all right?”
She nodded, then blinked a few times before she went back to staring.
And they went on like that for an hour; her staring, “unbelievable” sliding out of his mouth every ten minutes or so. He kept reliving the birth of the calf, the concern on the faces of all those men who had nothing to fear, but feared for a cow and her newborn.
“Unbelievable.”
He'd apparently taken quite a drink from that hose, once someone had turned down the pressure, and now he had to pee.
They stopped at the same gas station as before and he prayed the same gawking kid would have been sent home, but all his luck had apparently been used up at the ranch. The kid could hardly help his customers as Jamison walked through the store in his new white garb.
He couldn't blame him, though. It was pretty widely known that Somerleds didn’t take on new recruits, or converts, or anything. There were no expose shows about a Somerled escaping from their cult or falling in love with someone of a different...fashion persuasion.
Of course, if this kid made the right calls, and made them quickly, there might be a blurry photo of Jamison from the store camera on the cover of some news magazine in the grocery store in a couple of weeks.
Somerleds
Now
Recruiting.
The
End
Is
Near
.
When he got back in the car, Skye's face was buried in her hands, as if she were crying, or trying to cry.
“Skye. What the hell happened in that house?” He slammed the steering wheel. The horn beeped and the people walking past the car pretended not to be interested. Or else someone had suggested they not be interested. “I shouldn't have let them take you. I should have demanded our car and gotten you out of there.”
“No, Jamie—Jamison.” She cleared her throat and sat up straighter. She even gave him a smile. “Lanny had all the answers I was looking for, actually. Going there was, um, fated, you could say. I'm just glad you went with me.”
“Oh, so now you're cheerful? Wow, you should sign up for drama next semester. Learn to act.” He took the keys from the ignition. “We're not leaving here until you tell me what's going on. And no giving me suggestions, okay?”
“Okay. No suggestions. For today at least.” She'd mumbled the last.
“Oh, no you don't. I want you to promise you'll never use it on me again.”
She looked at him then—really looked. Her brows tweaked together for a split second, then her face went blank again, and he shivered, like someone had just walked over his grave.
She forced a smile and turned away. A child in the next car had crawled into the driver's seat and was bouncing while trying to turn the wheel back and forth and Skye watched as if it was the most interesting thing in the world.
“I'm sorry, Jamison. I can't promise that. I have an assignment to do and it may be necessary.” She turned back and looked him straight...in the chin. “I can promise to never suggest you do something you wouldn't mind doing.”
He didn't like it, but there was something in her voice that warned him not to argue with her. Hell, she was probably using a suggestion on him right then, to keep him from arguing.
Well, he could wait and argue later. It wasn't as if she could erase the discussion from his memory; that wasn’t one of her personal tricks. It had been a long day and it wasn’t over yet. Jamison wouldn’t mind waiting.
He’d just helped spare two lives and he was anxious to see what God was ready to do for him.
Jamison had never watched darkness fall so beautifully.
The Western horizon was a bright line of mustard that faded up into pink, and then to purple. The distant clouds smeared the colors together and stretched them north to south. The highway took Jamison and Skye straight west, keeping the light from getting out of reach.
The air changed. His ears popped.
The small distraction finally brought him out of his own world and he became aware of another change. It was Skye. That meeting with Lanny had changed her. She wasn't the girl, or the spirit she'd been on the way up the canyon. Something was missing, and he knew it was silly, but he wanted to go back up the canyon and get it, if he needed to.
He finally gave up chasing the setting sun and pulled into a wide turn out, a rest stop of sorts, a swath of gravel next to a creek. There were plenty of boulders to sit on and a small trail that started with a bridge and wound its way into the trees. Twenty feet away the hillside rose abruptly.
Skye got out when he did.
“You need a bathroom again?” She leaned back against the car, unimpressed with the scenery.
He walked around the car to stand in front of her.
“No, I need to talk to Skye again. The Skye I left Flat Springs with. The Skye from my English class. Not the version they gave back to me at the ranch.”
She looked away.
Guilty!
He'd only been exaggerating, but maybe he'd hit on something. Had they given him a replacement?
Only one way to tell, as far as he could see, but then again, he didn't want to look very hard for a better idea.
He kissed her. She felt the same in his arms, moved her lips the same...then stopped and straightened away from him. He didn't want to let her walk away, but he did; he'd held her against her will enough lately. He had no right to even touch her now.
