Dashing Through the Snow (5 page)

Lily started the car and he realized her
attention wasn’t even focused on him. He looked behind him to where
her gaze was directed and watched as a dumpy little man in an
expensive suite walked to a Mercedes. He realized her target had
arrived. It wasn’t until both cars had pulled out of the lot that
he woke up from his stupor.

“Shit!” he muttered with disgust and rushed
towards his car. “What the hell am I doing just standing here like
a frigging idiot?” He searched his pocket for his keys, swearing
when they slipped from his fingers and fell to the ground. “Fuck!”
After picking them up and hurriedly unlocking the door, he jumped
into his car and peeled out of the lot, hoping that he was in time
to catch up with them. He’d promised her parents he wouldn’t let
her get hurt.

“The little pain in the ass,” he said aloud
as he drove and searched the streets frantically for the eyesore
Lily was driving. There was no sign of either car. He screeched
through a yellow light that was rapidly turning red and then had to
brake for a jaywalker who was crossing in the middle of the street.
“Hey!” he yelled out the window. “I don’t see any bumpers on your
ass, pal!” For the second time in an hour, Smith was flipped the
bird.

***

Lily took her cue from her target and drove
just a bit over the speed limit. Staying at least two car lengths
behind, she watched carefully as the Mercedes’ right turn signal
began to flicker. She pulled up to the corner, stopped, counted to
twenty and then made the turn. She looked at her surroundings. He’d
lead her to a large apartment complex on the edge of town.

She recognized the place. It had five very
ordinary brown and beige colored, mid-sized buildings with twelve
floors each. The buildings were all connected with three facing
front and two – one on each end – curving around so that the
complex was three-sided. Each building had its own entrance and
exit. The front of the complex faced a run of the mill parking lot
while the back door of each building opened to an outdoor ground
level pool. The pool, of course, was the center of the social whirl
and in winter, the management’s event coordinator kept things
hopping with well-planned, themed events. It catered mostly to
twenty-somethings from all over the county and was well-known for
its loud parties.

She noticed the Mercedes and pulled into a
slot four spots down from it. “Well, Mr. Benson,” she mumbled as
she concentrated on parking the car straight inside the lines,
“just what could a man your age possibly be doing at the Happy
Hollow Housing Hacienda?”

She sat back in her seat and watched as the
forty-five year old walked jauntily up the sidewalk to the
building. Taking her camera, she zoomed in on him and snapped off
four quick shots. Hoping that the street lights provided sufficient
brightness, she took four more as he bent over to speak into an
intercom after having rung the buzzer.

When he was buzzed in, she got out of her car
and ran over to the building’s entrance. She looked at the list of
names next to the buzzers. There were twelve of them. Sighing, she
began to write them down and then had the idea to take a picture of
them. She peeked in through one of the long panels of glass
surrounding the door to see if Mr. Benson was still in sight. He
was just stepping into the elevator.

She thought about trying to get into the
building, but decided against it, turning to go back to her car.
Once inside, Lily looked at her watch. “Six fifteen. I hope he’s
here to pick her -- if there
is
indeed a her -- up for
dinner and not here for a long stay.” Either way, she was starving,
just a bit chilled and she
still
needed a bathroom break.
She wanted inside -- wherever that might be.

While she waited, she thought about Smith.
She’d known he’d been back in town for a couple of weeks. Hell,
thanks to her mom, she’d known when he was coming, where he was
going to live and the color of his kitchen before he’d even gotten
to town. The one thing she didn’t know was why. Her mother simply
would not tell her. “Whatever the cause, it must have been damn
near catastrophic to get him to leave his beloved Texas,” she
muttered.

She had not been able to believe her eyes
when he had driven up to park next to her. She’d managed to avoid
him since she’d been home, but she knew that had only been through
sheer luck and wily planning on her part, given that their families
were so close. Their mothers had been best friends since they’d met
their first day of college as roommates. They’d become inseparable
and when Smith’s dad had gotten a transfer by his insurance company
to Sheffield-Chatham, everyone had been thrilled, including Lily.
She’d been five and she still remembered the day she’d found out
the news as one of the happiest in her life. The day they’d moved
back to Texas had been one of the saddest. She’d been absolutely
heartbroken.

