Woman in Black (62 page)

Exactly fourteen hours
and twenty-seven minutes later, Abigail was on an Air Iceland flight to Reykjavik awaiting takeoff. Earlier in the day, she'd seen her daughter off to the airport, and now here she sat, buckled into her seat, feeling like a teenager herself heading off to parts unknown. And though she still wasn't convinced this was a good idea—in fact, she was pretty sure it was a terrible one—it was too late to back out now. The hatch hadn't been closed yet, so technically she could, but it seemed her heart had the upper hand here. It knew what it wanted, and it wasn't going to rest until it got it … or got broken.

She was dozing off by the time the plane taxied down the runway, thanks to the sleeping pill she'd taken as soon as she'd boarded: her usual routine when flying trans-Atlantic. She slept straight through the flight, only to be roused, eight and some hours later, by the pilot's announcing from the flight deck that the plane was beginning its descent. It was five A.M. in Iceland. She pushed up her window shade to peer groggily out at the eerily lit landscape far below, which at first glance, with its uninterrupted miles of barren gray tundra, looked so much like the ocean over which they'd just flown that she wondered if someone in the control tower was asleep at the wheel. Surely they were meant to touch down on dry land?

An hour later, cruising along the lone highway into Reykjavik in the hired car that had been waiting for her at the airport, Abigail still hadn't shaken the sense of having been plunked down in some alien landscape, one that at a cursory glance didn't seem capable of supporting life, human or otherwise. Reykjavik, by contrast, was like the Emerald City, a modern metropolis rising from the stark terrain surrounding it. Yet she found it, too, strangely deserted. Driving through its nearly empty streets, she recalled having read in the guidebook that she'd flipped through on the plane that Reykjavik was far less populated than other cities of equal size, but even taking that and the early hour into account, it seemed strange not to see more people about.

Running through the center of the city was a river. She was astonished to see a man fishing off a bridge. “Is it safe?” she asked, pointing him out to the limo driver as they drove slowly past.

“Safe? Ah,” he said, catching her meaning. “Yes, is safe. Water is clean, so fish is good.” Like most of the people she'd encountered so far, he spoke English—true of Scandinavians in general.

She thought, You'd be taking your life in your hands if you were to eat a fish that came out of the Hudson River anywhere south of the Whitestone Bridge. She smiled to herself. Maybe it was a good sign. Maybe coming here hadn't been such a bad idea after all.

Minutes later, they were pulling up in front of the hotel, a modern structure that looked to be built almost entirely of glass. She recognized the lobby, as soon as she stepped through the revolving door, as the one in the postcard Vaughn had sent—all clean lines and sleek blond wood, the front desk a slab of glass the size of an ice floe, supported by a central pillar that made it appear to float in space. She was approaching it when a smiling blond bellhop, so strikingly handsome that in New York or LA he'd have instantly been identified as an aspiring actor, materialized at her side to take charge of her suitcase. “Mr. Meriwhether asked me to escort you to his room,” he informed her in his flawless, accented English.

Abigail was aware of her heart pounding in time with the clacking of their footsteps as they made their way across the glass-floored lobby, which was lit from below, giving it an eerie, lunar glow. What would she find when she got to Vaughns room? More reasons not to have come … or a reason to stay? Had he changed at all in the months since she'd seen him last? Had she?

In the glass elevator, her jet lag fell away with the floors she could see receding below her as it climbed. She felt as clearheaded as if she'd just emerged from a pool after an invigorating swim. It wasn't just that she was on her way to meet Vaughn, it was that she was doing so in this strange, otherworldly city, where the rules of the natural world appeared to have been suspended—summer was neither hot nor cold, it seemed, and morning and night were nearly interchangeable. She felt as though she'd slipped out of her old skin as if from a travel-worn set of clothing, every inch of her alive with sensation, down to the tiny hairs on her arms and neck, quivering like antennae.

