Firebird (The Flint Hills Novels) (18 page)

Thunder woke him in the night, and he looked over and saw she wasn't there. He found her sitting on the front porch steps, her knees pulled up under her chin and her robe wrapped around her legs.

"What're you doing out here? It's cold," he said from the doorway.

Lightning crackled in the distance, momentarily lighting up the sky, revealing the high, heavy clouds slowly rolling across the southern sky.

"God, we need this rain," she said.

Thunder shook the earth, and a few seconds later Traveler appeared from behind the house and came trotting up the stairs to greet Ethan. He reached down and scratched the animal under his chin. Katie Anne had never taken much of a liking to the dog, and so he never went to her, even if he was hungry or thirsty or worried. He always sat and watched her from a distance. But tonight he left Ethan and went and lay down next to Katie Anne, and she reached out her hand and stroked his back. Ethan knew she was crying. He looked away, back at the sky, at the dramatic struggle of the elements. He knew he should say what he needed to say, but he couldn't find the words. He was a coward, and a first-class asshole.

Ethan turned and went inside; when he reappeared, he was dressed.

"I can't sleep," he said. "I'm gonna take a drive out to my place."

"At this hour?"

"Yeah."

"Ethan?"

"Yeah?"

She stared at him for a long moment. Then she shook her head. "Nothing."

"Go in the house. It's cold."

As he drove away with Traveler in the back of the truck, he could see her standing on the porch with the wind whipping her hair.

Ethan spread his sleeping bag on the hard wooden floor of his new house and Traveler lay down beside him. He slept late, long after sunrise, and was awakened by one of the construction workers. He rolled up the bag and drove over to the old Reilly house and sat on the porch in the cold March wind waiting for Annette.

"Mornin', ma'am," he said as she got out of the car and walked toward him, violin case in one hand and a thermos in the other. She wore an old sheepskin jacket he had found at the back of his closet and given her. It was stained and dirty but she said she didn't mind. He loved seeing her in it. It made her belong to him.

"You haven't shaved," she said as she stood over him.

"Nope," he said. "Spent the night at my new house."

"You slept there?"

"Yeah."

He rose and stood close to her, then reached for her hand and pressed the open palm to his lips. A wave of desire passed through her and she pulled her hand away.

"Come on in. You look like you could use some coffee."

They sat at the kitchen table and she unscrewed the thermos and poured a cup of steaming coffee for him.

"You've never seen the house I'm building, have you?"

She smiled. "I've sneaked a look from time to time."

"What do you think of it?"

"It's big. It's not finished. What can I say?" she teased.

He looked down at the placid surface of the coffee, feeling the blood pounding through his veins.

"Why?" she asked softly. "Is it important what I think?"

Thunder rolled in the distance and Ethan looked out the window to see dark, heavy clouds scudding swiftly through the sky, covering the sun.

"We sure need some rain," he said, struggling to keep the emotion from his voice.

"Ethan, what's wrong?"

"I've done more soul searchin' these past few months than I've ever done in my life."

She reached for his hand and drew it to her face and kissed it. The feel of his skin against her cheek made her ache. She felt drugged.

Ethan withdrew his hand and reached to unbutton her blouse.

"Ethan," she murmured, her eyes half-shut. "Ethan, I can't stop you."

He stood and came around the table to her. He lifted her to her feet, and in a flurry of movement, he undressed her. As he fumbled with his shirt, he was swallowed up by a wave of outrage toward every person and everything that had kept him away from her, and he tore at his clothing with the urgency of a prisoner hacking at his chains. When he was finally free, he laid her back on the table, gathering her tightly in his arms, and it seemed that she was drawing him in with her whole body. All of a sudden he felt her wince and grab the table.

"I'm sorry," he whispered as he pulled back. "God, I'm sorry." He looked down at her soft white skin against the dark wood. "I didn't want it to happen like this."

She kissed the top of his head. His hair was damp and cool against her lips.

"Is this..." She paused. Her voice was a throaty whisper. "Is this all we'll ever have?"

He lifted his eyes to meet hers.

"Do you want more?" he asked, and he began to move again, very gently.

Her face became like a child's, full of tenderness and vulnerability, and in those terrible moments Ethan felt bound to her like to no other thing on the face of the earth.

It came upon her without warning and Ethan felt himself go with her. She cried out, and from his chest burst deep savage cries he didn't recognize as his own.

* * *

A cold rain had begun to fall so lightly that it landed with all the stillness of snow. Ethan and Annette, wrapped in their coats, lay together on the floor in front of the dark fireplace. The air was cold and Annette burrowed into Ethan's arms.

"What are you going to do with this house?" she asked.

"Nothing."

"You're not going to tear it down?"

"I wasn't planning on it."

"Good." She nestled closer and said, "I see this land so differently now. You made me see it differently. And after today..." She hesitated.

"What?" he urged gently.

"After today, I won't be able to look out a window or drive down a road without thinking of you. It's as if you're in the air I breathe." She added in a low voice, "That's why I was hoping to get away. Before this happened."

Ethan was quiet for a long time, but he held her tightly.

