Picture Perfect (41 page)

Dorothea rolled toward her husband, burying her face against the hard bones of his shoulder so that he wouldn't know how close she'd come to crying. “It was,” she whispered.

 

D
OROTHEA DID NOT SAY WHY SHE STAYED HOME FROM THE CAFE
teria the next day, but Cassie knew, simply by the way she sat in the rocking chair beside hers on the porch and waited, unmoving, in a silent show of support.

She also knew that the time had come, when just after noon, Dorothea softly whispered, “
Koképe Å¡ni yo”—Don't be afraid
—and stood up. The wind whipped her skirt around her ankles as she came to stand beside Cassie's chair, but by the time the unfamiliar black Bronco pulled to a stop in the Flying Horses' front yard, she had gone inside.

Cassie knew no one would come out and bother her while she was speaking to Alex. Not Cyrus and Dorothea, who believed this was her business alone, and not Will, who was sitting with Connor. And for right now, anyway, that was the way Cassie wanted it. Her palms were damp and she wiped them on the front of her shift as she stood up and stepped toward the porch railing, trying to hold fast to her fury.

Alex shut off the motor of the Bronco and tugged off his sunglasses. It was Cassie. It was really Cassie. After months of agony, he was ten feet away from his wife.

He stepped out of the car and stared up at her. She seemed to be smaller than he'd remembered. The imagination that had served him so well as a director began to function double-time: he pictured the wind blowing her hair around her face, her lips breaking into a delighted smile, her feet flying over the rough boards of the steps. He envisioned her soft skin pressed against the lines of his body; he saw himself carrying her into whoever's hut this was and stretching her out on the whitest of sheets and burying himself inside her.

“Alex,” Cassie said. Having been warned by Joseph Stands in Sun of Alex's preemptive arrival, she'd planned all night to take him to task.
You lied
, she would accuse.
You gave me your word
. But it had been so long that she found her anger fading and she stared at him the way she used to when she first saw the dailies of his films—awestruck and overwhelmed by his beauty, his very size.

He stopped in front of the porch, underneath the railing where she stood, like he was playing Romeo to her Juliet. Then he reached up, gazing at her hand as if he'd never seen anything like it, and touched his fingertips to hers.

It was the physical contact, the stepping of the movie idol off the screen, that jolted Cassie. She jumped back as if she'd received a shock, and let the tears run down her cheeks. She thought of Alex wearing his dinner jacket and serving her wine on a Tanzanian set. She imagined him draping a pillowcase on his head and doing Lady Macbeth while standing on a coffee table. She considered Connor, living proof that the sweet ache of coming together could create something perfect. And she did not remember why she was supposed to be angry; or why, exactly, she'd left.

Then Alex was standing beside her, wrapping her in his embrace. “Don't cry,” he begged. “Please, Cassie, don't cry.”

“I can't help it,” Cassie said, but she was already wiping at the tears, ready to do anything she had to to keep that raw, bleak note out of his voice.

He was running his fingers over her face, remembering the features. Then he smiled and sat down on the top step of the porch, pulling her to sit beside him. He wrapped his hand around the nape of her neck and kissed her so gently she felt her resistance shatter like glass. His hands came to rest at familiar spots on the sides of her breasts; the pattern of his breath was an old, slow song. Cassie rested her forehead against his, tamping down the stirring fear which she had begun to associate even with Alex's softest touch, assuring herself that things would be different now.

“I had two more weeks,” she murmured.

Alex squeezed her waist. “It was harder knowing where you were and not being able to go than not knowing at all.” He kissed her again. “I thought if I came in person I might be able to argue my case.”

“What if I still decide to stay?” Cassie said.

Alex glanced out at the plain. “Then I'll develop a taste for South Dakota.”

Cassie shook her head. There was no point arguing over something that had already been done; something she knew, deep down, she had wanted. Besides, she was hardly the person to complain about a breach of trust, when Connor was just on the other side of the door.

“So,” Alex said, smiling. “What do we do now?”

