Tea and Primroses (18 page)

I couldn’t think what he meant at first, I was so utterly bewitched by the feel of his hands under my hips. “Take what off?” My voice sounded like it was coming from someplace in the distance. I couldn’t take my eyes off the set of his jawline and his mouth and the place on his neck where his pulse flashed.

“Your sweater. Take it off. Now.” He removed his hands from under my hips. “Lift up.” I did, lifting several inches from the floor as he slipped it up, slowly, over my stomach and breasts and finally over my head. He tossed the charred sweater aside. It smelled of burnt wool. He was still perched over me, his hands on either side of my face, so close I could imagine his fingers in my hair. My nipples were hard, stretched against the fabric of my tight T-shirt. I closed my eyes, trying to think of something besides wanting his fingertips to brush against them.

“My God, you’re beautiful.”

I opened my eyes, surprised. “I am?”

“Perfect.”

“Patrick,” I whispered.

“Yeah, Oregon?” His voice was husky. His eyes traveled from my face to my chest and back again. The vein in his forehead bulged against flushed skin.

“I do think of other things besides writing.”

“It that right?” His mouth twitched. He took in a deep breath.

“Sometimes, yeah. Especially when I can’t sleep.”

“Insomnia must be contagious because I’ve had it ever since I met you.” He moved off me and plopped onto the floor. Sitting back on one hand, he raked his hair with the other. “Will you come out with me? I have someplace I want to take you and I can’t think straight when I’m this close to you.”

“Do I get to ride in your truck again?” My voice cracked. I’d wanted it to sound light-hearted but instead I sounded bereft. I shuddered; it was cold in the room without my sweater and I ached with wanting Patrick to reach out and hold me in his arms. I remained on the floor, hugging myself, my hair spread out about me. A tear slipped out of my left eye. I brushed it aside, hoping he hadn’t seen.

“Hey now, what’s the matter?” His voice was gentle.

“I’m cold.” My lips trembled. More of the betraying tears spilled down my cheeks. “And hungry.”

“Stop. Please, don’t cry.” He pulled his sweater up and over his head. “Here, take mine. Wear this until I can get you another sweater. And I’ll take you to get something to eat.” He wore a long sleeve cotton T-shirt the color of spring grass that matched his eyes. He was slender but muscular, his shoulders wide above a tapered waist. What would it feel like to touch his skin under the shirt?

I sat up and slipped his sweater down over my head. It smelled woodsy, mixed with a spicy aftershave. It smelled like Patrick. I wanted to bury my face in it. I sat cross-legged on the floor, trying to get myself together. I’d never felt more like weeping inconsolably than I did at that moment. What was it about this man that made my emotions run so deep and wide and up and down?

“Oregon, you wear yourself out, that’s what these tears are about, right?” His voice was soft and tender and so kind it made me feel worse.

“I don’t know,” I said, tears spilling down my cheeks.

The expression on his face had changed to something between panic and concern. He scooted closer to me and took my hands in his. “Oregon, don’t cry. I shouldn’t have yelled at you. It’s just you scare me.”

“It’s not that.”

“What is it, then?”

I tried to think of an answer but the truth was impossible to explain.
I want you. I’m falling in love with you.
“It’s nothing. You’re right. I’m just tired and hungry.” We locked eyes, a silent agreement between us that we could not say just then what we felt or thought. After a moment, he stood and held out his hand. When I took it, he lifted me to my feet. “Come with me, Oregon. You can’t work all the time.”

He picked up the charred sweater, tossed it into the garbage, and turned the stove off.

I escaped into the bathroom and sat on the closed toilet lid, taking in deep breaths until I felt calmer. The wicked tears were banished for the time being. I ran a brush through my hair and wiped under my eyes, where my makeup had smeared, before reapplying both mascara and blush.

When I went back into the room, he was by the door, wearing his leather jacket and holding my coat. He held it out as I moved toward him. “Wear this and a hat, Oregon. It’s colder than it looks today and we’re going to walk a bit.”

I turned around and he guided my arms into the thick wool coat. “Do you ever tire of telling me what to do?”

“Someone needs to save you from fires and cold and starvation.”

