DAY FOUND her bicycle helmet the next morning and wore it on the ride to work. Nick wasn’t there when she reached the office. Day hadn’t seen him since the broomball game; afterward, he’d left with Shep.
In the bathroom, she changed into a navy blue wool pinstriped shirt and trousers and navy spectator pumps. By the time she’d made a cup of coffee and sat down at her desk, it was eight-thirty. Zac and Grace would pick her up in half an hour, then go collect Pip at the airport. She could finish some work before then. Deposits for spring Cataract Canyon raft trips had arrived by mail the previous afternoon.
Hearing a vehicle outside, she glanced through the window. It was Nick’s truck, the only navy blue‘57 Chevy in town.
The bell rang as he opened the front door. Day heard him say, “I’ve applied for a Selway permit five years in a row. There’s no permit in the country that’s harder to get.”
“Well, let’s apply, anyhow. Both of us. Two chances are better than one. Maybe we’ll get it.”
Shep.
Swallowing envy, Day translated their conversation. On many rivers, private trips were regulated, and more people applied for permits to launch than received them. Permits were assigned by lottery. Apparently Shep was as eager as Nick to try the harrowing rapids of Idaho’s Selway River.
Gingerly Day touched her bruised lip. How can I compete with Shep when I’m afraid of white water? Recollections dimmed after so many years, but a part of Day had changed back then, that afternoon in Cataract Canyon. Her father had said, You just get back on the horse, Day. That’s what you do. Day had signed on for the next Cataract Canyon trip. But when she spent the night before the launch date vomiting, even Sam had said, Maybe you should wait a bit.
That was ten years ago. Day was still waiting.
“Whose bike?” asked Shep.
“Day’s.”
Nick looked in the door of the inner office. His hair was mussed, his suntanned skin flushed from the cold, the crevices in his cheeks deep and rugged and sexy. Bright dark eyes regarded her plainly, with no extra emotion, as though he and Day had never been anything but co-workers and business partners. Stepping inside, he tossed his head in the direction of the Colorado. “Guess what’s happening on river left.”
Day tried to think what he could mean. Tried to think at all. So he slept with her again; it doesn’t mean anything.
“Carl Orson,” said Nick. “New office. Why didn’t we know about this?”
As Shep moseyed in, drinking from a plastic bottle of cabbage juice, Day fingered a rubber band on her desk. Carl Orson. Current Adventure Tours, the largest and glossiest river outfit in Moab. Carl was setting up a new office across from Rapid Riggers? “Someone else owned that land.”
“They sold it.” Nick threw himself on the couch, and Shep plopped down in close proximity. Her sunglasses dangled from a tie-dyed cotton knit keeper strap around her neck. It was a common sight, but one that, for the last ten years, had always evoked an unsettling reaction in Day. She shirked it off. Shep and Nick were touching.
I ought to be used to this. Although she knew Nick tried not to flaunt other relationships, occasionally Day ran into him when he was out with someone. In a town the size of Moab, it was inevitable. But it never felt good. If I have to look at that nauseating little boatina another minute… She gathered her blue alligator handbag, which lay beyond the bills. “Maybe I’ll drive over and see what Carl has to say.”
“I already talked to him. He looks forward to doing business together.”
“We’ll get his overflow,” Day interpreted. In other words, when he had too many passengers for his boats, the rival outfitter would subcontract to Rapid Riggers. But that wouldn’t be enough if he took the rest of their business.
Nick said, “Don’t worry. We’ll just keep trading on our image as the oldest river outfit in Moab, Utah.” Shep handed him the bottle of cabbage juice they were sharing, and he drank some of it.
Day shuddered.
Nick saw—and licked his lips. “That hits the spot.”
“That is disgusting.” His swapping spit with Shep. Dog spit.
“It’s very nutritious,” said Shep.
Sharing mouths with Nick? Yes, it was the most nourishing thing in the world. Day could live on nothing else. She stood up, taking her purse. She needed a cigarette, an Almond Joy and a Mountain Dew; then she’d have some perspective. Self-help. “Um. I’m going out. If Zac and Grace show up, tell them I’ll be right back. We’re going to the airport to get Pip.”