The elevator glided to a stop on the eighteenth floor, where the young Robert Redford look-alike guided the way down a corridor before stopping at one of the identical blond-wood doors lining it. He tapped on it, then retreated so quickly that Abigail didn't have a chance to tip him.

A moment later, the door swung open.

“Abby!”

Caught in Vaughn's embrace, Abigail felt as though she were being swept up by a force of nature. She smelled something minty—toothpaste?—and underneath it the earthier scent that was Vaughn alone. When he released her, it was a moment before she could gasp, “That was some hello.”

He grinned. “I'm good at hellos. It's the good-byes that still need work.”

He looked none the worse for his long sea voyage; if anything, he appeared more robust than ever, deeply tanned, his cheeks ruddy from the outdoors. Gone were the protruding bones and hollows that had worried her so when he was ill. The only evidence of his ordeal was the deep lines scoring his face, which only served to make it more appealing somehow. In his vintage Black Sabbath T-shirt and faded jeans, she could see that his body had filled out as well. He was solid muscle, his jeans snug in all the right places.

It was an effort to tear her gaze away. “Nice digs,” she commented, glancing around the room, which was painted in cool blues and grays and furnished in Scandinavian modern.

“Believe me, I'm used to a lot more rugged accommodations than this,” he said. “It just so happens that the guy who's directing this film is friends with the manager of the hotel. We got the family rate.”

“Lucky you.” She brought her gaze back to him, drinking in the sight of him: his eyes, blue as the thermal springs depicted in the framed photo on the wall at his back; his hair, fully grown in now, that was a dozen different shades of blond; the faint scar that ran like a seam down one cheek, which always made her think of a package to be unwrapped, like the queerly marked brown-paper parcels that would show up in her mailbox from time to time, smelling vaguely of foreign lands and intrigue.

He gestured toward the small table by the window, which was set for two. “I figured you'd be hungry, so I ordered in. I hope you like smoked fish because that's pretty much what you get for breakfast, lunch, and dinner around here.”

“That was thoughtful of you.” She sank gratefully into the chair he'd pulled out for her. She hadn't eaten since the day before, and she was starving. She broke off a piece of roll and nibbled on it while he poured the coffee.

The miniaturized view of the city spread out below made her think of an architectural model—it was almost too perfect to be real. Its buildings, a mixture of old and new, were spotlessly maintained, and there didn't appear to be a speck of dirt anywhere. Even the snowcapped mountains in the distance, which looked almost close enough to touch, were as pristine as if scoured.

“Pretty amazing, isn't it?” Vaughn said, following her gaze.

“It's not what I expected,” she told him. “I was imagining something a lot less cosmopolitan.”

“Another day and you'll feel right at home,” he predicted. “For one thing, almost everyone here speaks English.”

“So I've noticed.”

“The only thing I don't get is how anyone could be content to live here year-round. In summer, the sun never really sets, and it's dark all winter long. I've been here over a week, and I still haven't gotten used to it.” Using his fork, he helped himself to a piece of herring from the platter of smoked fish and cheeses at the center of the table. “But I'm only here for a few more days. We set sail again on Tuesday.” Their boat had needed some repairs and was currently in dry dock, he explained. He'd thought he could slip away to New York for a few days, but work on the boat was going more quickly than anticipated. “Damned Scandinavian efficiency,” he said with an easy laugh. “It'll fox you up every time.”

He looked so much in his element, this modern-day nomad whose home was wherever his bag was unpacked, that she felt something akin to despair.
I shouldn't be here. I shouldn't have come
. At the same time, after months of dining out on memories alone, having him in such close proximity made her want to tear his clothes off. And the way he was looking at her, as if it was taking every ounce of his restraint to keep from doing the same, wasn't helping any. Damn him. And damn his sister, too. If Lila hadn't bamboozled her into this, Abigail never would have made the trip.

Her hand trembled as she raised her coffee cup to her lips. “How long will you be out to sea this time?” She kept her tone casual.