Despite my confusion and emotion, I smiled. I stretched the blue knit hat my mother had made over my head, using the small mirror hanging near the door as I arranged my hair. I reached into the pocket of my jacket and found a lipstick, a soft pink my mother gave to me before I left home, and ran it across my mouth.

When I turned to Patrick, he was perfectly still, his arms limp by his sides, staring at me. “What?” I asked.

He shrugged, his face unreadable. “Nothing.”

I followed him downstairs and allowed him to help me into his truck. It smelled less of gasoline today, or was it just that all I could smell was Patrick? We turned right at the road instead of the left that would have taken us into town. We traveled several miles, winding around a curving country road. We passed a long white fence with several large barns behind it, painted in the traditional red in contrast to nature’s greenery. The cab of the truck warmed; I yanked off my hat. My hair fell about my shoulders and I fluffed it with my fingers.

We passed a white church, complete with a steeple, nestled between crimson trees. After a time, he turned down a narrower road and after a quarter mile or so we came to a red covered-bridge.  He pulled to the side of the road and turned off the truck. “This is one of my favorite spots in the world.”

All around us were the colors of the season, so vivid they seemed a photograph rather than real. I put on my hat again, tugging it over my ears. He helped me out of the truck and put his hand on the small of my back, guiding me toward the bridge. We walked across; inside were couples’ initials carved into the wood. On the other side, as we exited into the sunshine, the road was now dirt and covered almost completely with fallen leaves, a crimson blanket. We trudged along, our breath clouds in the crisp air that smelled of wood-burning fires.

“What do you think, Oregon?”

“Perfect.”

“Isn’t it, though?”

I kicked leaves with the toe of my boot. They flew into the air several feet and then fluttered back to the ground. “Why did you go to New York?”

“I went to see my lawyer. Details of the divorce to work through.” He made a motion with his hands, like shutting curtains.

“Oh.”

“Last night I went back to the house to get some of my things.” He stuffed his hands in the jacket pockets. “She was there. I didn’t expect that. Thought she was at her parents’.”

I held my breath, waiting for what might come next.

“She’d been served earlier that day.”

I didn’t say anything. Ahead, a crimson leaf hovered in the air above our heads, suspended as if on an invisible tightrope before falling to the ground.

I stopped walking and put my hand on his arm to halt him. “Patrick, what happened?”

His hand went to the gashes on his neck. “No one in her life has ever told her no. Until now.”

A hollow feeling came to my chest. I touched the collar of his shirt. “Did she hurt you?”

He covered my hand with his.

“She’s not well.”

“Violent?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“How bad has it been?”

He closed his eyes for a second or two and took in a deep breath, the way one does when recalling something painful. “It’s bad. Nine years of bad.”

“Why did you stay so long?”

He looked up and sideways and then back to me. “I was only twenty years old when I met her.”

“Did you love her?”

“I did. But I’m ashamed to say I didn’t love her enough to marry her. I shouldn’t have. I know that now, obviously. She was like this fragile bird that needed me and I was flattered that she chose me to be her protector, her partner. And I was seduced by her family, her background—not the money—but the idea of being part of this legacy publishing empire. You know, that someone like me could sit at the same table as giants of the literary world—it was intoxicating. I’m not proud of it but it’s true just the same. As far as Sigourney’s behavior goes, I saw things early on that I pushed aside and made excuses for. My only excuse is that I was so young. We both were. She’s grown steadily worse.” Something between guilt and regret flashed across his face. “It was the miscarriages that made it worse, I think. There were four in a row, and with each one she declined further. Depression, paranoia, drastic mood swings, episodes of violence. I never knew what I would come home to on any given day.”

“Isn’t there help for her, though? A doctor?”

“She’s been to a slew of them. None seem to help. They give her medication that either lulls her into an almost comatose state or makes her so agitated she can’t sleep for nights on end.” He paused, and when he continued his voice sounded strangled at the back of his throat. “Leaving felt cruel. I’ve tried to be a good man, like my father was.” He hesitated, as if he wanted to say more but instead pointed ahead. “Come on, let’s keep walking or you’re going to get cold.”

