Take Me Home (27 page)

“It’s beautiful!” she said, standing in the middle and turning slowly around. She walked to the island and traced a pale-silver vein in the granite. “Gorgeous! Like a streak of lightning against the night sky.”

He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. This was a woman who had a highly developed aesthetic sense. He was worried about how she would react to his taste.

As Claire sat beside him at the counter enjoying pizza and beer, he realized that being with her made him more aware of everything around him. Colors seemed heightened, scents were sharper, voices and music sounded clearer and more distinct.

But he was most aware of her—the intelligence in her brown eyes, the mobility of her expressive mouth, the fragility of her wrists, and the shining flow of her dark hair. She brought his senses fully alive.

Unfortunately, she also seemed to evoke darker feelings, forcing them up to the surface, where he had to face them. As he had offered comfort over her strained relationship with Holly, it had struck him that his words could apply to himself.

Someone could argue that Anais’s suicide had nothing to do with him, but it didn’t feel that way most of the time. He kept looking for what he had done wrong. What else had Claire said? It hurt him that Anais hadn’t told him how deeply she was
suffering. Not to mention the promise she had asked from him in the letter she’d left. He had kept it. The press had never gotten so much as a whiff of why she had killed herself, even though it meant the blame had fallen on him.

She wouldn’t let him help her while she was alive, so he had made sure to honor her last wish.

“Tim? Are you all right?” Claire’s hand was on his shoulder, and she was peering into his face. “Did I say something to upset you?”

“No, I’m fine. Just”—
Just what? Haunted by my dead wife?
—“just thinking about Frank.”

“Oh.”

She looked confused, and he realized he had no idea what she had been talking about while he wandered off into his own personal hell. “I was hoping he’d refuse to let go of you, so I could deck him.”

“Hmm, and I thought your threats were all an act. I remember what you did at Holly’s house, using your voice and body language to intimidate him without having to resort to physical contact. I was impressed.”

Anais had taught him that, only in reverse. His height meant he intimidated people without intending to. His actress wife had shown him how to adjust his posture and his gestures to make his size less overwhelming to others. For a moment, he stayed silent. He had worked so hard to keep Anais away from this place and from Claire. Yet he found he wanted to bring his dead wife out into the open, to see if that would banish the darkness surrounding her. “Anais showed me how to change my body language. Her stage training made her an expert.”

Claire sat silent, her eyes wide and soft. She gave him a tremulous smile, and he was afraid she pitied him. That was another reason he never mentioned Anais’s name. He hated the combination of curiosity and sympathy it brought out in people.

“Why don’t I show you the rest of the house?” he said, closing the almost-empty pizza box and carrying it to the refrigerator. “Not much is finished. Just the living room and master suite.”

“Thank you for trusting me enough to share that,” she said, ignoring his change of subject.

“It was time to stop avoiding the topic.” He felt better too, as though he’d cracked open a window to let light and fresh air waft through. He grabbed two more bottles of Molson from the fridge and opened them, giving one to Claire. “Now let me lure you into my bedroom.”

She stood, reaching up to cup his cheek with her palm as she pressed a gentle kiss against his lips.

He put his hand on the indentation in her back where her T-shirt met her skirt. He couldn’t resist slipping his fingers under the white cotton to feel the warm satin of her skin.

“Beer and a back rub,” she said, breaking the tension, much to his relief, “what could be better?”

He fluttered his fingertips against her rib cage, making her squirm and giggle. He loved to hear the trill of her giggle; it contrasted with the sophisticated facade she wore so comfortably.

She angled her arm to bat at his hand. “Not quite what I had in mind for the back rub,” she said.

“I find a really good massage requires a certain state of undress.”

“Didn’t you want to give me a tour of your house?” she asked.

“You sidetracked me.” It was true. He wanted to slide his hands under her clothes every time he saw her. He craved the feel of her against his skin because she chased away the cold. This time he offered her the crook of his arm. “Let me show you my etchings.”

She snorted and threaded her arm through his elbow to rest her hand on his forearm, tracing the line of his muscle with her index finger. Her feather-light touch sent a bolt of arousal straight to his groin.

“This is the living room,” he somehow managed to say as he almost dragged her through the doorway.

He watched her gaze sweep the room and come to rest on the expanse of glass. The moon had risen while they ate, bathing the softly arching mountain ridges in a cool, silver light.

“Ahhhhh,” she sighed, releasing him and moving closer to the windows almost as though she were sleepwalking. “Much better than etchings.”

He could see her reflection in the glass, overlaid on the view and washed to black and silver just like the mountains. Her expression was rapt and for the first time, he saw her as part of this place, saw that it called to her just as it called to him, no matter how much she denied it.

He stepped up behind her, putting his arms around her and resting his chin lightly on top of her head. “Why do you fight it so hard?”

She relaxed back against him. “I’m not putting up much of a fight.”

“I mean Sanctuary. You love the mountains. You love your sister and her kids. You love horses. Why are you so determined to leave?”

He felt her stiffen. “You must have wanted out pretty badly yourself to go to college at age fifteen.”

“I just ran out of classes to take. The guidance counselor told me I should apply to college, so I did.”

“Did he suggest Harvard to you?”

“It was on the list he gave me.”

