A Damaged Trust (7 page)

“Will you ever let that unfortunate incident rest?” she asked despairingly. “Enough already! I repent sincerely of all former rudeness, real or imagined, that I might have possibly—”

“Imagined!” he exclaimed. “Now, that’s going far enough—why, you know fully well that you…”

Talking thus, in a light, teasing, and surprisingly friendly manner, they passed the time it took to drive to the shopping plaza in a very pleasant way. Then Carrie gazed about her with a deep appreciation as Gabe parked the car. The shops were positioned around a large parking area, with a round fountain and several trees in the middle. The buildings were of a dark brown wood shingle motif. The architectural design was starkly simple, making one imagine the rough style of the old West, but there the similarity ended, for the angle and the style of the buildings were wholly modern. She looked entranced.

“Why,” she exclaimed, getting out of the Mercedes, “this is really marvelous! The buildings are just right for the desert background and the mountains on the horizon. Even as a colour scheme they match! Just look at the reds in the mountain and the tans—the perfect shade!” She whirled to face Gabe, who had left the car and moved up beside her. “Who is the architect?”

“Roderick Boyer,” he told her as he too looked around. “The man does have a genius for making the building blend well with the environment. It’s just a shame that we had to put in an asphalt parking lot! But you see, by making the asphalt the centre and putting the buildings around, the artistic design of the buildings and the land is intact when viewed from outside the centre. Of course, it also shortens walking distance from the car to the store.” He took her hand. “Come on, I’ll show you around.”

She followed him around the buildings and through a few of the stores to get an idea of the interior. The floors were of a highly polished, glossy dark wood surface and the walls were rough, unpainted wood. The solid beam rafters lent an air of rusticity to the place. It was all very pleasing on the eye and, she guessed as she looked over the high quality wood, wildly expensive to build.

“You realise that this is going to be extremely popular,” she commented as they emerged from the building.

Gabe had one dark and heavy eyebrow cocked. “I like to think so. It’s been a major production just to get the place built.” The next question was casual. “How do you like it?”

Carrie shook her head, intent on surveying the area, one hand shading her eyes from the bright sun. “I don’t really ’like’
it. ’
Like’ isn’t really the word for it. It’s such a lukewarm word, you can
like
just about anything in the world! The line and the position of the buildings—it’s all very pleasing to me. They’re all so artistically arranged. The whole scene is quite a composition and it all has a deep sense of continuity.” She pointed to her left. “The angles of the tops of the buildings over there, the jutting edge of the corner—following it up will lead the eye to the funny cliff in the background, that will in turn lead the eye over to the right roof, that will in turn lead one to look at the horizon line of that same mountain, and so on and so forth. If you were to change just the angle of that roof, and make it more or less steep, that building wouldn’t fit in with the rest of the landscape. It’s incredible!”

Gabe stood back, leaning one muscular arm against the side of the building as he listened to her talk. His eyes were on Carrie’s expressions as she talked, and not on her subject, and he watched her thin hands gesture expressively as she attempted to describe what she couldn’t put into words. She caught sight of his dark eyes on her and her hands fell to her sides as she became self-conscious.

Embarrassed, she said, “I tend to talk a lot with my hands when I get excited.”

He replied quickly, “And very expressively, too. You communicate well, there’s no need to be ashamed of that.” Straightening up from his lounging position, he turned to look around, squinting into the sun, his head tilted up. The line of his neck was very strong, the column sturdy and yet graceful. “The morning’s just about gone,” he remarked, “and we haven’t really sat down to discuss business. How does a drink sound to you, or better still, some lunch?”

She said gratefully, “It sounds terrific!” All the walking around had made her realise just how empty her stomach was.

He grinned. “I was hoping you’d say that. Come on.” They drove the rest of the way into Grand Junction and he parked in the small lot of a coffee shop that was a great favourite from Carrie’s high school days. The little place served a limited menu, consisting mostly of a variety of sandwiches and soft drinks, but the food was excellently prepared. It was impossible to find a place with better sandwiches.