Cassie smiled back, relieved, more than willing to put off the time for explanations. “I don't know. You're the one who reads all the good scripts. What happens in the movies?”

Alex scuffed his boot against the step and looked down, but he didn't stop rubbing his thumb over the back of her hand, as if to remind himself that Cassie was indeed flesh and blood. “Usually the hero and the heroine ride off into the sunset.”

Cassie bit her lower lip, as if she were considering this. “Then we still have a good seven hours to sit here on the porch,” she said.

Alex's eyes grew dark, lazy. “We could go
inside
,” he suggested.

Cassie knew exactly what he was thinking, and laughed out loud at the thought of Alex walking into the living room, expecting to make love, only to find Cyrus, Dorothea, Will, and Connor staring him down. “I don't think you want to do that,” she said. “It's a little crowded.”

Alex frowned, thinking of the goddamn tabloids that had ripped Cassie apart after she left, linking her with every man from the Shah of Iran to JFK Jr. He told himself she was not living with another guy. She wouldn't have been so relaxed. She wouldn't have kissed him like that. She couldn't have. “You don't live here alone?” he said carefully, keeping the emotion out of his voice. Cassie shook her head.

“It was a nightmare,” he said. “A reservation's a big place. I didn't think I was ever going to find you. When I got here yesterday, no one would tell me where you were. They all looked at me and pretended they didn't speak English, or else they told me it was none of my business. What is
with
these people, anyway?”

Cassie just shook her head. Pine Ridge was probably the only place in the world where her own group of supporters was stronger than Alex Rivers's fan club.

“So I finally bribed some teenager by giving him a fifth of vodka, and he gave me directions here.” Alex looked around at the landscape. “Wherever ‘here' is, exactly.”

“It's the Flying Horses's house,” Cassie said, but that was all she was willing to offer. She slapped her palms on her thighs and affected a bright smile. “So,” she said, walking away from Alex. “What have you been doing since the Academy Awards?”

She turned around for his answer and stumbled against Alex, who was standing several inches too close. “I don't want to talk about me,” he said softly, gripping her shoulders. “I know exactly what I've been doing for the last six months—I was trying very hard to kill myself, the slow, poisonous way: letting my career go to hell and drinking myself into a stupor because I didn't have you around.” His hands dropped to his sides and his voice fell so quiet Cassie had to lean forward. “I don't know what exactly it was that made you go that day,” Alex said, “but I have a good idea. And I want you to know that I'll do anything you want—I'll even sleep in a different bedroom. But God, Cassie, please say you'll come home.” He looked at her, his lashes dark with tears. “You're too much a part of me,” he said. “If you cut yourself free,
pichouette
, then I bleed to death.”

Cassie stared at Alex, feeling the balance of the world shift under her feet. She'd spent three years afraid of the ways Alex reacted to her; now he was afraid of how she would react to him. She had bent over backward to make him happy; now he was offering the same bargain to her: therapy, counseling, even celibacy, because that was what he thought would please her. Figuratively, he was on his knees before her—just as she had literally been countless times in the past.

A beautiful nugget of optimism burst inside her, flowing through her system until it heated the ends of her fingers. She placed her hand against Alex's cheek, thinking of all the times she had pictured this moment: when Alex would begin to keep his promises; when he willingly would start to change their lives; when he would never risk her again.

Cassie brushed away Alex's tears, humbled by the fact that this man, who never cried, was doing so for her. It
was
different, this time. He had seen that she had the power to leave, and because of that, she was now an equal. He had admitted there was something wrong between them. He was depending on her for help again, except this time her involvement would not be as a sacrifice, but as a savior.

She smiled at Alex. “I want to show you what I've been doing since I left,” she said. Turning on her heel, she pushed open the door of the little house, ignoring the questioning glances from Dorothea and Cyrus. She looked at Will, but only because he was holding the baby. His eyes were dark and hooded, his lips drawn into a tight line.

Cassie took a deep breath and scooped Connor from Will's shoulder. She stepped outside and closed the door behind her, bouncing the baby to keep him happy. Then she held Connor out in her arms, an offering. “This is Connor,” she said. “Your son.”

