Once Touched (31 page)

O
NE MONTH PASSED
and then a second. By the third, Quinn had discovered the many stages of grief. They were labyrinthine, sometimes doubling back on each other, sometimes leading her to a dark and dismal place so far from where she wanted to be.

The first stage: shock, an icy cold blast that withered the small, foolish, and too fragile hope residing in a corner of her heart. The wish that Ethan, upon seeing the images he'd captured, the beauty and honesty that shone in them, would have spoken before she had to utter a word.

The reaction she'd dreamed of? A simple one. Perhaps a slow but heavy exhale signaling his epiphany. Surrounded by his extraordinary pictures, he'd realize how important it was to overcome his guilt and self-doubts. The power of the work he'd already created would give him the strength required to finish the military documentary. She'd even believed that he would recognize that the endeavor, painful as it surely would be, would ultimately provide the catharsis and healing he needed.

In that Disneyesque script, love never dimmed from his eyes. He even accepted the necessity of her going through his phone and contacting his former girlfriend and his editor behind his back, arranging for all his gear and his equipment to be express-shipped to New York, and having his clothes packed and delivered to Dara's apartment. It was a stretch, but somehow she sort of, kind of, hoped that he'd accept her motive for not simply banishing him from the ranch but also kicking him out of their hotel suite.

As that incredible fantasy went, he'd then summon that half smile she adored and shake his head in rueful admiration at how carefully she'd orchestrated the details of her strategy while bluebirds sang and Thumper thumped.

How pathetic that when he'd acted as her rational self had predicted, it had crushed her. Like a sledgehammer smashing ice into fragments.

The worst moment came the second before he cursed her, when neither his face nor his expressive eyes reacted to her anguished declaration. He remained chillingly distant. Untouchable.

Her love hadn't mattered to him.

On the heels of shock came agony, the next stage of grief to torment her. As she returned to her life at the ranch, mechanically going about her daily chores and activities, how many times did she torture herself, replaying those minutes in the gallery space? How many sleepless nights did she pass, tossing and then turning, as she composed alternative speeches, ones in which she'd coax and sweet-talk him into agreeing to open up his equipment cases, take out the rolls of film and memory cards, and begin the job of selecting the images that best represented the soldiers' lives in Afghanistan?

The answer? Dozens upon dozens, until her brain was feverish, her stomach knotted.

But would any of those approaches have worked?

Of course not. It wasn't in her nature to cajole; it wasn't in Ethan's to tolerate flattery. But if she'd even remotely believed that wheedling would sway him, she'd have dropped to her knees and pleaded until her voice was gone.

Could she have played the diplomat and reasoned with him? He had a father in the State Department who'd failed. He had an editor who was persistent and likely excellent at her job—Ethan wouldn't have signed on to work with anyone less than top-notch on a project like this—and she, too, had failed to convince him to return to the project.

The only option remaining was to throw down the gauntlet and challenge him. And while she'd dreaded it, she also knew she might have to withdraw the offer her parents had made him: a job, but even more, a refuge.

Would that drastic step have been necessary if she'd been cleverer in her approach? Well, crap, she hadn't been. And up until that evening she'd never felt less than an equal in matching wits with Ethan. Remembering some of their conversations, how they'd laughed together, how they'd
gotten
each other, made her heart bleed a little more.

Those memories most likely triggered the next stage: anger. Damn it, why couldn't he text her if he couldn't bring himself to speak to her? She only wanted to know that he was all right. Wherever he was, whatever he was doing.

Had nothing they shared and given each other—passion, tenderness, laughter—mattered? Had her betrayal erased all the positive?

Did he truly have no idea of how deeply she'd fallen in love? He must have. She'd gone from a man-awkward virgin to an enthusiastic sex partner in zero to sixty, Ferrari fast. No other man could have made her lose her inhibitions and give herself over to him so completely.

Did he really not know how much it hurt to be separated from him, not to turn and see his face and feel her heart leap?

He was too smart and sensitive a man to be unaware of the pain she was suffering, so her only recourse was either to bawl her eyes out or stretch her vocabulary, amassing new curses and insults to whisper as she mucked out the goat pen, hiss as she turned the earth in the vegetable garden, and mutter as she patted freshly tilled and composted earth around tiny seedlings.

She managed to resist venting too much around the animals, aware they would sense her emotions and grow agitated. Bowie was on edge as it was, often running to the window and looking out, scanning the world for a glimpse of that human who'd thrown the ball so well. But every once in a while Quinn succumbed to her fury. Shutting the study door, she would recite the curses du jour to Alfie. His head cocked, his eye beady, he picked them up with the ease of a polyglot.

She hardly noticed when her anger faded, replaced by a weird numbness, as if her body had received a massive dose of anesthesia. Smiling still felt foreign, but at least it didn't resemble a rictus of pain. It meant, too, that she could hang out with her brothers and her friends without exhausting herself trying to pretend that she didn't have a gaping hole in the center of her chest.