Pip. Nick tensed. It’s good for her to go get Pip, he told himself. Maybe she’ll fall in love with Pip. Struck by the profound generosity of the notion—he did want her to be happy; wasn’t that love?—he watched her tall slender body leave the room. He listened to her go out, to her heels on the porch steps.
“You two have known each other a long time.”
Nick started at Shep’s voice. “Yes.” He finished the juice and got up. “I should get to work.” Doing what? The equipment shed was in order, everything from life vests to coolers already inventoried. He’d even built and painted a new sign for the roof peak of the office.
Shep stood, too. “Okay. Will I see you tonight?”
Nick wavered. He was still upset. Still not over Day. It was going to take him a little longer to feel right. “No. But we’ll go to Grace’s tomorrow night for dinner, all right?”
“Great.” She grinned, carefree and young. Shep was twenty-one, and even her experiences in Argentina didn’t make up for the years between them.
What are you doing, Nick? Why are you doing this again?
The reason never changed. He was trying to find someone…else.
In the reception area, Shep hugged him. “Have a good day.”
Day. “You, too.” He kissed her and tried not to think about the owner of the name she’d unconsciously invoked.
WHEN DAY LEFT with her sister and brother-in-law to meet Zac’s brother, Nick took two books and a folder from his office out into the reception area. The books were River Rescue and Advanced First Aid. He would be teaching both courses in the spring, and he’d already prepared the handouts. There wasn’t much else to do, and the side window distracted him. Across the river, construction was under way. Current Adventures would put Rapid Riggers under if he and Day didn’t do something.
Day used to complain about her dad not spending money on the outfit. She wasn’t as bad—at least she admitted they needed new rafts and life vests—but she wouldn’t take risks. They’d been in business together five months, and Nick kept telling himself that when river-running season returned in the spring, everything would be fine. He’d have more to do and wouldn’t feel like a useless figurehead.
He didn’t believe himself.
Day was accustomed to being in charge of Rapid Riggers and to doing things as they’d always been done. It was the first domain where he’d ever known her to fight him so hard.
Nick knew how to win control.
It was no secret to him why she’d shown up to play broomball. Because he was playing. And if he told her it would make him love her more, she would let him do exactly as he wanted with Rapid Riggers. Day would do anything for him.
You love me too much, Day.
She loved him. And didn’t really know him. Didn’t have a clue why he’d gone to the Back of Beyond that night. Didn’t know the other things he’d done. Didn’t know about Kelly.
Her loving him and not knowing him was a bad combination for both of them.
She needed to get over him—they needed to get over each other—and it wasn’t going to happen while they were business partners, while they saw each other every day and while he was so bored out of his mind that all he could think of was sex with her. They needed total separation, and there was only one way to manage that.
He had to find a way to buy her half of the business.
She wouldn’t like the idea at all.
THE RIVER INN was a sprawling white building with a chaos of balconies, verandas and dormers. The Colorado flowed beside it—in high-water years, a little too close for comfort. Nick admired the architecture. The building, where Grace and Day had grown up, had many French doors which were propped open in the summer months. Nick liked the space and the light and, most of all, the ventilation.
He was less comfortable with the memories. Warmth, anger, other emotions, all jumbled together. Sam. Day. As teenagers, they’d messed around on her bed when no one was home. Slowly unwrapping the gift of sex. It had begun in the house, the house of other beginnings. Where the civilization of Nick had begun.
As he parked under the cottonwood trees outside the inn, Shep, in the passenger seat, said, “This place is awesome.”
“Yes.” The screened porch had been glassed in for winter, and the whole house was lit up like Disneyland, colored lights everywhere.
Zac’s Siberian husky, Ninochka, pushed through a dog door in the porch as Nick and Shep got out of the truck. In her cotton dress, Argentinean sweater and hiking boots, Shep bent over to pet her.
