Walk in Beauty (11 page)

A sudden gust of wind swept upward, cool and invigorating. Luke whooped, standing up to feel it on his sweaty body. Behind him, he heard Jessie make the same kind of noise and he looked back.

She stood on a precarious outcropping, her toes curled around a rock. The wind blew so hard, her hair whipped out behind her in a nearly straight line.

“Jessie!” he shouted in warning, but the wind took his words. And as he watched, she suddenly reached down and tugged her blouse over her head and lifted it up in the wind like a flag, closing her eyes to the sun and wind, as if drinking them in. She hung on the ledge in a pair of jean shorts and a scrap of lace. He’d been struck with a sense of her power in that instant, as if the wind and the crashing sea were responding to her, this wildly beautiful woman hanging between sky and earth. On the beach below, they made love with untamed abandon, then laughed at themselves afterward with a sort of sheepish joy.

With a growl, Luke pulled the pillow over his head. He was never going to make it through the next day. She had to get out of his life, or get in it. Living on the edge like this would drive him—

To drink. The words crawled into his mind like a black snake, sinuous and unspeakably evil.

His arousal dissipated instantly. Maybe for once the cautious side of Jessie was right. Maybe she understood things he didn’t. Maybe what was between them was so fierce and volatile, it would destroy both of them.

And in the process, it would destroy Giselle.

He couldn’t let that happen. He would let it go, let her go. Better empty peace than the rage and pain. that had once nearly consumed him—and Jessie, too.

I
n her dream, Jessie was painting a scene from the past—she and Luke in a field in Oregon. She filled her brush with greens and dabbed them on the enormous canvas, but they kept slipping off, falling into puddles on the floor. She looked down at the pools of green around her feet and realized she’d been trying to paint the same thing for a long time. In her dream, she frowned and wondered why she kept trying; she shouldn’t be wasting so much time on one painting. There were other subjects she wanted to explore. But almost against her will, she dipped her brush again in the soft green on her palette and tried again.

“Jessie,” came Luke’s voice into her sleep world.

She stirred, realizing with relief that her dream was just that—only a dream. But just as she realized it, the paint on her brush stuck to the canvas. Eagerly she sketched a watercolor blur for the field, feeling jubilant.

“Jessie, it’s time to wake up. We have to get to the meeting.”

She opened her eyes. Luke bent over her, his hand warm on her shoulder. “I made you some coffee,” he said. “It’s right here.”

“Okay. I’m awake.” She blinked hard to make it true. A hint of a smile crossed his mouth, and he rubbed her arm. “Coffee is right here,” he repeated before he left her.

Groggily, she turned and struggled upright. Gray light fell through the window, and she glared at it with annoyance. Was the sun gone forever? The sun shone three hundred days a year in Colorado. Why was she getting three straight days of clouds?

She reached for the coffee, steaming and sweet and pale with milk. Excellent. She sipped it gingerly, hearing Luke and Giselle and Marcia chatter in the kitchen. A scent of food filled the air.

Jessie didn’t want any. She looked at the clock and realized they’d let her sleep until the last possible minute. Grabbing her coffee, she rushed to the bathroom. “I’m going to take a quick shower,” she called.

“Towels are in the cupboard,” Luke answered.

There was no time for washing her hair. She showered and dug through her clothes, wishing for something stark and plain to wear. There was a tailored white blouse in her closet at home that would have suited her mood this morning. Unfortunately, she was stuck with her usuals—a flowing rayon skirt printed with paisleys and a poet’s blouse with full sleeves and a romantic collar.

To compensate for the softness of the clothes, Jessie meticulously applied her makeup—foundation to cover the lines of strain and the dark circles under her eyes, blush to replace the color that had drained away, lipstick to hide her tense mouth. Her hair she pulled into a knot. The well-groomed and severe woman looking back at her from the mirror was not the Jessie Luke had known, was a long way from the instinctive, bohemian girl he’d fallen in love with.

Unfortunately Luke had not changed much at all from the man she’d fallen in love with. His hair gleamed like river water and his face was the perfect advertisement for the outdoor life, not too pretty, not too harsh, undeniably rugged and male. In deference to the meeting, he wore a crisp shirt paired with new jeans—about as dressed up as he ever got. His boots, as ever, were expensive and well-worn; he’d probably been wearing them for five or six years.