“But we still had Christmases together,” she
murmured softly as she remembered how much she’d looked forward to
their joint family vacations every year.

He’s so damned hot, she thought. “Not just
hot, but
hawt
,” she said aloud, using the slang she’d heard
her teenage cousins use. Being in such close approximation to him
when he was in her car had almost been her undoing. Heat had filled
her to the brim almost as soon as she’d seen him.

When the door Mr. Benson had gone through
earlier was rudely shoved open so that it bounced back against the
wall, Lily came to strict attention. Out stumbled a statuesque,
red-headed, giggling woman. Dressed in a mink jacket and a short
black dress with stiletto heels, the mystery woman was carrying a
wineglass full of something golden and right behind her was Mr.
Benson. “Obviously the party got started early.” Lily snatched her
camera up and started snapping pictures as quickly as her shutter
would allow her.

The woman slipped on a patch of ice, about to
take a very painful tumble, but Benson quickly put his arm around
her waist. “Now there’s one for the missus,” Lily muttered when the
woman put a gentle hand to his face in gratitude.

“Thank you, babykums,” Lily heard her coo and
grimaced in embarrassment as she watched her kiss him on his
balding head.

“Just get in the damned car,” Lily muttered a
few moments later, knowing that while the photos she had were
adequate, she’d need more just to be on the safe side. Of course a
few of them kissing would serve her well, but she found that she
really didn’t want to see that. She knew that photographing them
kissing would make her feel more sordid than she was already
beginning to feel.

The couple held hands as they walked to the
car and Lily went to work with her camera again. She waited for
Benson to start his car and drive to the parking lot’s exit before
she keyed her ignition and followed them.

Chapter Five

Christmas Eve 1986

Lily glanced warily over at Smith. She could
tell something big had happened and whatever it was had made him
unhappy. She didn’t like it when he was unhappy – he either became
really angry where he was just mean or he was really sad and didn’t
talk, but looked like he was trying not to cry.

“
What’s the matter, Smith?” she asked
tentatively.

“
Nothin’.”

“
Uh –huh, yes there is,” Lily insisted as
she fingered her new pink snow suit. She didn’t like it very much
because it felt funny and kind of slippery, but she really loved
the matching boots with their pretty pink flowers and tinkling
silver bells. Her mommy had told her she’d look just like a snow
bunny on the kiddy slopes. Lily smiled at the thought and imagined
herself hopping just like a bunny. That thought was followed by one
where she actually
turned
into a bunny –
a bunny with her black hair and fabulous new boots.

“
Lily!”

Lily looked over at Smith and the frown he
was aiming at her made the happy thought of bunnies disappear right
from her head. She scowled at him. “What?”

“
Why’d you even ask me if you weren’t even
gonna listen?”

“
Listen to what?”

He sighed and Lily watched as his dark blue
eyes squeezed together like he was just getting madder and madder.
She hated when he got mad for nothing and besides she really liked
bunnies. “Just tell me, then,” she demanded with folded arms.

He made a sound like a big gust of wind again
as if she’d just asked him for his dumb ole’ Hot Wheels or
something. “All right, I know you’re just gonna bug me about it
anyway, so I’ll tell you. We gotta move from Texas, and I hate
it!”

“
Why do you gotta?” Lily asked in an awed
whisper. Nothing else could have surprised her more. Smith’s daddy
loved Texas like she loved…well, anything pretty.

“‘
Cause my daddy’s job says we have ta
move to Sheffield-Chatham!”

Lily felt tears fill her eyes and she knew
her face was scrunched up. “Fine! Stay in stupid Texas! You can go
to the moon for all I care ‘cause I don’t wanna live near you
either!” She punched him in the belly and ran to cry in her
mother’s arms.