Alex took a step backward. He made no move to touch the baby. “My
what
?”

Cassie pulled Connor close to her chest. “Your son,” she said again, wondering what had gone wrong when everything was beginning to seem picture perfect. “I was pregnant when I left. That last time you—that last time, I realized that I had to keep the baby safe. But I wound up with amnesia, right back where I had started. So I had to run away all over again.” She looked down at the top of Connor's head. “I never would have left because of you, Alex. I only left because of the baby.”

Alex's jaw tightened, and a muscle jumped along his throat. His senses were reeling, his knees could barely support him.
A son? His?
He pictured, fleetingly, his own father, jeering at him when a low cypress branch knocked him from the pirogue into the deep brown mud of the swamp. He remembered that white smile, the bitter racket of his laugh as he held out his hand to pull Alex back into the boat. He remembered hating that he had to grasp his father's hand, that there had been no other way out.

“Don't think about it, Alex,” Cassie gently warned. “You aren't like him. I can prove it.”

Alex looked up just as Cassie plunked the squirming infant into his arms. Reflexively he caught Connor under the bottom and around the shoulders, jiggling him up and down to keep him from making any noise. His fingers gradually closed around the baby's skin, stroking. He could smell detergent from the diaper, and powder, and something unnamed that he could only think of as what
pink
would be, if it had a scent. Connor opened his eyes, silver. Completely startled by the mirror image, Alex choked on the burst of a laugh. He wondered if his father, or his mother, or anyone, had ever held him like this. He wondered, if you did it right from day one, whether it could make all the difference in the world.

 

A
LEX HAD WANTED TO LEAVE RIGHT AWAY FOR
R
APID
C
ITY TO
catch the next plane to Los Angeles, but Cassie had simply told him that was impossible. “I have friends here,” she said, “responsibilities.” She laid her hand on his arm. “If I can't have two more weeks, give me till the morning.” She saw the flash of disappointment in his eyes when she told him she wouldn't be accompanying him back to his motel, planning instead to spend her last night with the Flying Horses. But true to his new word, Alex simply nodded, kissed her goodbye, and promised to meet her the next morning in front of the grade school.

For a few minutes Cassie had stood with Connor on her shoulder, watching Alex's Bronco disappear in a cloud of red Dakota dust. Then she fixed the happiest smile on her face that she could, and pushed open the door to the house.

Cyrus was knitting again, and Dorothea was chopping a ginger root to use in a stew for dinner. Will was nowhere in sight, which surprised her since the house had only one door and she and Alex had been in front of it the entire time. Dorothea looked up as the door whispered shut. “So,” she said, “you go back to the big city with him.”

Cassie tucked Connor into his cradleboard and sank down beside Cyrus on the couch. “I have to,” she said. “It wouldn't be fair to him otherwise.”

Dorothea pointed her paring knife at Cassie. “Seems to me, he hasn't always been fair to you.”

Cassie ignored Dorothea. Tomorrow she would be back in L.A. She would go to her office, first thing, and talk to Custer; then she'd visit Ophelia. She'd discreetly call a hotline or a shelter and ask for the names of reputable therapists in the area. She would have to find someone to babysit for Connor…Here she broke off her thoughts, laughing. Surely
someone
on Alex's staff would be capable of watching a baby for an hour or two.

But the truth was, she didn't know anyone on Alex's staff as well after three years as she had come to know Dorothea and Cyrus in just six months. And Will, well, she would try to make him understand, but she knew how angry he was going to be. She pictured him leading her around a corral on a six-year-old cousin's pony when she was pregnant, sitting beside her on the couch when her water broke and soaked his jeans, making her laugh with stories about giving Clint Eastwood a ticket for speeding down Hollywood Boulevard. Sometimes, when Connor became very crabby just before dinnertime, Will was the only one who could get him to quiet down. Cassie wondered how she was going to get by without Will, and out of nowhere, his words came into her head:
You can't have the best of both worlds.