"It can't happen again," she said. "Not ever." She shook him lightly. "Promise me it won't happen again."

"I can't promise you that."

"You'll break my heart."

"Annette," he began. His voice was tight in his throat. "Annette, could you live here? With me?"

"Could I live here with you?"

"That's what I'm asking. Do you think you'd be happy?"

"It can't happen."

"And if things were different?"

"What are you saying?"

"If things were different," he repeated.

"You're engaged. To a woman who holds your dreams in the palm of her hand."

"You've blown a hole in my dreams. They don't mean a damn to me anymore."

"That's nonsense."

"I can't marry Katie Anne."

"It's too late."

"So I guess you're trying to say no."

Annette turned her face away from him and stared out the window. Fat raindrops hung on the glass panes.

"To love a man again, and to have that love returned... that was something I didn't dare hope for. To think that you might love me the way I love you... it's too good to be true."

"Are you saying you love me?"

"I thought that's what I was saying."

"Is it?"

"I can say it simply, if you want."

"That'd be nice."

"I love you, Ethan Brown."

"That's all I needed to hear," he whispered.

"I told you, I get anxious when good things happen. I'm afraid they'll be taken away."

"Nothing bad is going to happen. I won't let it. When I look at you, I have this overwhelming desire to protect you. And at the same time I want to ravage you."

"I rather like that idea."

"Then let me. Let me take care of you. You and Eliana."

"Do you mean it?"

"With all my heart."

She rose on her elbow and gazed into his eyes. "Then I'm yours," she said quietly. "Heart and soul."

"Just give me some time to work things out," he said.

"I want you again," she whispered.

He kissed her deeply, and said, "I think we could use a little more furniture in this place."

"Like a bed?" she murmured.

* * *

He got into the office around ten. Bonnie eyed his wrinkled shirt and day-old beard, but he sent her out on some business and got away at noon without having to answer any questions. He plucked up the courage to go back to the guest ranch and face Katie Anne, but her Wrangler was gone, and he fed Traveler and shaved and changed his shirt and hurried out again on a wave of relief.

He had to drive up to Emporia to get the bed. He had called around and located a store that could get him what he wanted that very day, and with the help of the warehouse man he loaded it onto his truck and drove the back roads through the hills to the Reilly house, hoping he wouldn't pass anyone he knew along the way. Burning through the back roads with a mattress in his truck. Like some shrivel-hearted coward. Suddenly he was angry with himself for his cowardliness these past years. Too cowardly to stake out room for how he felt. He shouldn't have let Paula take their boy away. He shouldn't have allowed Katie Anne to stake a claim to him. He shouldn't have let his daddy die without taking his wasted body in his arms and telling him he'd been a good father. He'd been too afraid of what he might feel.

He promised himself it wouldn't happen again.

He managed to heft the big mattress and box springs through the door by himself, and after he'd set up the bed in the living room he called Annette and told her what he'd done.

"Can you meet me here tonight?"

"I can't leave Eliana."

"Just for a few hours."

She hesitated. "I'll try. Maybe I can get Nell to come over. But I can't stay the night."

"You stay as long as you feel comfortable."

He drove back to his office. It was after five and Bonnie was gone. Katie Anne still hadn't called, and he didn't call her.

* * *

The last light was just fading from the sky, and he didn't see Annette's Buick parked around the side of the house until he was driving up the dirt road. His heart had begun pounding away in his chest as soon as he left the office. He couldn't remember the last time a woman had had this effect on him.

Annette smiled at him from the bed when he opened the door; she was huddled with her back to the cold wall, wrapped in her coat and his sleeping bag with a book on her knees. She'd brought candles and set them around the room, on the table and the mantelpiece, and their light softened the harshness of the bare house. He sat down on a chair and removed his boots, and he told her he was sorry he'd forgotten the sheets and blankets. But there was the sleeping bag, and her coat, and his arms. As he stretched out beside her, he found the book of Yeats' poetry she'd been reading.

"Recite it to me again," she whispered, finding her place in his arms. "The one you recited to me that day I met you. The one about being old and gray..."

"And full of sleep / And nodding by the fire..."

"Yes. That one."

"Take down this book / And slowly read, and dream of the soft look / Your eyes had once..."

He had to stop, to kiss her.

"Is this really going to happen?" she whispered.

He nodded. "Yes, pretty lady. It's going to happen."

"Good," she said. "So it's not a dream."

"I think I knew from the moment you left my office with that book of poetry in your hands, I knew the truth, and it was a hard truth to swallow."

"What truth?"

"That you were the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with."

For a long while they looked at each other in silence. The night was black around them, and it peered through the bare windows at the two figures in heavy winter coats lying together on an unclothed bed, surrounded by a few candles with flames fluttering in the drafts of cold air. They seemed vulnerable and fragile in the way that humans are to darkness, as if the night had the power to reach in with its fingers and pluck them apart. But there was nothing fragile about their love; it was cast for eternity.

This time he made gentle love to her, and she responded so quietly that the night, with all its ears, couldn't hear them.

Chapter 19