Smith sat in his car outside Candace
Carstairs’ house. After he’d driven around for more than an hour
looking for Lily, he’d decided his best bet would be to come back
there and confront her at home. She wasn’t there and so what he was
doing now was waiting. “And I’m not even getting paid for this
shit,” he said aloud in disgust.

Parked at the curb, he looked over at the
house. Built in the Federalist tradition, the house was certainly
out of place on a street full of the more modern Ranch style homes.
Smith was so close to the family, he knew the story as well as any
of the cousins. New bride Candace Carstairs had fallen in love with
the house on first sight and they’d scrimped and saved their
salaries, he as a plumber and she as a social worker, until they’d
had enough and when the house had come on the market, they’d bought
it. The house had been in the family since 1966.

It had been built more than a hundred years
after the Federalist period had ended, but one wouldn’t know that
just from looking at it. The house was a two-story red brick with
black shuttered windows arranged symmetrically around a center
doorway -- two on each side. The door had a half-circle window
above it that Candace had always referred to as a fanlight. The
drapes of the big picture window in the parlor were opened and he
could see Lily’s Christmas tree with its colorful lights brightly
blinking on and off. He could see a smaller tree in the living room
through opened drapes. He knew if he were inside the house, he’d be
smelling pine, just as he knew that the wreath hanging on the door
would be fragrant with the scents of evergreen and holly. Lily had
always said that the smells of Christmas were the best things about
the holiday. There were about a half dozen poinsettias on the
window sill in the parlor, outdoor lights blinking in the hedge and
finally, a manger scene sat proudly on the lawn.

“Always did love to go all out,” Smith
muttered with a shake of his head. He sighed as he studied the
house some more. He loved it; something about the lines of it had
called to him even as a child. He remembered playing there with
Lily and her cousins. His childhood in Sheffield-Chatham had given
him some of the best times of his life, but Texas was in his blood.
Lily had never really understood that. Smith sighed.
Lily
.
“Little annoying ball of fluff,” he said. She’d been the bane of
his existence for most of their lives. When they were children, he
was charged with taking care of her and she’d often followed him
around as little sisters were wont to do. “I’ve felt responsible
for the brat since I was two. Thank you, Mom and Aunt Glenda.” Of
course he didn’t remember his and Lily’s first meeting, but the
story had been told so often, he
felt
like he remembered
it.

About thirteen years before, the reason for
her being his own personal nuisance had changed – ever since he’d
realized he’d wanted to get in her pants more than he’d wanted to
get under her skin. “Man, did she turn out nice,” he said softly
and the dismay he’d felt all those years ago when the realization
that she was more than just Lily the pest hit him in the gut could
still be heard in his voice. His attraction to her had by turns
scared and repulsed him because he’d always thought of her as
family, and worse than that, someone he was supposed to protect
from threats, even if that threat was him.

And that was why he’d -- and there was no
other word for it --
fled
her apartment four years ago the
morning after he’d spent the night making love to her and holding
her in his arms. “I ran like a scared rabbit.” He still felt shame
over it, but still felt like he’d made the right decision by
leaving. It was true he should have talked to her first, but he
admitted it, he’d panicked. He’d awakened with her in his arms and
she’d felt so soft and perfect that it had scared him. That coupled
with their background together had sent him on his panicked flight
and he’d run all the way back to Texas. He’d felt like a man on the
lam ever since.

He thought about his first sight of her
yesterday and how just looking at her had made him all taut and
ready to spring. He spit out an exasperated sigh. He was still
attracted. He hadn’t gotten her out of his system during their one
night of explosive sex and the knowledge was killing him. Of course
he’d known that when he’d left her and that was what had kept him
away from the family for so long. Even after four years, he
wouldn’t be in Sheffield-Chatham now if he hadn’t needed to get as
far away from Texas as he could. Smith took his fingers through his
hair as, in self-defense, his mind shied away from the thought of
Texas and his troubles there. He grimaced. “What a fucking
debacle.”