Scanning the yard, Nick spotted the Austin-Healey and Grace’s new Toyota 4Runner. The Porsche wasn’t there yet, which troubled Nick. Riding with the Moab ambulance as an EMT, he had responded to many car accidents. All the roads along the river became icy in winter as the canyon walls locked them in unrelieved shade. Highway 128, the river road, the road out to his place, was the worst. Almost every year, someone drove into the Colorado and died. But River Inn Road could be just as bad, and Day drove about the way she played broomball.
Someone should go pick her up.
Shep straightened up from petting the dog. “What’s wrong?”
There was no reason to feel guilty. He was concerned as a friend. “I think maybe we should go get Day. It’s icy tonight.”
Before Shep could answer, headlights cut across the mud and patches of snow in the yard, casting their glow far out onto the ice-clogged river. Nick recognized the low bullet shape of the red 928.
“Looks like she made it,” said Shep.
Beyond the glass on the porch, the kitchen door opened, and Nick saw Zachary and another man come out. Pip. Both silhouettes were wearing dinner jackets. Though Nick owned a suit, one Day had helped him choose for a wedding, he hadn’t thought to wear it.
When Zac opened the porch door, Ninochka trotted toward him, tail wagging. The other figure stepped outside. “Hello.” Greeting Shep, he sounded more British than Zac. “I’m Pip.”
Nick introduced Shep and managed some kind of smile as he shook Pip’s hand. Neither he nor Pip said, Good to see you again, and at the first possible opportunity, Zachary’s brother made a beeline for Day’s car.
Nick followed Shep onto the porch.
The kitchen door opened again, releasing mouthwatering smells, and Grace peered out. “Hi, you guys. Come on in. Oh, there’s Day. Good.”
As Zac and Shep went inside ahead of him, Nick heard Day greet Pip. Tarrying on the porch, he watched the man and woman crossing the yard.
Day wore her white silky down jacket, the coat that always made Nick think she could get lost in the snow. With surprising dexterity, she navigated the slush in the yard in clear vinyl pumps with something glittery all over them and a skirt that probably made walking tricky.
Nick’s breath grew shallow. You make me hard, Day.
Beside her, Pip was saying, “You look beautiful tonight. Have I told you that yet?”
Nick pushed open the door for them.
“Hi,” Day said, smiling. “Thanks.”
The Christmas lights stained her coat and her hair pale pink and green. When he saw her lips, Nick looked away, his blood rushing, his mind fogging.
“Ah, thank you,” said Pip. “Still rowing boats, are you, Nick?”
Nick remembered how much he hated Zachary’s brother. “Actually, in the winter I divide my time between cleaning outhouses and scavenging road kill. What about you?” Zac and Pip had both rowed crew at Eton and Oxford. Neither wanted anyone to forget it.
Pip didn’t answer at once. “Not much, no. Oakhurst keeps me busy.”
“Oh, right. The hotel.” You had to find some way to pay the upkeep on those English manor houses.
An elbow jabbed his ribs. As Day continued innocently into the kitchen, Nick resisted sliding his hand to her delectable rear end.
Pip’s expression was cool after the slur on his family home.
Salvaging civility, Nick said, “After you.”
Inside, the first person Day noticed was Shep, in her cotton dress and hiking boots and barely twenty-one-yearold skin. Grace was at the stove. “Pretty dress, Grace.” It was burgundy crushed velvet with an empire waist and calflength skirt. Politely she added, “You, too, Shep.”
“Oh, thanks. Salvation Army. I hate spending money on clothes.”
Even Grace stared.
Was hating to spend money on clothes part of being Nick’s kind of woman? It seemed to go hand in hand with cabbage juice and organic gardening. Day admitted, “I’m not that evolved.”
Behind her, shutting the door, Nick said, “Day sews.”
“Did you make that?” asked Shep.
The ankle-length clingy jacquard-silk skirt was a blushcoffee color, like her close-fitting blouse. “Yes. Polyester.” Touching the blouse, she waited hopefully to see if Shep would break out in hives at the thought.
No such luck.
Pip offered, “Can I take your coat, Day?”
Shep had already hung up her sweater, Nick saw. Removing his own parka, he watched Pip take Day’s from her. Her chunky gold earrings and the silky sheen of her clothing drew his eyes. He saw himself alone with her, felt her slender white fingers unbuttoning his jeans.