“You know what the guidance counselor did when I went to talk to him about studying art history in college?” she asked. “He smiled and handed me information on two-year teaching certificates and a practical nursing program. His other suggestion was secretarial school. My parents thought they were all great ideas.”

“That obviously didn’t stop you.”

“No, it made my future in Sanctuary very clear to me. Then my favorite teacher—the only one who believed I had a future in art—quit the next day.”

“Who was that?”

“Mr. Van Zandt. He taught art and Spanish.”

“I remember him. He was one of the young, cool teachers.”

“He was the first person who spoke the word
connoisseurship
to me. I fell in love with that word. It seemed miraculous that you could have a career as a connoisseur of art, but I knew that’s what I wanted to be.”

This glimpse of her younger self fascinated him, and he wanted to hear more. “Why did he quit?” he prompted.

Her grimace showed in the window’s reflective surface. “He was forced to leave by a parent who claimed he made homosexual overtures to his son. Mr. Van Zandt wasn’t even gay.”

“So why the accusation?”

“The son wanted to join the art club instead of playing football. Evidently, the kid was pretty stubborn, because his father couldn’t think of any other way to get him to play quarterback, or whatever position it was. And no one in Sanctuary stood up for Mr. Van Zandt. No one.”

“So you lost your one supporter. That was tough.”

“It was a total shock. I walked into his classroom while he was boxing up his last few possessions. He told me to get out of Sanctuary before it destroyed me.”

There were tears in her voice, and he felt her drag in a shuddering breath. He tightened his hold on her and dropped a kiss on the top of her head. “I can’t blame him for his bitterness, but he shouldn’t have let it spill over onto you.”

“I never thought of it that way, but I guess he shouldn’t have. All I knew was that the only person who understood my dreams was telling me to leave, or they would be destroyed.” She turned in his arms and looked up at him so he could see the tears start
down her cheeks. “I felt utterly alone that day, and that’s when I knew I couldn’t stay in Sanctuary.”

He imagined the teenaged Claire standing in the empty classroom, resolving to find a way out of her small-town life all by herself, and the courage of it took his breath away. He began to understand what Sanctuary represented to her.

“You did it, Claire,” he said. “You proved everyone wrong about you.”

At that, she shifted away from him, and he released her. “Some things worked out; others didn’t,” she said.

He knew she was thinking about her divorce. From his standpoint, divorce looked like a minor glitch, not a major failure.

Her story told, she stepped away from him and turned to scan the rest of the room. “I understand now,” she said.

“You do?” He felt a clutch of panic at what his living room might have given away.

“Why you want the Castillo.” She waved to the blank wall over the sofa. “It would balance the incredible view.”

He nearly sagged with relief. “Now that you know what a great setting it would hang in, will you sell it to me?”

She laughed and shook her head, making her hair ripple around her shoulders. “Nope. I promise to find you something else worthy, though.”

“Problem is, when I get a notion in my mind, it’s hard to shake it loose. I just can’t picture anything else in that spot.”

“What did you tell me the other day? That when you want something, you keep after it.”

“It works nine times out of ten,” he repeated. He took her elbow and led her toward another doorway. “This way’s the master bedroom.”

“Oh my, a fireplace,” she said as she stepped into the high-ceilinged room and spotted the rough-cut stone hearth. “I’ve
always wanted one in my bedroom. And you have a glorious view from here too.”

“Right now, I prefer the closer view,” he said, letting his gaze skim down her legs to her nearly bare feet. She was wearing dark-pink polish on her toenails.

“Really?” she said, turning and giving him a mock sultry look. She took a sip of her beer and deliberately ran her tongue over her lips.

“How about that back rub?” he said, taking the bottle out of her hand and setting it on the mantel beside his. He scooped up Sprocket and put him outside the door before closing it.

She looked small and shy, standing in the middle of his big bedroom, her arms wrapped around her waist. All he could think about was seeing the curves of her smooth, bare skin contrasting with the patchwork quilt spread over the king-sized bed. She would look beautiful against the golds and greens. For a moment, he wasn’t sure how to approach her, and then she raised her arms and ripped the shirt off over her head.

“There’s nothing I like better than a good back rub,” she said and flung the tee across the room.

Hours later, he lay in bed with a sleeping Claire spooned up against him. The moon’s light glistened on the strands of her dark hair as it fell over her shoulder. Her arm was draped over his chest in a graceful arc. He picked up a swath of her hair and brushed it over his lips, savoring the sweet scent of citrus wafting up from it. She’d told him she’d used her niece’s orange-fizz shampoo. He inhaled again and smiled.

It felt good to be awake because he wanted to be, not because he couldn’t sleep. He could feel Claire’s soft breath ruffle across his skin, her heartbeat against his ribs.

His smile faded as he considered whether he kept seducing her just to fend off his nightmares. No, that couldn’t be true, because there were other women who had been willing to keep him company in his bed. None of them had tempted him.

It wasn’t until he saw Claire step out from behind Sharon that he began to want something again. Why? Why did Claire do that? The first answer he had come to dug cold, sharp claws into his mind: Claire reminded him of Anais in some dark, unspeakable way.

But there was no darkness in Claire; he could see that now. What she had was the strength to help him fight his way out of Anais’s shadow. As he wrapped himself in the warmth of Claire’s presence, he almost believed his past could be banished and he could love her with a whole heart. Almost.