A Rush of Wings (11 page)

Rick laid the saddle on the hearth to dry. “Morgan's no slacker. More of a prodigy.”

She didn't hide her surprise. “Prodigy? What does he do?”

“Turnaround management. Saves businesses. Major corporations. His name is known in very high-powered circles.”

“Morgan?” The ne'er-do-well cad and cutup she'd spent weeks with and never glimpsed with more than a capricious nonchalance?

“With his Wharton MBA he went into corporate finance, and from there he began saving the world. Found some smaller companies floundering with great ideas and no clue what to do with them. One merger with IBM set him up pretty well.”

Morgan Spencer a Wharton graduate? A financial prodigy? No wonder he could take a month off if he felt like it. And she'd been so uptight about her own background she'd never asked. Other things now came clear: his choice of clothing, his car. No wonder she'd pictured him at Daddy's club. But he'd put her off with his very first statement,
“I'm just freeloading.”

“So this is a consulting job?”

“If he takes it. He's pretty particular.”

She looked up the stairs again where Morgan had disappeared. She'd flaunted her few sold paintings and mockingly called him the success guru, when that was exactly what he was? And his job was to fix things, find solutions no one else saw. No wonder he'd seen through her.

She closed her portfolio with an exhaled breath. “He never said a word. I mean, all those stories he told and—well, most men would have dropped a hint, bragged on that kind of success.”

Rick shrugged. “He comes up here to get away. Relax. He hasn't said so, but it must be draining to have everyone expecting you to solve their problems. It takes a toll.”

Yet he'd tried to do just that for her. Maybe she should have let him. She gathered her portfolio to her chest and stood up. “Well, good night, Rick.”

“Good night.”

N
oelle slept fitfully and awakened to a dim, dreary day. She lay in bed and watched the drizzle run down the windowpanes. Things were changing, and it unsettled her. She forced herself to rise, wash, and dress, then dragged downstairs. Morgan had his suitcase by the door, and he stood beside it, buttoning his raincoat, ready to leave. Would he have gone without saying good-bye?

He turned. Already he looked different, or maybe her perception had changed. Now that she knew his potential, she saw it in him. Yet before . . . How flimsy impressions could be. Or had he purposely hidden himself? A prodigy escaping the pressure. What if he had told her his profession at the start? Would their time together have been different?

She had thought him a chameleon the night at the Roaring Boar. Now he was changing colors again. Her throat tightened. “Not a very nice day to fly.” It was a stupid, useless thing to say.

He took her hand and pulled her close. “Give me a reason to stay?”

New color, same lizard. “Good-bye, Morgan.”

For a moment she thought he'd say more, but he only squeezed her hand and disengaged. He must no longer believe she needed him. Good. Because she didn't.

“Ready?” Rick joined him at the door.

Morgan gave her one last wink and followed Rick outside. As the
door closed behind them, she went into the dining room. Marta had set out bran muffins and fruit compote, but no one sat at the table. Well, she was in no mood for morning banter anyway. She took a muffin and wandered back to the front room. Drizzle obscured the outbuildings. It was too wet to ride out and paint, so she returned to her room.

Downstairs the vacuum hummed, one of Marta's endless jobs. She didn't know what Marta did in her room at night, but all day the woman worked, seemingly content with menial tasks, as though they defined her. Noelle looked into the oval mirror. How would she define herself?

Artist? Perhaps. It was the means she'd found to support her stay, though it barely covered her current minimal expenses. It was a start, but was that all she was, who she was?
The real Noelle
. She'd never had the chance to be real—until now.

Voices floated up from downstairs, guest families congregating in the lodge, held inside by the rain yet seeking companionship, distraction. They must be playing a game, a team game by all the hollered guessing, adult and children's voices alike. She could go down and join them, but her natural reticence held her back. She didn't like crowds, had never learned the herd mentality, having never been herded into school but privately tutored instead.

There had been group activities, her dance and riding lessons, her college courses, though much of that had been individual study as well. But as she'd told Morgan, her preference was solitude or at least limited numbers. Was it preference or habit?

She looked around the room. The overcast weather gave the golden walls a sickly pallor. Everything smelled damp, and the dripping of the gutters was a constant drum. She walked to the window. Misty trees like ghostly shadows faded up the slope. Her gaze deepened. How well the scene matched her mood, yet it was beautiful in its own haunting way. She absorbed it, or it her, until it was there, inside. Then she took out her paints and created it.

