The Sibylline Oracle (15 page)

Closing her suitcase, she grabbed the handle and walked into the great room. Alex tried to take the suitcase from her but she pushed his hand away.

“Why?” Valeria turned to him defiantly. “Why did you bring me here Alex? I thought there was…well…something between us. Do you care
so little
about me? I came here because of you! But it seems like you’ve gone out of your way to avoid me since we arrived!”

Alex let out a small, nervous laugh. “Avoid you?” He pulled her around. His face was ashen. “Val, I have thought of
nothing but you!
”

She pulled away and turned from him. He sighed miserably. “Val, there isn’t a cab that will come up the hill tonight.
Please
, just go up to the main house. Camille is waiting for you. She’ll help you with whatever you want to do.” He patted her shoulders. “We can talk later.” Alex rested his hands on her arms, but Valeria twisted free and walked out the door.

Following the darkened trail to the main house, she saw Camille walking rapidly toward her. The quivering waves of her hurt became racking sobs. Camille hugged Valeria and then handed her a handkerchief.

“Let’s go up to the house. We can talk there,” Camille said, gently guiding Valeria. As they approached it, Valeria stopped and glanced warily at the house between sobs.

“Don’t worry. It’s just you and me. Everyone else has cleared out. There won’t be other ears and we won’t be interrupted,” Camille soothed. “I’ll put on some tea.”

At the house, Valeria began to relax as she stared out the window into the woods. “I can’t believe I’m so angry over Alex,” she choked. “I mean, really, he has been quite admirable. He can’t help it if I’m not his type.”

Camille did a double take. Her voice lost its soothing nature and jumped up several octaves. “
Not his type!
” She regained her composure. “Valeria, I think you really care about Alex…probably more than care.”

Gulping back a sob, Valeria thought for a moment. “I know I really shouldn’t care this much so soon. I mean, he could be an international criminal for all I know!”

Camille rolled her eyes in pretended irritation. “Now, do you really have so little faith in your decision-making ability?”

“Alright, probably not a criminal.” Valeria thought for a second. Tears welled up again and she spoke in a whisper, afraid to admit it even to herself. “Camille, I’m…I’m…”

“Val, are you alright?”

“Oh, my God! Camille!
I’m
…
I’m in love with Alex!
” With the words out, she suddenly felt a pain in her chest that made breathing near impossible.

Camille patted Valeria’s back. “Breathe!” Once it was clear that Valeria was breathing steadily again, Camille asked softly, “And the problem is?”

“He’s in love with someone else,” Valeria sobbed.

“I thought we straightened out all of that nonsense about Daphne.”

Valeria wiped her soaked face. “It’s not Daphne. I…well, I wasn’t snooping…I was getting the aspirin and I found a love letter that Alex had written. He said that anything other than
her
was a momentary distraction.” Valeria sobbed, “He loves
her
. He will never love me.”

“Hmmm…you found a letter to Cassandra.”

“You knew!” Valeria’s face flamed red with betrayal from her new friend.

“Look, this is really between you and Alex.” Camille rubbed Valeria’s back. “But, Val, I can tell you with absolute certainty that Alex thinks of nothing but
you
.”

“That’s just not true! I mean, he seems to find almost any excuse to do things with anyone else other than me. He brought me here and then left me alone almost the entire time. And the other thing I really have to consider is…well, you know…the obvious.”

“The obvious?”

Tears rolled down Valeria’s face. “I mean…well, when Alex and I were out together, all of these extraordinarily beautiful women were falling all over themselves to talk to him. I could see what they were thinking…what is a guy like him
doing with a girl like her.”

“To address what you call
the obvious
...first of all, anyone who would think that simply doesn’t
see
you! Secondly, I don’t think you see yourself very clearly. And lastly, Alex didn’t choose those other women. He chose you!”

Taking a deep breath, Camille continued, “And as far as Alex not spending time with you, well, there’s a lot on Alex’s plate right this minute. But also, I think he's forcing himself to give you space so that you can decide on your own if you like him. He doesn’t want to scare you off. I think he’s also probably scared.”

“Alex? Scared?” Valeria’s eyes narrowed in disbelief.

“He is going through a lot with you here. He’s trying to manage it. Alex isn’t perfect but I know that if you level with him, you will discover everything you want to know about him and exactly how he feels about you…and
anyone else
you want to ask him about.”

“Camille, what are you suggesting?”

“Tell him that you love him!” Camille insisted.

“
Tell him that I love him?
” Valeria repeated, incredulously. “I couldn’t possibly do that!”

“Why not?”

Reflecting for a moment, Valeria realized she had spent a lifetime learning how to avoid letting people know how she felt. “I...I can’t. I don't want him to see me as some foolish girl...probably just one of the many who are in love with him.”