Numbness was a blessed relief. It provided her a kind of floaty, above-the-scene distance as well. The vantage point allowed her to remember a previously glimpsed truth. At Christmas, her mother had said that Quinn had a deep-seated need to rescue and heal broken creatures. But Quinn had understood what she was really saying. That with respect to Ethan, Quinn
couldn't
let him become the human equivalent of Tucker or Una, two creatures forever handicapped by the suffering they had endured. Ethan had a chance to become close to whole again and live his live fully.

So she'd forced him to confront his obligation to the soldiers and their families—and perhaps even the world—to show these pictures of men at war. She'd done so knowing that if he finished the project, if he healed as she hoped he would, he'd in all likelihood return to his former existence, traveling the world, capturing its beauty, mystery, and ugliness. It was a life she couldn't share. Her ties were here at Silver Creek and the animals in her care.

Forcing him to go was the hardest thing she'd ever done. It was also the most selfless and loving.

Sacrifice wasn't something with which she was overly familiar. It might not have hurt quite so much if there had been one conversation between them where they wished each other well. But no closure was in the offing. Ethan didn't want to talk. It was as simple as that. After what she'd done, Quinn couldn't bring herself to initiate a conversation. Also simple. Heartbreakingly so.

Early April came and the world was filled with signs of renewal. Flowers bloomed, lambs bleated and gamboled, calves suckled and dozed in the sunshine, and two new foals, Flora and Zeus, raced each other in the pasture in short bursts before returning to their dams' sides. In the goat pen, five gray and white kids tottered around and nosed everything in sight. Only Gertrude, who always did things according to her own schedule, had yet to kid. But her hindquarters had softened and she'd been pawing the dirt; she'd birth anytime now.

Growth and change were all around her. Impossible to remain in this benumbed state, no matter how much protection it afforded her. The moment had come to accept that what she and Ethan had was over.

It was time to focus on the positive. She knew that she would survive the heartache. She had work she loved. She had friends and a family who had been treating her as if she were made of spun glass these past few months, and it was time to put their worry to rest. They deserved it. So did she.

This was the moment to start filling her heart with new things. While she would never experience a love like the one she'd known with Ethan, she refused to feel bitter or resentful any longer, not when there was so much life to be lived.

A sense of peace settled over her.

She knelt on the goat pen's stomped-on dirt and let the kids' tiny noses butt her sides and their cloven hooves press into her thighs as they scrambled over her, already determined to scale heights. And while she couldn't prevent the pang of loss when she thought of how much Ethan would have enjoyed the sight of the baby goats, she believed a day would come when her memories of him would summon a smile of affection and gratitude.

A larger head butted hers, and she reached up to scratch Gertrude's ears just the way she liked.

“Oh, Gertrude, I really need to get to that place, I do,” she whispered. “I'm better, honestly I am. But there are these moments when I'm so scared I'll never feel as happy again as when I was with Ethan.”

“Gertrude doing okay, Quinn?” Reid asked from the other side of the enclosure.

Better than I am,
she thought. Surreptitiously she wiped her eyes and then straightened, making sure she smiled. “I'm pretty sure she's close to kidding. Her bag's tight and her ligaments and rump have softened. She's been pawing as well.”

“You need help getting her into the kidding pen?”

“I'd appreciate it. I didn't want to do it alone in case Maybelle's buckling tries to escape. Ten days old and he's already a little devil. The lead's hanging by the gate.”

After they'd led a swollen-bellied Gertrude into the straw-lined pen on the other side of the small barn, Quinn filled the water bucket and put some fresh hay in a feeder for her to nibble on. The nanny didn't like being separated from her tribe. Fortunately, she was growing increasingly distracted by what was going on inside her body.

“It won't be long now, sweetie,” Quinn told her.

“You want me to bring you something? Coffee? A sandwich?”

Her brother was so solicitous these days. Perhaps he remembered how awful he'd felt during the period when Mia had broken things off with him. Quinn would have been a lot nicer to him if she'd had the tiniest inkling of what he was going through. In Reid's case, with Mia as their neighbor, he had to contemplate the prospect of running into her and pretending he wasn't bleeding inside.

Yeah, she should have been a lot, lot nicer.

“No thanks, I'm good,” she said. “Jim brought me a cup of joe and a donut while you all were at the meeting. How was it? What did I miss while I was hanging with my girls?”

“Roo had us sample some chocolate tacos she's planning for Cinco de Mayo. Messy but damn good. Don't worry, yours is waiting in the kitchen. She also gave us a taste of the lemon lavender polenta cake and chocolate pomegranate truffles she's going to serve at the wine auction next week. Jeff presented the menu he and Anna have planned.”

“Anna's arriving the day before the auction, right? You need me to pick her up at the airport?”

“No!”

Quinn looked up in surprise at the force with which he'd rejected her offer.

Reid coughed and resettled his cowboy hat, pulling the brim down a little lower. “No,” he repeated in a more normal tone. “Tess wants to go—so she and Anna can catch up and all.”

That made sense. “Okay.” She shrugged and returned her attention to Gertrude, who'd been walking in circles and then stopping abruptly to nose her belly. Yes, an alien body was in there, Quinn felt like telling her. But that might only freak Gertrude out. Instead she asked Reid, “Did Dad mention anything about a new hire?”