Cool it, Nick.
He hung his coat on the tree beside Day’s. “Need any help, Grace?”
“No, thanks. I’ve got it covered.”
Day opened her purse, a large cloth bag beaded with white seed pearls, and pulled out color brochures in two sizes. “Nick, these came today after you’d gone home.”
Everyone crowded around, and Day handed several brochures to Grace and Zachary because they contained the offer of a package tour—four days on Cataract Canyon with a night before and a night afterward at the River Inn.
Nick unfolded a brochure, but his eyes drifted to Day’s hands, then to her body. He knew what kind of underwear she had on. Stockings. Garters. See-through bra and panties. Through her clear vinyl shoes, he made out the sheer silk of her stockings.
Shep’s Vasque hiking boots and dress blocked the view as she pointed to a picture on the brochure Day held. “That’s Dirty Bob, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” Day sounded impatient. She let Shep take the brochure and backed away to eye Pip and Zachary. “You guys are wearing matching ties.”
“Ah, yes, so glad you noticed,” bantered Pip, straightening his knot. “We’re—what do you say—power dressing.”
“The old school tie,” murmured Zac, still appraising the brochure. “Guaranteed to suffocate. This looks lovely.” He caught Nick’s eyes coming up from another sweep over Day. Zachary’s smile was rueful, and Nick didn’t know whether to be irritated or comforted a moment later when his friend handed him a glass of wine.
FOR DINNER, Grace had prepared lamb chops with nut crust, pasta with sun-dried tomatoes, mushrooms and artichoke hearts, bulgur with vegetables, currants and pine nuts, and River Inn bread. Nick sat between Grace, at one end of the candlelit dining-room table, and Shep. He was across from Pip.
While Grace was in the kitchen getting the dessert, Pip asked, “Nick, where is your family?”
He thought of Kelly. Child Kelly. Kelly who might never have reached womanhood, who could be anywhere, dead or alive. “I don’t have any.”
Cater-corner to him, Day reached toward one of the candlesticks on the table. “These are pretty. Where did you guys get these, Zac?”
As Zachary answered, Nick lifted his wineglass to his mouth and drank.
“Have you always lived in Utah?” Pip asked.
“Yes.”
“Traveled?”
“Yes. So has Shep.” Nick tried to transfer the attention. “She spent last year in Argentina.”
“Now, that’s an unusual destination. What were you doing there?”
While Shep replied, Nick kept his eyes off Day. She looked like a princess. She ought to marry at least an earl.
Nick remembered her legs squeezing him, her body holding the most intimate part of his. Nick…I love you. I love you so much.
He was going mad.
Maybe he could find a minute alone with her tonight to suggest she sell him her half of Rapid Riggers. Better yet, maybe he should mention it in front of Pip. If he was serious about Day, Pip would encourage her.
The wine grew sour in his mouth.
Generosity didn’t feel good anymore.
AFTER DINNER they retired to the living room, where an enormous tree lit with white bulbs scraped the ceiling, and logs blazed in the hearth. Pip filled drink requests, and as Nick took a seat by the window in the path of a reassuring draft, Grace said, “Hey, Day, how about a story?”
The request both pleased and distressed Day. She loved telling stories. Her nature was theatrical; when, on a whim, she’d enrolled in a storytelling seminar at the local university extension that fall, it had been with the notion of broadening her dramatic range. But once she began, she saw that her life had guided her toward this art. And her fire and need were intimately bound with hot afternoons beside the river, with a dark and wounded boy turning into a man. A man whose body disappeared into a silence of concentrated listening whenever a story was told. Back then, it was how he learned, because he could not read. Even now, all her stories were for him.
Any truth so strong couldn’t be hidden. He must know, and his knowing made Day vulnerable. Yet he was here. It was a golden chance to beguile him. And to give to the person she loved best. To tell him a story.
Perched on a striped wing chair, Day consulted the other faces in the room to see how everyone felt about Grace’s suggestion. Nick was staring at the floor, alert. Listening. Waiting.