We walked in silence for a few minutes, our feet making crunching sounds through the leaves. Above us geese called out to one another. At a curve in the road, he stopped, his face twisting as if he felt a sudden pain. I stopped as well, my breath slightly labored from keeping up with his long legs. “Are you all right?” I felt the warmth of the brisk exercise and took off my hat. The nape of my neck was damp with perspiration.

“Listen here.” He reached out and took my gloved hand in his bare one. “I talked to my colleague Janie about your work. I trust her to be discreet about where the submission came from. If my father-in-law finds out you’re a friend of mine, I have no doubt he’ll kill any kind of deal.”

“Okay.”

“But she was excited and wants to look at it. She knows I have a good instinct.” He paused and touched my hair. “Constance, your cheeks are pink from the cold.”

“You just called me Constance.”

“No I didn’t.”

I shook my head as if disgusted, smiling. “You’re a liar.”

He smiled back at me. The butterflies came to my stomach again, prancing and fluttering. “Constance Mansfield, aka, Oregon, bestselling author. I like the sound of that.”

“Me too.”

“Butt in seat. That’s your only job from now on. Don’t let anything get in your way.” He turned on his heel, facing the direction we’d just come from. “Time to go home.”

“My home?”

“No, my home.”

We walked in silence back down the blanket of leaves until we arrived at the truck. He drove us over the covered bridge and turned left at a fork in the road. We went another quarter of a mile or so and then took another left into a dirt driveway. After about 100 yards we came to a small dirt parking area, big enough for two cars. The woods were dense; I could only just make out a structure of some kind between the trees.

I followed him down a foot-trodden path, enjoying watching his long legs and backside without fear of being caught. He moved aside spider webs and overhanging branches of sapling trees. Dewdrops glistened on leaves and tall grass, shining as bright as diamonds in the October sun. After a few minutes, we came to a small house, made of wide planks, stained but not painted so the knots and lines of the wood were visible. The front of the house had a covered porch that ran the length of the house, supported by four posts. Above the porch were two square dormer windows, sticking out from the house like eyelashes. Four-paned glass windows were on either side of the front door. The trim around the windows and the front door were painted cranberry red. On the right side of the house was a stone fireplace.

The surrounding yard was not landscaped but was left in its natural state; it was as if the house had been dropped into the middle of the forest, except for a stone walkway running parallel to the porch. Patrick reached in his pocket and drew out a set of keys. “This,” he said, indicating the house and yard with a sweeping gesture of his hand, “was my dad’s.”

We were at the door now. He slipped the key in the lock and turned the knob. He held the door for me as I stepped inside. The room was only slightly warmer than the outside air and decorated sparsely but elegantly in browns and blues, with leather chairs and a fat couch. He smiled, looking sheepish. “I updated the furniture a couple of years ago.” Moving inside, he switched on the lights. “After my dad died.”

“I’m sorry.” I paused, feeling shy suddenly. “About your dad I mean, not the furniture.”

He grinned. “I got it, Oregon.” The fireplace was deep and made of uneven, jagged gray stones. A teepee of kindling over crumpled newspaper waited for a flame. He moved to the fireplace and took a box of long matches from the mantle. “I miss him.” Staring at the matchbox, he stroked the rough surface of the matchbox with his thumb.

“What about your mother?”

He raised his gaze to me, his eyes sharp. “She died when I was two. I don’t remember her.”

“How?”

“She was holding me on her hip walking into the market and slipped on the ice. She hit her head, protecting me from the fall.”

“I’m sorry, Patrick. That’s awful.”

“Thanks. So, yeah, it was just the two of us. He was the greatest man you’d ever hope to meet.” His voice was gruff, dismissive. Young as I was, I understood this was the way of men, uncomfortable talking about their feelings. There was my own father, of course, and his father before him.

There were three photos on the mantle. He picked up the one in the middle and handed it to me. It was a wedding photo; the groom looked like Patrick in the face but was shorter, and the willowy young bride, with light brown hair, wore a soft, flowing white gown. Her face was delicate, almost patrician, with a slender nose, wide mouth, and round eyes. “My mother and father,” he said.