“Is this all right?” asked Gabe, before switching off the engine. She nodded quickly, smiling at him. He explained as they left the car and walked to the entrance, “I love their Reuben sandwiches! I discovered this place when I would spend all day at the construction site working, and wouldn’t want to take the time to drive home for lunch. Now I’m hooked.”

She laughed. “I know what you mean! Gail and I would come here for lunch when we were in high school and were allowed to leave the school grounds in our senior year. Have you met Gail Bordner yet?”

He thought for a moment. “Does she have dark brown hair, and grey eyes, with an upturned nose?”

She chuckled. “That’s the one, all right! She would always go into the throes of despair over that tilted nose! And I would always secretly think she was the most beautiful girl in my class!”

Running an eye down Carrie’s figure appreciatively as she slid gracefully into a booth, Gabe drawled, “Oh, I wouldn’t go as far as that, surely.” She looked up in puzzlement; she had not seen his glance. He hastened to add, “Although she’s very attractive.”

One corner of her mouth tugged upward. Her voice was wry as she spoke. “I suppose that when you get to know a person, you tend to see that person through your own emotions, and you can’t really see objectively what the person is physically like. To me, Gail is really beautiful. I wouldn’t know how other people see her.”

They gave their orders to the waitress who came to the table, and when she had brought the two cups of coffee, they settled back to talk as they waited for the meal. As Carrie spooned sugar into her cup, she asked curiously, “How much more work has to be done inside the buildings?”

Gabe’s expression changed as she slid into thinking about business. “I have electricians working on the wiring right now, and we need to have phones installed. The plumbing is finished—really, it’s just the final touches. About half the building space is already rented out, and now is the first time that I’ve given any thought about the open spaces. The photographs would be used to advertise both to the businesses I plan to contact in New York, and to the general public about the eventual opening of the shopping centre.”

She interposed with amusement, “Dad doesn’t think you’ll make your August deadline for the opening of the centre.”

Gabe shook his head, chuckling. “I know. He’s told me several times. But I think I’ve got a good chance at it, and August would be a good time for business if I do. Have you decided whether you’d like the job or not? You’d get good publicity yourself, when I take the pictures with me to New York.”

Carrie hesitated, turning her head to stare out the window. He waited patiently, making no attempt to persuade her as she tried to make up her mind. She said, thinking aloud, “It really would be fun at that—and the buildings can’t talk back, like some of my models do!” She sighed. “I don’t know. Would I have pretty much a free hand to do whatever I wanted to do?”

“Of course,” he said instantly. “I did as much with Roderick, and the results were more than satisfying. I can do as much for you.”

Finally, she gave in. ”Oh, all right I succumb! To tell the truth, I’d love the job. How about if I take a roll of black and white pictures and a roll of colour, and then you can have the lot, good and bad? Although, I might add, I never take bad pictures! Oh, wait, I forgot—I don’t have anywhere to develop the pictures here. All my darkroom equipment is in Chicago.”

“No problem. I have a darkroom at my house. You can develop the pictures there.” Gabe airily waved away the dilemma.

“You have a darkroom?” She didn’t know why she was so astonished.

He looked modest. “I like to putter around in it. Photography is a hobby of mine, although I’m nowhere as good as you. You capture something in your photographs, a certain element of power and movement that I could never match.”

“Oh,” she said rather stupidly, at a loss. She continued impulsively, “I’d like to see some of your work, if you wouldn’t mind. Really, I’m very interested.”

He looked pleased at this. “Maybe when you come over to develop the pictures, I’ll show you a few. Which reminds me, when would you like to start?”

She asked hesitantly, “Would tomorrow be too soon?”

“Certainly not. The sooner the better. Do you have any idea how long it might take you?”

She shook her head. “Not really. What I’d like to do is just follow you around as you work, to take pictures of both you and the buildings. Then, if I get an inspiration, I could just wander off and get lost. I would like to get some early shots of the morning or evening, when the sun is near the horizon. That’s the only definite idea that I have right now.”

“Then can I pick you up around eight tomorrow morning? We can see how the day goes, and if you finish shooting early, I’ll bring you back to my house so you can develop the pictures,” he suggested. “And if you need to, you can finish shooting up the next roll on Wednesday.”