He got to his feet when she came into the room and put his coffee cup down on the lamp table. “Ready?”

She nodded. “Giselle, are you sure you’re going to be okay?”

“Mom, she’s my aunt.”

Jessie glanced at Marcia, who gave her an impish smile. “We’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”

Luke gathered the weavings, flung them over his shoulder and settled his hat with the beaded band on his head. “Let’s go.”

“Do you mind if I drive?” Jessie asked.

He shrugged. “No. I just don’t want to be late.”

It was a small thing, but it made Jessie feel more in control to drive. Her car didn’t smell of forests and there was no blue jay feather on the mirror. The CD was Enya and sounded of Ireland, not Van Morrison and lost days with Luke.

He didn’t talk, didn’t smoke, didn’t move. When she asked for directions, he pointed out the turns, but otherwise just sat there. In the small car, his legs seemed too long, his shoulders too broad. He was tall for a Navajo. Once he’d told her he had a Spanish grandmother, a long way back in the family history, and that was where he’d gotten his size.

At the gallery, Luke took her arm impersonally, opening the door for her to go through first. Jessie murmured her thanks in the same matter-of-fact way.

When the secretary led them into the gallery owner’s office, Jessie’s heart sunk. Harlan Reeves sat behind a massive mahogany desk, a fit and elegant man in his early sixties. The silvered hair, the English suit, the discreet red tie, all signaled old money and interests. Not the best candidate for support.

But he stood up and rounded the desk, extending a hand. “Hello. You must be the representatives of the weavers’ project. Come in. Sit down.”

Jessie glanced sideways at Luke to see how he was reacting to the warmth in the man’s tone. His face showed no expression.

“I’m glad you were able to come back today,” Reeves said, sitting not behind the desk, but in another chair in the small grouping by a warmly curtained window that looked toward Cheyenne Mountain. “My granddaughter broke her arm at school yesterday and she needed her grandpa there at the hospital before she’d let them set it.”

Jessie smiled, warmed by the admission. “I hope she’s all right.”

“Oh, she’s fine. Just a broken wrist. It happens.” Spying the weavings, he reached out. “May I?”

Luke passed them over. “Mary Yazzi wove the first.” Reeves nodded. “I recognize her work at twenty paces. She’s a great artist.”

Luke unfolded from his stiffly erect position and leaned forward to point out design features he particularly liked. “These wefts are a unique trademark,” he said. And to Jessie’s surprise, he added, “They were my mother’s invention.”

Reeves peered over his glasses. “Your mother? Not Rose Bernali?”

Luke grinned. “Yeah.”

“Well, I’ll be damned. Do you have any of her work?” Reeves asked urgently, the rug in his lap forgotten. “I have a collector willing to pay almost anything you’d ask for them.”

“Some, I guess,” Luke said with a perplexed frown. “I don’t know how I’d feel about selling them. Who is this guy?”

Reeves leaned forward and pressed a button on his desk. “Janet, bring me the Bernali file, will you please?” He leaned back in his chair and gave Luke an expansive smile. “I’ve been dealing in Indian goods most of my life, and there’s probably not a weaver you could name I won’t recognize. My grandfather started this business in 1902, when the rich were coming here in droves for the sanitariums.” He leaned back and took off his glasses. “Every so often you see something special, a kind of magic or genius no one can ever pinpoint, but everyone agrees it’s there. Your mother was one of them.”

Luke leaned forward. “Who is the collector?”

“A Denver lawyer. Name’s Garcia.” Reeves flipped open the file. “He found the first ones at a flea market in Albuquerque, I believe, about ten years ago, and tracked down a few others through a reservation trader. He came to me four or five years ago, and I’ve helped him locate a couple of others. If I’d known she still had family here, I would have contacted you sooner. Would you be interested in talking with him?”

Luke glanced at Jessie. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I have a daughter now. That’s her only legacy.”

“I understand,” Reeves replied. “Perhaps she’ll inherit the gift.” There was no rancor in his tone, and he took the rugs in his hands again. “Shall we discuss terms, then, for these?”

“Mr. Reeves, you need to understand why we’re here,” Luke said.