Seated on the end of the couch nearest him, Shep exclaimed, “Cool! I’d love to hear a story.”
“Me, too.” Zac loosened his tie.
“Do you have a Christmas story, Day?” asked Grace.
From a chair like Day’s beside the hearth, Pip interjected, “I have to say, it fascinates me that Day enjoys storytelling. You know, through the ages, telling stories has been the perennial entertainment of the poor and the illiterate.”
Illiterate. Day sat back, her internal reaction like that of a mother prepared to defend her young. Pip probably thought he was within a group of people who reserved that word for others, who had never known it applied to themselves. She stole a glance at Nick, and his black eyes were fixed on Pip. She could see his mind spinning.
“Which brings up the question,” Pip continued, “of why this fad has emerged. In my opinion, it’s a reversion to the—”
“Pip,” said Zachary in a good-natured deadpan, “shut up and let Day tell her story, will you?”
His brother blushed with charm. “Yes, yes. Of course. I’ll shut up. What story are you going to tell, Day?”
“Well, I don’t have a Christmas story, per se,” she said, “but I do know a story that begins at Christmas.” Fingering her glass of cognac, she saw Nick still watching Pip the way a cat watches a mouse. “Sir Gawain and the Green
Knight?”
Pip’s smile was just polite. “How about one we don’t know?”
In his chair Nick tensed. Beside him Shep said, “I don’t know‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.’ I’d love to hear it.”
Good for you, thought Nick. He loved Day’s stories about knights. In high school, she had always had her nose in medieval romances, from Arthurian legends to supermarket paperbacks. Nick remembered Sir Gawain from another story Day had once shared.
“Anyhow,” Zachary pointed out, “part of the tradition of oral storytelling is repetition.”
“Like on the river,” said Grace. “How many times do we have to hear about the open canoe in Cataract, Nick?”
“Till the women get tired of it.”
The three women pelted him with cocktail napkins. Zachary laughed.
Pip was talking again. “Now, this is fascinating to me. Where does storytelling still emerge? Among river guides.”
Nick’s eyes shot toward the ceiling.
Day could guess what he wanted to say. Sure wish I’d learned to read.
“Under primitive conditions, with no electricity,” Pip went on, “mimicking the conditions of poverty and conditions under which it is difficult to read.”
Oh, shut up, Day thought fiercely. Meeting Nick’s eyes, she silently apologized for Pip.
He winked at her.
“Now, the interesting thing about repetition,” Pip continued, “is that the stories change with different tellers.”
“No kidding,” Shep said. “Think of all the versions of what happened to Jim Antonio in Cataract.”
Day stilled. Jim Antonio in Cataract…She’d been there. It was why she didn’t go down the river. The experience had constrained and altered her forever.
It was a story she did not tell.
“Day?”
Nick’s dark eyes reached out to Day. She found their expression as comforting as the heat from the blazing yule fire. He hadn’t been on the river that afternoon—but he’d stood outside the bathroom when she was throwing up before the next trip, the trip she didn’t take.
“Tell us about the Green Knight,” he said.
At his words, Day seemed to come out of a trance, maybe a bad flashback of that Cataract Canyon trip. Nick watched her collect herself, smoothing her long elegant skirt, repositioning herself. Afraid his face might betray him, he gazed deliberately at the flames in the hearth.
“Well, it was the feast of Christmas,” she told, in her husky alto, “and the knights of the Round Table were gathered for caroling and reveling. It was King Arthur’s custom never to begin a feast-day meal until he had witnessed or heard of some wonder—”
Pip held up a hand, as welcome an interruption as the phone ringing in the middle of sex. “Now, wait. It is worth mentioning that many Arthurian legends begin in this way. And this is what we were saying about repetition—”
Zac got up from the couch and stepped over the coffee table, threatening to silence his brother with his Eton tie.
Go for it, Nick thought. We can lose the body in the river.
Red-faced, Pip crossed his legs, folded his hands. He smiled with embarrassment. “I’m very sorry, Day. I’ll be quiet now.”
All eyes and ears returned to Day.