She agreed with this arrangement. “All right. But there’s no need for you to pick me up. I can just drive myself just as easily, and leave whenever I’m done. I know where the Carroll’s ranch is, which is where you’re living, and that way you won’t have to leave work before you’re ready just because I’ve finished.” When Gabe made no objection, Carrie for some reason felt disappointed. Which, she told herself, was ridiculous. It was quite illogical and unfounded. Or so she told herself.

The next morning, she was up very early, making sure she had everything she needed in her camera bag before getting ready herself. This time she had enough foresight to put on a pair of serviceable jeans and a light summer top, while neglecting to put up her hair again. She wore little make-up, realizing that as much as she would be tramping around in the heat, she wouldn’t be able to stay fresh. The only thing she bothered with was mascara, leaving her already tanned face to its own natural glow.

Emma fixed her a thermos of lemonade to take along, in case she got thirsty in the middle of the day, for which Carrie was later grateful. She started off around seven, planning to arrive at the site before anyone else. In this she was thwarted, for a dark blue Mercedes was parked along with a van and several cars by one of the buildings where the main office was. She told herself she was disappointed that the lot was not empty, but her reaction to the sight of Gabe’s car contradicted this. She ignored the rush of excitement and the pounding slug of her heartbeats quickening, and quite deliberately put off going into the building where Gabe was. Instead, she retrieved her camera, an expensive but rather older model that had been for years one that she knew like an old friend, familiar and reliable.

After checking to see if she had the film in the camera started properly, she took off to explore the buildings on her own. Soon she was lost in a world of her own as she concentrated on the angle of the buildings and the position of the sun. At one particularly tall building whose roof jutted high and intersected the morning sun’s rays, she stopped. She tried several positions and distances, but she couldn’t seem to line up the building to satisfy what her mind had envisaged. She got a glimmer of an idea and sprawled flat on the ground, trying to shoot straight up. She wasn’t close enough. Scrambling up halfway, she scooted a few feet on the ground and plopped down again.

As she focused the camera on the high jutting roof that was a silhouette in the bright sun, a dark figure appeared in her camera’s field and she started. “I hadn’t realised you were here,” it spoke quietly in the tones of Gabe’s deep voice.

Caught by the sight of the man’s outline dominating the hard angles of the building, Carrie cried out, “Don't move!” Gabe, caught by surprise, held very still. Excited, she began to take pictures, rolling to one side to get a different angle of him and to capture his profile. “Look out toward the mountains, straight ahead,” she ordered, preoccupied. Patiently he complied. The lines of his body, powerful enough at a normal angle, were greatly emphasized as she crouched at his feet and stared up. The natural outward jut of his shoulders from trim lean hips was a perfect foil for the contrasting building behind. It was a beauty of a picture.

“Okay,” she said at last, standing up in one quickly graceful movement, her face flushed with pleasure and hair tousled from her exertions. She was beaming from ear to ear. If she didn’t get another good shot that day, it wouldn’t matter to her. She was fairly sure that she had got the best possible combination of man and object already locked into her camera’s film.

Gabe was smiling faintly, indulgently, at the look on her face. “Can I move now?”

“Of course. Oh, Gabe, that was gorgeous!” she enthused, falling into step beside him and tucking her arm into the curve of his. He squeezed gently. “It couldn’t have been better if I’d planned it myself! I even had the right film in the camera—black and white. Perfect for the picture’s composition!”

He chuckled. “You’re making me excited too! I can’t wait until you develop the pictures.” After consulting his watch, he added, “But now it’s time for a coffee break. Do you have any idea what time it is?”

When she shook her head, he told her it was nearing ten o’clock. She was shocked. “You’re kidding! I could have sworn that I got here just half an hour ago.”

She squinted up at the sun. It was beating down in fierce, scorching waves of heat, and she suddenly realised how sweaty and tired she felt. “I have a better idea than coffee,” she offered quickly. “Emma put some lemonade in a thermos for us, with lots of ice. Let me go and get it.”