Reeves waved a hand. “I know. All the gallery owners know. You want a better price for the weavings or you’ll open your own galleries. Am I correct? I support the project,” he told them. “I’m willing to do what I can to talk to some of the others around, as well, but you may not have much luck. They
will
call your bluff, so I’d advise following through on the leases for galleries of your own by summer.”

“We’re willing to deal with studios who will go along with our requests,” Jessie said.

He smiled at her. “I’m counting on it. Why don’t you leave an invoice with my secretary for these weavings, and I’ll look it over.”

Jessie felt a little nonplussed at the speed of his agreement, and she glanced at Luke for clues as to what should happen next. He seemed at ease as he got to his feet and held out a hand. “Thank you, Mr. Reeves. We appreciate your support.”

“You let me know if you ever change your mind about letting some of your mother’s work go, you hear?”

Luke smiled noncommittally.

Jessie added her thanks and collected her bag. As they turned to go, Reeves cleared his throat. “Let me offer a friendly warning, folks.”

They both turned back.

“Most of the gallery owners are not taking kindly to this. There are some rumors—” he frowned “—that someone may have hired some thugs to harass members of the project.”

Luke touched Jessie’s shoulder, as if in protection. It surprised her. “Thanks,” he said. “We guessed that might be the case.”

“Take care then.”

It was as they stepped into the cold from the gallery that Jessie was seized with a wisp of a vision. One moment, she was thinking of the very real danger she had now placed herself and her daughter in. The next moment, her eyes caught on the deep blue of the mountains below their adornment of gray cloud, and she was lost, seeing against that backdrop a clear, compelling picture of a woman.

She narrowed her eyes, still walking with Luke toward the car, but what she saw was Luke’s mother bent over her loom. She had Luke’s hair, that thick glossy mass, impossibly black and full of light. The face belonged to Marcia and Giselle.

Jessie had seen several pictures of Rose, always looking severely into the camera as if it were an ill-mannered and unfriendly intruder. In those pictures, Jessie always thought of Rose as a mother, then as Giselle’s grandmother—a woman from such a different lifestyle as to be nearly alien.

What she saw against the mountains was Rose as a woman, an artist like Jessie herself, working in the strong Southwestern light of northern Arizona, uncovering a twist in a weft string that had become her trademark.

Absently, Jessie opened the car door, but paused to peer a little longer at the sudden painting in her mind. Half of her saw the brush strokes she would use, saw her hands mixing the oils to form a perfect sienna for the weaver’s skin, a color like the wood of a living pine tree, pale brown with hints of warm red blood below.

Luke’s voice, quiet as the forest she stared at so intently, swirled into the vision. “What do you see?”

Jessie answered without thinking. “A yellow fire and a baby sleeping…”

It was only then she realized she had allowed herself to drift so far. Before she could retreat, however, Luke smiled. “A painting.”

She met his eyes. “Yes.”

“Good,” was all he said before he ducked into the car. Jessie climbed in beside him, smiling to herself. As she settled into her seat, she bumped his arm and he playfully pushed back. “This car is too small for me.”

She looked at him, only inches away in the cold car, and felt an odd thrill. It was
Luke
sitting next to her, her lost, beloved Luke, sober and calm and mature and still so achingly beautiful, he made her dizzy.

Without knowing she would, she leaned forward to kiss him, full on the mouth. She didn’t close her eyes, and Luke didn’t, either. For a full minute, she pressed her mouth to his and met the dark velvet of his eyes. Jessie felt all the scattered pieces of herself whirl together as she drifted there, lost in his eyes. Lightly, gently, their lips moved together.

His face was grave when she pulled away, and he caught her hand. “Jessie, you were right last night.” He swallowed, touching her fingernails with his thumb. “We have to find a way to just be friends. There’s too much between us.”

She turned her face away, appalled and embarrassed that she’d kissed him so boldly, without any invitation on his part at all, and now he was rejecting the overture.

He tugged on her hand. “I’ve worked hard to keep things even in my life, Jessie. It’s not always easy for me to stay on the wagon, you know?” He paused. “I don’t want to lose Giselle the way I lost you.”

“I understand,” Jessie said, meeting his gaze with as much honesty as she could muster. She squeezed his fingers. “I really do.”