“Whatever you're thinking...tell him.”

“Why? When all it will do is make him feel sorry for me? I can tell that he likes me. I know that I could be a…a substitute. But why would I set myself up for humiliation when he obviously loves someone else?” Valeria sobbed.

“I know this sounds kind of harsh but, Val, you don’t strike me as a coward.” Camille put her arm around Valeria’s shoulder. “And until you are willing to be straight with your feelings, why would you expect him to be straight with his?”

“I can’t,” Valeria murmured.

“I know that somewhere in you is the courage to put your heart on your sleeve and ask for what you want, instead of only
taking what’s offered.” Camille’s words sunk in like a knife.

“I know you have it in you. Find it! It will set you free.” Camille offered Valeria a wistful smile. “Give him a chance to respond before you decide that it will be a rejection.” Camille winked mischievously. “And then you can also satisfy your curiosity about Alex’s possible criminal activities.”

Valeria shook her head, still desperately unhappy. “I don’t know, Camille. Right now I’m so humiliated and the only thing I want to do is leave.”

“I’ll tell you what. You tell him how you feel, and then
listen
to what he has to say. Once all is said and done, if you
still
insist on leaving, I will drive you into town myself. Okay?” Valeria cringed, but nodded. “But, just some food for thought. Not to guilt you into anything, but Alex has probably not slept since he met you in New York. If you leave, he most certainly will not sleep tonight either.”

Camille led Valeria to the deck. “First of all, what do you want me to tell Alex? You know he’s asking.”

“Please, Camille! Please, don’t tell him anything.”

Camille nodded and then turned Valeria toward the stairs. “Go talk to him. But if you insist on being stubborn and leaving Alex in agony all night, you are welcome to sleep at the main house. We have a room for you here. I don’t recommend it, though. There won't be much privacy, especially for the next few days. Besides, if you sleep here so will Alex.”

Glancing down the hill, Camille urged, “He’s waiting for you. He’s worried that he’s upset you.
Tell him how you feel!
” Then lifting a finger, she added, “One last suggestion. Ask Alex for the full tour of the cottage.”

“The full tour? I don’t understand.” Valeria frowned.

“Alex is quite an artist. Ask him to show you his studio.”

“I don’t know.” Suddenly, Valeria realized that Alex had painted the picture of Cassandra and himself.

“Be the courageous woman I know you to be!” Camille hugged Valeria again and then lifted an eyebrow. “You know, last night after Lars and Alex finished up, Alex came down to the cottage and stayed on the porch until morning.” Valeria looked at Camille, doubtful. “He wanted you to have some fun. But even then, he couldn’t stay away from you.”

Smiling, Camille pointed down the hill. Even through the darkness, Valeria could see Alex’s frame lit by the lights on the trail, looking at her, waiting for her.

Valeria tentatively walked down the path toward Alex. He nervously steadied his hands in his pockets and then hesitantly reached out to hug her. “I’m sorry, beautiful! I never meant to make you feel anything but safe.”

Alex broke from the hug quickly and took her hand. “You might be more comfortable inside,” he said tentatively. She looked away from him and then nodded. He guided her into the cottage and then sat next to her on the sofa in front of the fire. “Camille says we have some things to discuss.” He muttered to himself, “I’d say that was an understatement.”

Sitting with him, holding his hand, and seeing his hurt caused Valeria to love him even more. She had hurt this extraordinary man whose only crime was to love someone else. But Camille had suggested there was more to the story and Valeria needed for the truth to be out in the open.

“Can I ask you some questions?”

Alex nodded as he brushed his finger along her cheek to capture a rogue tear that had escaped her eyes.

“Is Cassandra your symbolon?”

Alex’s eyes narrowed. “That’s not an easy question.”

“I have time.” She crossed her arms and Alex let out a small, nervous laugh.

“Let’s just say yes for the sake of argument.”

“Are you still in love with her?” Valeria held onto her arms, knowing the answer. Why should she expect anything else?

His eyes rimmed with emotion. “With all of my heart.”

“I know I shouldn’t ask…” She already knew the answer and it really didn’t change a thing. But she had to hear his response. “She’s beautiful, isn’t she?”

“Extraordinarily so,” he whispered.

She gulped and took a deep breath. “I saw your love letter…it’s Cassandra, the one in the vision.” Alex’s nod was barely perceptible.

A cry escaped her throat. “Well, I’ve decided I’m going to help you find her.” Valeria swallowed her pain. Alex was in love with someone else and always would be. “What if you never have the chance to be with her?”

His eyes steeled on her as he said, “I’ll
never
give up.” Valeria’s face fell along with her heart. He lifted her chin and spoke softly, “Before I say anymore, Camille tells me that I need to listen to
everything
you have to say.”