When he finally had himself under control, at least to the point where he wouldn't chase her up the hill and grab her, he turned.
She was seated on a boulder with her feet pulled up, as if the crack in the rock was designed with her in mind. A mermaid draped in white, she stared into the bubbling water as if it were speaking to her. A mermaid. Painfully beautiful. Untouchable. Destined to get away.
And selfish jerk that he was, he didn't want to let her.
***
Skye perched on the large rock and tried to absorb its chill into her. She had to be cold, distant. She had to be the nothingness she'd been before Jamison came to town. She'd keep just a little acorn of warmth in her heart, for Kenneth. He deserved her comfort and he only needed it a short while longer.
But she had to remain cold for Jamison. It would be easier for him that way. He and his mother would have each other for comfort. He didn't need Skye. He would need a real girlfriend soon, and it couldn't be her. No matter what her options, it could never be her.
If Jamison came with one of those choices, it would be so easy!
Pulling away from his kiss had been anything but, since her sensations seemed to mature every hour they spent together. But Lanny’s explanation for those sensations gave her the strength to resist them.
If she hadn’t come to Lanny when she had, she might have ended up just another Gabriella Somerled—wicked, damned, and the only danger to Somerleds on Earth.
She had no idea what she’d tell Lucas and Jonathan when she got home. For now, she just had to change back to the old Skye—not the one Jamison was asking for, but the one before that. There was a reason people didn't want to leave their comfort zones. She'd left hers, somehow, without intending to, but now she was back.
Just as long as he didn't kiss her anymore.
And even if he did, if she couldn't stop him, she could at least refrain from kissing him in return. It seemed to work. No one enjoyed kissing a cold fish, of course. She just needed to be the fish.
When she thought he'd had sufficient time to cool down, she climbed back off the boulder and turned right into him. His hands clenched around her arms, to steady her, then he let go.
She had to remind herself it was a good thing, ignore the tingling in his touch.
“I’m sorry. I’ll try not to kiss you.” He grinned, his teeth glowing white in the dying light. “But I can’t promise of course. I have a...a project I’m working on and kissing you might be necessary.”
She couldn’t help but smile at her own words being thrown back at her.
“I can promise, however,” he said, picking up her hands and kissing the backs of them between words, “that if you ask nicely, I’ll still kiss you against my will.”
She looked at her hands, looking for a difference in the places his lips had touched. She tried not to feel that difference in the bite size areas—
No!
Cold
fish!
She needed to be cold, distant. There was nothing to feel!
She pulled out of his grasp and backed away. He smiled and kept coming.
“Jamison, stop. I don’t want you to kiss me anymore. You’ve already done enough damage.”
He stopped, bending a little at the waist. His mouth dropped open.
She shouldn’t have said that. It wasn’t his fault, truly. It was no one’s fault that she faced the choices she now faced. Like she’d told him before, it really had been Fate, or Providence that had taken her to Lanny, not Jamison.
“What have I done, Skye? Tell me. Are you in some kind of trouble because of me? Is it because I kept you up in the tree house?” He walked toward her, his arms out, his palms open as if he needed to convince her he wouldn’t harm her. He knelt at her feet. “Tell me. What is it? Who can I talk to? None of it was your fault!”
She wanted to reach into his hair and pull him toward her, hold him close and take his worries away. But would that be best? Wouldn’t they both be better off if he did believe he had crossed some line, that if he didn’t back away, she’d be punished for it?
She swallowed back the denial wanting to jump from her lips.
“There is nothing you can do now, Jamison. What’s done is done. No one’s fault. Only it has to end. Now.”
Tears lined up in his eyes when he looked at her, and she nearly took it all back and told him the truth. But like many times in the lives of mortals, it was best to get the pain over with so the healing could begin.
“I’ve broken some rules. I can’t break them again.” It could be true. Kind of.
“But if it was my fault—”
“Jamison, you are mortal. You were born to make mistakes.” She took a haughty step back from him. “I was not.”
He stood and searched her face for some emotion. There was none to find.
“I’m sorry just the same.” After a minute, he cleared his throat. “You’ll let me know if there is something I could do, to help?”
The chill in his voice matched her own. She should be relieved, not feeling the urge to bend forward and catch a breath she’d never need, maybe wait for tears that would never come.
“Yes, I’ll let you know. But there won’t be.”
He nodded and started back to the car. He opened her door and left it. He wasted no time climbing in and starting the engine, then just stared forward until she was inside.