“Another two, three weeks, tops,” he said, popping a morsel of herring into his mouth. “Angus is determined to film a whale harvest in the Faroe Islands, and it's not like something you can just order up like an act at Sea World. Also, we ran into some bad weather and lost time due to that as well as the usual technical difficulties—problems with equipment, footage that had to be reshot, that sort of thing. And you wouldn't believe the challenges involved in sticking to a production schedule on an island where the phones are down half the time and there's no Internet.”

“And after that? I suppose you already have another gig lined up.” It was always another gig, another far-flung place. Time with Vaughn was measured in days, hours, moments, not years.

He set his cup down in its saucer with a deliberateness that caused her to tense. “That depends,” he said, his blue eyes fixing on her.

“On what?” she asked.

“You.”

Her heart began to race, sending a surge of blood up into her face. What did he mean? Was he suggesting that she had any say in the matter? That she could command him to heel and he'd obey?

“I'm not sure I know what you're getting at,” she said.

“Oh, I don't know. I was just thinking we could use a real vacation, someplace warm. Tahiti maybe,” he replied casually with a glance out the window at the frigid, blue-gray landscape.

So this was it? His grand declaration of love? She felt absurdly disappointed, though to have hoped for more was foolish. “I have a business to run. Where would I find the time?” She spoke lightly, not knowing how serious he was. Probably it was just a passing fancy, one that would blow over with his next gig. She was glad now that she hadn't told him about her decision to step down as CEO. Better to have him go on thinking they were two of a kind: both so absorbed in their work that they had little time or energy left over for a real relationship. It was easier than getting her heart broken.

A romantic weekend I can recover from, she thought. Longer than that, and I'd be in big trouble.

“I've missed you, Abby.” At the dubious look she gave him, he smiled. “I know what you're thinking. But with you …” He reached for her hand. “Wherever I go, I can't seem to get you out of my mind.”

She held perfectly still, as if a butterfly had landed on her arm and she didn't dare move or even breathe for fear it would fly away. “What are you saying, Vaughn?” she asked.

“That I'm glad you came. I wasn't sure you would. And that I don't want it to be this way forever, the two of us dancing around each other like a pair of mating cranes.” He brought her hand to his mouth and, one by one, kissed each of her knuckles, chipping away at her resistance with each soft press of his lips. “Come away with me, Abby.”

“For how long? A week? Two weeks?” she said, withdrawing her hand. “What about after that?”

“I can't make any promises, but I'm willing to meet you halfway. A man has a lot of time to think when he's out at sea, and I've realized that maybe I've been going about this ass-backward. There's no reason I can't spend more time with you and take fewer gigs instead of its being the other way around.” He rose from his chair and walked over to her, drawing her to her feet. Then he had his arms around her, his face buried in her hair, and she could feel his lips moving against her neck as he murmured, “See how easy it is? A piece of cake. We can do this, Abby.”

For a moment, she allowed herself to be lulled, eyes closed, as she was rocked gently from side to side in his arms. The owl and the pussycat went to sea in a beautiful pea-green boat.…

Then she drew back to look him in the eye. “Prove it.”

“All right, I will. It just so happens the National Geographic channel wanted to fly me to Australia as soon as I finished this gig—some special on the Great Barrier Reef—and I turned them down flat. I told them I needed some time off.”

She eyed him warily, not quite sure what to make of it. “Wow. That's a first. I'm impressed.”

“You should be.” He flashed her his most disarming smile. “Though you have to admit, you're not always so available yourself.”

“That used to be the case, but not anymore.” She told him then about resigning as CEO, emphasizing that it had been a decision that was entirely personal and in no way related to him. She added somewhat sternly, “This doesn't mean I'm free to take off whenever I feel like it. I still have responsibilities. Commitments. People who depend on me.”

At this last, he raised a questioning brow. “Don't tell me you've met someone.”

“You mean another man?” She laughed at the idea. There had never been anyone but Vaughn. Not really. Even with Kent, there had been a part of her that had held back. “No, in that respect, I'm free as a bird.”

“Well, I guess that makes two of us, then.”

“What, you don't have a girl in every port?” she teased.