Nervously, Valeria glanced away and swallowed. In all of her life, she had never asked anybody for anything. For the first time, she needed something from someone else—something from him. She wondered if she had the courage to say it. Then, realizing that it was only her cowardice that kept her from telling him, she began, “Alex, I wondered if there was any possibility...I mean...let me start over...”

Valeria breathed deeply, again gathering her courage. “Do you think there would ever be any possibility that you could...care about someone as...” Another tear escaped her eye and she rapidly pushed it away.
Coward! Just say it!
“Do you think you could ever care about me?”

The words seemed to open the floodgates as tears streamed down her face. At least she had said it. Alex reached for her face and she forced his hand away—she didn’t want or need pity.

Then, she realized that she hadn’t actually told him
. Just tell him!
“I mean you don’t have to worry about me stalking you or anything,” she said. He let out another small laugh. He knew it wasn’t the time to laugh but he found the paradox quite humorous. He had been so concerned that if she found his gallery, he might need to say those exact words to her.

He nodded to her so that she would continue and she again looked away from him, gathering courage. “I am so embarrassed,” she said. “but...in the course of, well...I guess really only a few days...as ridiculous as it may seem...” She looked into his beautiful blue eyes and was surprised to see the fire there and at that moment the words slipped from her lips on their own volition. “I fell in love with you.”

So many emotions swirled in his eyes. He swallowed hard and then took her hand. “Camille is right. You do need to see my gallery.”

He guided her to an attachment of the cottage. He opened the door and switched on the light. She gasped; there were dozens of paintings and sculptures of bronze, ceramic, and marble.

Stepping toward to the rear of the L-shaped studio, Alex flipped on another light and said, “I don’t usually share this.” His eyes nervously flashed around the room.

Valeria stopped at the first painting. It was the young Cassandra. It was breathtaking and obviously painted with love.

The next work was a marble sculpture. Alex moved back to her side cautiously watching her expression. She thought she was hallucinating and wiped her eyes. It was a sculpture of herself. But, she thought, far more beautiful.

She couldn’t quite take in what she was seeing. Valeria looked at Alex and then back at the sculpture. “Alex, I don’t understand…” She wandered to the next work.

It was a painting of Valeria’s face with her hair pulled into braided wraps and a blue gown from the renaissance era. The work was titled “Isabella, 1574.” Valeria stepped to each piece of his amazing work. They were all with her face but each had a different date and name. Another sculpture read “Jenni, 1903.”

At the back of the studio, there was a bust of Valeria looking toward the heavens with a haunted expression. She stared at it for some time.

“It’s a bronze,” Alex offered.

She imagined the degree of emotion that was behind the work. Tears rimmed her eyes as she said only, “It doesn’t look like a...bronze...”

“I added a metallic patina,” he said, mechanically, while inside he was reeling joyously in this new reality. She was still staring at the bronze when he added, “On this one, I experimented with fast-drying acrylic paints. I think it looks more lifelike,” he said in a hushed tone.

She couldn’t take her eyes off the sculpture because if she did she wasn’t certain she could stop herself from touching him. Her brows pulled down. “That’s how you see me?”

Alex let out an uneasy laugh, and then said, “No.” She turned to him, confused. He brushed his hand along the side of her face. “I could
never
capture your spirit. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

Something inside Valeria stirred, on some deeply hidden, cosmic level. Suddenly the world was no longer like a dull dream with no meaning or purpose. The world was physically transformed to a brighter, deeper, more significant place. All of her senses—the beauty of the room, the rich, musky smell of the
gallery with its wood and canvas and every perfectly placed beam of light and the wonderful scent of Alex—that mix of soap and aftershave, and even the view of him, although she hadn’t yet turned to face him, all became fantastically vivid. She could feel his heart beating fast like hers and even from the distance she could feel the sizzling electricity between them. She felt a deep trembling inside her and swallowed. In this new world she wasn’t certain of the rules. Instead of surrendering to her desires she focused on the art and not on the man...not just yet.

“But the eyes… my eyes aren’t that color.”

“Once they were,” Alex whispered as he became lost in the delicate curve of the edge of her jaw. He had carved it a hundred times and realized that he had never perfectly captured the elegance in the gentle angle.

“They were?”

He nodded.

“It’s…they’re like yours.” Focus on the work, she reminded herself. The eyes on the bronze had a sparkle unlike any paint. “How did you make them that color?”

That curve was completely distracting him and he needed to touch it. He ran his fingers from her ear and over the angle of her jaw and around to the front of her neck. “Well, I…uh, I blended crushed Lapis, Tanzanite, and...Azurite.” He sighed, needing to explore that curve with his mouth.