Maybe she wasn't only an artist, but it was a part of her. The professor had seen it. He saw her as someone in love with the beautiful, in search of the divine. Maybe not the latter, but then . . . maybe . . . She looked at the painting before her. It was different from her others. Usually she did so much with light, with shade and hue. This one was subtle, almost monochromatic.

Would Ms. Walker like it? It didn't matter. This one was powerful.
It came from some shadowy place inside her that had responded to the weeping skies, the questions, the void. She wouldn't care if it didn't sell. It was a personal communication.

But of what? Gloom? Loneliness? The need to be known? She felt a flickering loss that surprised her: homesickness. She and Daddy had been close, even with him away so much, for so many long hours. She could admit she missed her father, even some of her friends. Her throat tightened as wings once again flashed above her, then dissolved as soon as the image came. These wings were different, though. Stylized. How strange.

Noelle scrunched her brow, trying to bring the image back, but couldn't. Other wings threatened to fill her mind, but she forced them away.
Not the hawk
. Not now. She wasn't ready. Shaking her head, she dispelled the memories.

She left the painting on the easel to dry and sat on the bed with the vignettes of Western women she'd brought up from Rick's shelf. Reading about such women as Augusta Tabor and Helen Hunt Jackson underscored her own trek westward and the expansionist spirit Professor Jenkins had sought to explain. Though Juniper Falls was scarcely the frontier those women had helped settle, it was foreign enough to what she knew.

As she read, the room grew chilly. Long pants and a sweat shirt were more in order. But when she took off her shorts the button fell and rolled on the floor. She scooped it up and laid it with the shorts as she finished changing. The voices had ceased downstairs, and only Rick sat in the corner chair beside the fireplace when she went down. It was likely too damp for him to work outside, but she couldn't recall seeing him just sit. Didn't he, like Marta, thrive on diligence? Yet there he was. So much for impressions.

“Excuse me.”

He glanced up, and she realized he'd been reading, the book in his lap hidden by the angle of his leg. “Did you need something?”

“I've lost a button. Could Marta—”

“She's doing housekeeping in the cabins. But there's a needle and thread in that cupboard behind you.” He pointed to the top right door in the wall unit.

A needle and thread. Uh-huh. Well, how hard could it be?
In the cupboard she found a lidded basket that held a pincushion and spools. As luck would have it, there was a needle already threaded with white
to match her shorts. She took it and sat on the couch where Morgan had lounged the evening before.

“Where did everyone go?”

“Movie theater.” His attention was back on the book.

She studied the task at hand. Holding the button in place, she poked the needle through and caught her finger underneath. She gasped and jerked it out. No blood, but how could that tiny pink spot hurt so much?

“There's a thimble in the basket.” Rick spoke without looking up.

How would he know what she needed? she thought, then snorted. She probably could have asked him to do it. She pictured his long deft fingers attaching the button, his placating smile as he returned the shorts, mission accomplished. The very thought annoyed her.

And she could do without a thimble, thank you. She yanked the thread and it went all the way through, leaving the button still completely unattached. It must need a knot of some sort. She tied the end of the thread and went through the button again. The knot stuck, but she realized she should have come up from the bottom for it not to show. Never mind. If she made the button stay that was good enough.

She pushed the needle through and back, then checked the stitches underneath and realized the finger had bled after all, on the shorts. Great. And how did she secure the thread? Another knot, of course. She pulled the needle out and tied one like she had at the start, then bit it off with her teeth. Rick glanced up. No doubt there were scissors in the cabinet as well.

She laid the shorts in her lap. “You're engrossed. Some bestseller?”

“You might say.” He held the book up, and she saw the gold lettering.
Holy Bible
.

“Is it any good?”

He smiled. “It's great.”

Sucking her finger, she carried the needle and remaining snippet of thread back to the cabinet and stuck it into the pincushion the way she'd found it. “I've studied Buddhist, Greek, and Hindu myths and Native American folk tales.”

“I don't consider this mythology.”

“What, then?” She sat back down on the couch.

“The Word of God.” He said it simply, as though he really be-lieved it.

“So God wrote the book?”

“His Spirit inspired those who did.”

She lifted the shorts and wiggled the button. Maybe it would hold. “Like automatic writing?”

“That's a demonic counterfeit.”

She laughed. She couldn't help it. How could he say something so ludicrous? “You mean little men with horns and tails poking people to make them write?”

“I mean real forces of evil that ensnare people's minds and lead them away from the truth.”