“As they were seated at the table…” Nick listened as she described the Green Knight—even his horse was green. She pantomimed Sir Gawain’s decapitating the Green Knight and the Green Knight picking up his own head.
“The lips moved, and the severed green head reminded Gawain of his promise to meet him one year hence.”
As Day described Gawain being outfitted for his adventure to meet the Green Knight, Shep moved from the couch to the floor and joined Nick. He barely noticed.
“…Soon Gawain spied a grand moated castle atop a rocky promontory. From the residents of this place, he learned that the Green Chapel was just two miles away, and the lord of the castle, Sir Bercilak, was delighted to have Gawain as his guest. Such a friendship sprung up between Gawain and his host that Bercilak trusted Sir Gawain to remain at home with his wife while the lord went hunting. Playfully he made a bargain—that every evening they should exchange whatever they had won while they were apart…”
Nick leaned forward as Day played the interchange that occurred between Lady Bercilak and Gawain the next morning, when the lady of the castle found him in his bed and tried to seduce him. Lady Bercilak was determined to have Gawain, and Gawain was at his wits’ end to fend her off without hurting her feelings.
Unwillingly Nick flashed on Day in the Red Sled, putting back her head to try to stop her tears. After his rejection.
He felt like shit.
“At last the lady said, ‘I find it hard to believe you are really Sir Gawain, for a knight such as Gawain, who embodies courtliness, would not be in a lady’s presence so long without asking for a kiss.’‘I bow to your command,’ said Gawain, and kissed her, and when the lord came home from hunting that evening, Gawain gave the kiss to him and said, ‘This is what I have won.’ And the lord smiled with delight and asked, ‘And how did you win that?’…”
The story spellbound Nick, reverberated through him. He admired Gawain’s courage and honor. He knew his own lack.
When Day concluded the story, silence held the room. Then Pip stood up and burst into applause. “Well-done, well-done!”
Shep and Grace and Zac joined in the clapping, and Nick smiled at Day from the shadows, where he sat with his back to the wall and his arms resting on his knees. .
Pip said, “Now, you notice that Bercilak did allow Gawain to kiss his wife, which would be considered a fairly liberal attitude even today. But actually the whole idea of courtly love transcended the idea of marriage. In the Middle Ages,” he lectured, “it was acknowledged that marriages frequently occurred for political reasons rather than for love, and what was celebrated was not loyalty to the spouse but to the lover. Lancelot, for instance, on learning he’d been tricked into sleeping with Elaine of Corbenic, believing her to be Guinevere, nearly went mad. He was found wandering naked and starving in the forest, and…”
Nick swallowed, shutting his ears, peering between the translucent curtains framing the window. He tried to make out the glistening water and ice in the river beyond the screened porch. But Shep shifted beside him, grazing his thigh. And Day’s reflection, from far away, shone in the glass.
Yes, he fell far short of the knightly ideal.
A man should go mad for sleeping with one woman when he loved another.
BY MIDNIGHT Shep was yawning, and Nick knew they should go. But Day showed no signs of leaving. Someone should follow her home and make sure she didn’t drive into the river.
Nick tried not to wonder about the reasons for her delayed departure, but by twelve-thirty he had to. Maybe she planned to spend the night with Grace. The next day was Christmas.
Zachary’s brother was staying at the River Inn, too.
Across the living room, Pip stretched his arm over the back of the couch, behind Day. On the rug by the hearth, Nick took a drink of apple cider. He’d switched from alcohol hours before, afraid he was spending too much time gazing at Day. And knowing he’d have to drive later.
When he caught Shep’s eye, she covered a small yawn with her hand.
He got to his feet. “We’re going to take off.”
Day remained seated, and after good-nights, she was still talking with Pip and Grace while Zac got up to see Nick and Shep to the door.
As he and Shep left the living room, Nick’s head brushed something. The culprit was a bough of mistletoe hanging from the door arch.
Mistletoe.
Wishing he hadn’t seen it, Nick trailed Shep into the foyer. And hoped Day wouldn’t kiss Pip the way she kissed him.