His touch was distracting her and making it difficult to focus on his lifetime of accomplishment. “Your…your work is...remarkable!” She was immediately overwhelmed with the need to wrap herself around him and press her mouth to his. Instead she stood frozen in the now...the extraordinary moment in time when her life changed forever.

“It’s the subject,” he murmured, moving his finger softly around the dimple at the base of her neck.

Valeria saw a tag at the bottom of the sculpture. It read
“Cassandra, 1186 B.C.”

“Come with me,” he said, taking her hand.

As they walked to the door of the studio, she glanced again at the first painting and suddenly it all made sense. The painting was of the little girl in the vision.

“It was me,” she said suddenly seeing the obvious.

Alex’s face lit as he took her hand and led her to the sofa in front of the fireplace. “I should have put you up at the main house. But I have spent so many years creating this cottage for you that I jumped too soon at the opportunity to share it. Instead, you felt uncomfortable.”

Was she dreaming? Her voice came out in a cry, “You...you built all of this for me? I love this place! It feels…
like home
.” Her insecurity forced her to look away from him for an instant and when she saw that he was pleased she continued, “It feels like
everything
I love is here and I never want to leave.” She looked around the room with new eyes, taking in every detail with a new appreciation.

“The cottage was modeled after a number of homes you had designed. I would go to them, after…” Alex gulped. “Well, after you were gone. I would wait, sometimes generations, to purchase what I could.” He looked up and smiled, but his eyes were melancholy.

“You loved blue hydrangea and bougainvillea.”

“I still do.” She smiled softly.

“I plant bougainvillea every year. As hard as I’ve worked to preserve the vines, it’s just too cool to bring them out now.” Alex pointed to a basket on the table. “That was a wine casket that I converted. Most of the furniture here came from your homes or I had it replicated. Some pieces, like your china, I had to wait almost a century to get. That pattern of Limoges was designed for you.”

Valeria was stunned. “What else?”

“Do you want to know more?” he asked.

“I want to know everything.”

“There’s a lot to know. Not all of it is pleasant.”

“Show me.” She raised her hands out toward him, palms up.

He brushed the side of her face and turned it so that she was looking into his eyes. He took both of her hands in his and the force she had felt with Mani began.

Valeria saw herself as a young girl, similar to Mani’s memory, only from a different angle. She saw the little girl, herself, smiling at Alex. It was a special smile, implying they were secret friends. Valeria saw her own drowned face from Alex’s viewpoint; she heard his sobs and felt her own lifeless body. She saw Alex in a castle. She saw him battling the robed man, Aegemon, many times over. She saw herself in Alex’s arms in numerous memories, his hand, with his triangular tattoo, wrapped around her unconscious or dead body. The only things that changed were the clothes and locations.

Finally, the visions stopped. Valeria felt a rush of intense emotion for Alex and, for the first time, understood why he treated her with such fragility.

She wanted to move her mouth the short distance to his. She wanted to reach over and touch his face. Instead, she clung to his hands like a gift. His touch had a completely new level of emotional intensity to it, as if he now held nothing back. All of the years she had suffered, without love, no longer seemed to matter. For the first time, her heart felt as if it were overflowing, basking in the realization that he loved her.
That he always had!

A small laugh escaped as Valeria reached to brush away the joyful tears that threatened to spill over. “That letter…it was to me,” she whispered in astonishment.

His thumb played across the top of her hands. She could see that there was still a hint of sadness in his eyes, of something left unsaid.

“Alex, was I a true oracle?”

“You are.”

“But, sibyls or oracles have visions. I don’t have visions. And I’m certainly not immortal like you.”

“We don’t really understand it.” Alex drew a breath. These were the questions he wasn’t prepared to confront yet. She would have to know the rest. But tonight, he had almost lost her
again
. Because of his fears, she had been hurt and had wanted to leave him. Distracted, Alex moved his hand to her knee. He did it smoothly and naturally and then felt the heat move through him. He swallowed and pulled his hand back.

Alex needed to stay focused, especially over the next few days. Everything—her life, his life—rode on the precarious balance of his wits. He was inches from her mouth. The mouth he had spent a millennium dreaming of, painting, and carving; the mouth he had touched in stone and bronze and clay. Alex needed to feel the warmth of that beautiful, soft mouth responding to his. He could see the desire in her eyes and he knew that if he started now, they wouldn’t stop.

With extraordinary effort, he forced himself to distance his face from hers. “Beautiful, the next few days are going to be…important. It would be better if we kept things…just…” He let out a deep sigh and then looked into her eyes. Valeria could see the fire again. Alex’s voice trembled with passion. “I could get lost in this.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “But I need to stay focused.”