His straight, earnest face caused in her an obtuse desire to provoke him. “Truth is subjective.”

“Is it?” He fingered the tabs and flipped the pages, scanned, then read, “ ‘For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.' ” He looked up. “Do you know who said that?”

She shook her head.

“The Son of God. The Messiah.”

“You mean Jesus. How was he any different from Buddha or Mohammed or even Plato? They all taught truth.”

“Only one of them
was
truth.” His eyes seemed to deepen, to hold her, tell her . . . what? And how could she possibly answer? How could someone be truth? Truth was logic, proof, thought, and decision. He was speaking symbolically.

“You don't really . . .” She heard tires on the gravel outside and turned. “New guests?”

Rick leaned to look out the window. “My dad with the foals.” He took his hat from the hook by the door and went out into the misty yard.

Noelle followed, even though he hadn't invited her. Standing just outside the door, she took in the worn brown truck and horse trailer, which had pulled up between the house and stable. Rick's father climbed out and came around. He was a thicker version of Rick, same angular bone structure, though he was gray haired and had Morgan's blue eyes. The two men clasped hands, then hugged.

Rick said, “You just missed Morgan. He left this morning.”

“Figures.” Rick's father stood back with one hand still on his son's shoulder. “How're things?”

“They're good. How's Mom?”

“Ah.” Hank patted Rick's back. “Missing you boys.”

Their easy affection stirred envy in her, and surprise. Rick looked genial and warm. Not that he'd been cold with her, only this was different. This was . . . family.

Wrapped in her own arms against the chill, she watched from the porch while they opened up the trailer. The drizzle had stopped and the mist lifted, though the skies were still gray. She was learning that even in the middle of summer the temperature swings at this elevation were broad. Working together, the two men backed the horses down from the trailer. One was a sorrel with a white face and socks, the other a bay, both quarter-horse stock with the short front-legged, workhorse power.

She could tell they were quality bred. Their hides shone and their eyes were bright and spirited. Their backs were straight, higher in the withers than the croup and longer in the belly than the spine, the perfect proportion for saddle horses. She couldn't resist any longer and went down.

Stepping back, Rick almost trampled her, then caught himself awkwardly. He turned to his father. “Dad, this is Noelle St. Claire.”

“Hank Spencer.” Rick's dad shook her hand. “Are you vacationing up here?”

“On a kind of permanent basis.”

“She's boarding with us.” Rick reached for the sorrel's harness.

“Aha. Do any riding?”

“She's a capable horsewoman.” Rick stroked the foal's muzzle, checking one eye, then the other.

Noelle stared at him, surprised. He'd kept that opinion to himself.

“Good.” Hank patted the horse's withers. “Put her to work with these fillies. There's nothing like a woman's touch to take the wild out of a horse.”

Noelle's heart leapt. “That's what I've been trying to tell him about Destiny.”

“Thanks, Dad.” Rick smiled grimly.

She cooed to the bay that stood nervously. “But you're the pretty one, you sweet thing.” From the corner of her eye, she caught Hank's gaze moving from her to his son and back again. And she saw her chance. “Why don't you come in for some coffee, Mr. Spencer?”

“Call me Hank. And coffee sounds great. Rick, you can manage?”

“I can manage.”

She didn't miss Rick's frown as he started for the stable. Hopefully, she'd have time to make her case. She led Hank inside. Why it mattered so much, she couldn't say. Because it was denied her?

No, it was something she needed to do. A quest. And this was her chance, a better chance than she'd ever have with Rick alone. She brought Hank to the kitchen and found Marta preparing lunch. She must have finished in the cabins, and before Noelle could start her argument, Hank said, “Hello, Marta.”

“How was your trip, Hank?”

“Longer than ever.”

“At our age, nothing's as easy as it used to be.” She took a large can of corn from the pantry.

“That's true. But I'm not complaining. As they say, it beats the alternative.”

Marta laughed. They seemed to know each other well and just might keep talking until Rick came in.

Noelle went to the corner and poured Hank a mug of steaming coffee. “Cream?”

“No, thank you.” Hank took the mug gratefully, sipped, then sighed with satisfaction. “Now, that hits the spot.”

Marta's face flushed with pleasure, but before they got going again, Noelle started her bid. “Those are beautiful animals you've brought.”

He smiled like Rick at the mention of his stock. “You know horses?”

“Mainly thoroughbreds. The stable where I trained specialized in jumpers.”

“Ah.” He drank again.