DAY WAS WRETCHED. Listening to Pip’s voice and scrutinizing his green eyes and fair hair and the face that was just a little like his brother’s, she found him handsome.
It didn’t help.
She wanted Nick, who had said, I don’t love you the way you want me to. And, I’m never going to marry you.
Pip said, “You know, Day, I was terribly rude earlier. I enjoyed your story so much. I talk a lot. I’m sorry.”
The apology was obviously heartfelt, a true confession of weakness. This was a man with the propensity to change, to improve himself for someone else. The kind of man she should love.
“You know, if you ever came to England, we could go to Cornwall, visit Tintagel and Glastonbury,” suggested Pip. “I think you’d enjoy it.” He paused. “I know I would.”
Glastonbury. Tintagel. The land of King Arthur and his knights. She could visit those places, visit a charming man who lived in a house that was practically a castle. Maybe this is it. Maybe I’m meant to fall in love with Pip.
Imagining Glastonbury, she actually felt a little bit in love.
He touched her face.
Day shied internally but did not retreat. They’d kissed last summer.
“I was going to hue you under the mistletoe, but I think it’s more comfortable here.” When she didn’t object, Pip closed in and kissed her.
Day tried to kiss him back, but he wasn’t Nick. In comparison to the five-course French meal and chocolate triple-layer something wonderful that was Nick, Zachary’s brother was stale bread crust. As Pip’s tongue slipped into her mouth, she pulled away.
“Yes. Just tired.” Cautiously Day met his eyes. “I think I should go home.”
Silent communication passed between them, and Pip took it the way she hoped he would, that she just wasn’t ready. It was true.
They stood up together.
“Let me get your coat and see you out. Are you all right to drive? Will you call me when you get home? I’ll wait by the phone so it won’t disturb Zachary and Grace.”
Considerate. “Thank you. I will call.”
She saw no reason to protest when he put his arm around her to guide her through the house to the kitchen, where her coat hung. Or later, when he kissed her again beside the car.
Just believe, Day. Believe you can love him.
She repeated it like a mantra all the way home, blotting out pictures of Nick making love to Shep.
NICK KNEW Shep expected him to go inside, to stay. But when he slowed his truck outside her house and shut off the engine, a fragment of a story lingered in his mind. Not Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
It was what Pip had said. Lancelot and Guinevere. Nick knew Lancelot from Day’s other stories. The queen was everything to him. He ran from their love, but love always brought him back. He forsook all others.
“I’m not going to stay.” The same thing he’d told Day on the solstice.
How would Shep react? They’d been seeing each other five months.
She touched his hand and he flinched. Then looked at her guiltily.
She’d noticed nothing amiss. “Nick, I’ve always believed in that saying that, if you love something, you should set it free. If it comes back, it was yours forever. If it doesn’t, it never was.
“I’m going to Park City tomorrow to see my folks. I know you don’t want to come, so…” Her eyes raised a question.
“New Year’s Eve. We’ll go to Grace and Zac’s party.”
“Okay.” She stretched over the bench seat and kissed his mouth. “I love you, Nick. Take all the space you need.”
He always did.
It never made him free.
IN REGARD TO the circumstances of her coming to them, Rory’s parents had done one thing right. They had kept her clothes. This is what you were wearing that day.
Filthy threadbare corduroys and a boy’s striped polyester T-shirt.
Tonight, on Christmas Eve, Rory did not ask to see them. It would have upset her mother. But she knew where they were kept, and while her parents admired the tree the three of them had just trimmed at the far end of the house, Rory went to their bedroom and slid open their closet and worked the combination on the fire safe. The clothes were there, like an unforgiven sin.
She slipped them from the plastic Wal-Mart bag in which they’d been carefully wrapped. The pants were faded green—frayed hems, holes from seam to seam in both knees. The shirt was stained, the neck unraveling.
Through the corridors of the historic adobe ranch house, she heard carols playing. Andy Williams. The familiar record, one they played every year, invited her to forget the clothes, forget the child, forget the place from which she’d come.
But Rory could not forget, and she knew the haunting recollections would be with her in her sleep and at the dawn.