Chapter Three

Dustings

Two shaky cigarettes and half an hour later, Lark, filled with trepidation, leaned on the corral fence a few feet away from a calm mare, who lowered her head and drank from the high-perched trough. Large thigh muscles shifted beneath the mare’s smooth, gray-spotted coat, sheer power and sinewy grace enveloped into one magnificent creature. A beauty with a charcoal-gray-colored mane and tail, she continued to chomp on her feed.

Pam ransacked an old box and gave Lark an old, loose denim shirt, blue jeans, socks, and thick hiking boots she managed to fit into.

“Something wrong?” Aaron asked beside her with a rein draped over his shoulder. He had donned her dad’s black cowboy hat, and with the exception of his light, trimmed goatee, he could have been a younger version of their father.

“Hmm? Oh, nothing. Unless you consider I haven’t been on a horse in about a hundred years…” Her voice trailed off as her mother approached with reins in hand. She led another Appaloosa from a nearby pasture.

Aaron placed a high wooden stool on the ground for Lark to use to mount the mare.

“Well, try to look at it this way. You’re like, what? A hundred pounds lighter, so you’ve got that going for you. Vertically challenged people, this way.” He took her hand as he helped her up. “What’s the old saying about riding a bike?”

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up,” said Lark. “You gave me the nice horse, right?”

Aaron steadied the mare while she swung her right leg over the horse’s back.

“You know, Aaron,” Pam called as she guided his horse into the corral. “When Lark was a little girl before you could talk, she used to call these guys ‘Appley-loothas.’” She grinned. Rosy color lit her cheeks, and aside from the black she wore, her face lightened.

Aaron grinned up at Lark. “Did you?”

Lark glanced away. “I had a lisp until I was ten. There’s no way you’d remember. You weren’t even born. Dad was horrible and made me try to say ‘Appaloosas,’ and it became the brunt of every dinner joke for nine straight years of my life.”

Aaron chuckled. “Well, I do remember how I called you Lard.”

Pam snorted from a few feet away as she slipped the reins over the head of his horse. “Lark got so mad at you when her friends were over, and you would follow her around and torture her.” Pam lifted her face to the sky, closed her eyes, and breathed in deep through her nose. “Mmm, smell that.”

“What?” Aaron crinkled his nose. “The manure?”

Lark laughed, and Pam chided Aaron. “No, wiseass. I mean the grass, and the fresh air, and the soft breeze. Rick’s here right now, as sure as I’m alive. I can feel him. Thank you so much for doing this, Lark. I know he appreciates it. I can’t tell you how much I do.”

“Well, I’m glad my discomfort and sure-to-be-sore ass are appreciated by someone,” Lark quipped.

“Now, you’ll be fine,” Aaron reassured her. He stroked the horse’s neck as it adjusted to her weight. “This here’s Penny. We got her a few years back, and she’ll take real good care of you.” He tapped the horse’s rear flank, and they were off at a toddling, rhythmic walk.

As she passed Aaron, he mounted his horse and fell in line with her.

They went at a snail’s pace through the pasture at first. When Lark was confident Penny liked her enough not to throw her off, she turned to Aaron, who rode beside her. “Look at you. You’re like a young John Wayne or something,” she teased.

He tipped the brim of his hat. “Well, if John Wayne was into politics and had ideas about economic reform, I guess I am.”

“I don’t think he was involved in politics, but you do both have the whole androgynous name thing in common. His real name was Marion, yours is Aaron—”

“Hey now—”

“Hey, what,” she bantered. “It’s payback. How long have you had your goatee?” It would be interesting to see how much of a resemblance he bore to her father beneath it.

He smoothed his fingers over it. “A couple of months. I placed a bet with Niall on who could grow theirs faster, and I won.” He grinned.

“Oh. Can I ask you something?” She glanced at him.

“Sure.”

“It’s about all this. Was there any particular reason Dad wanted us to ride together?”

Aaron leaned forward in his saddle. “I’m not sure, but I think he regretted things and wanted us to have a kind of adventure before he was buried. He never said what it was. He said to me a few weeks ago, ‘Before they bury me, go for a ride with your sister.’ And he made me promise. I don’t know why, but thanks for doing it.”

Lark stroked Penny’s long neck, close to the saddle. “I’m glad to. Charles isn’t into this kind of thing, so it’s a nice change, if not weird to be—” She paused when she caught Aaron’s amused expression. “What?”

He shrugged. “Nothing. You seem at home in the saddle, is all.”

“I do?” She smiled.

He nodded and glanced ahead of him. “Hey, want to trot? We’ll keep it slow.”

Lark clicked her heels twice into Penny’s flanks, and the horse bobbed her neck as she set off on a trot. Lark leaned forward and enjoyed the way the wind played upon her face. A while later, Aaron talked her into a full-on gallop.

As the strong mare eased into a run, the wind whooshed against Lark’s flesh. The horse kicked clumps of dirt and grass, and she flew with the breeze, free.

****

A while later, when they returned to the open corral, Pam stood beside the fences. Aaron helped her dismount Penny.

“Well, how was it?” Pam asked.

Lark approached her, thighs jittery as though she were still on the horse. “Windy.” She turned with Pam toward the house, while Aaron and a ranch hand fed the horses after they removed their saddles and tack.

“Lark,” Pam said as they walked. “I’ve thought about you and Charles. If you want to talk to me about anything, I want you to know, I’m here, honey. I’m not breakable because your dad died; quite the opposite. Also, I’d like to get to know you again.”

Touched by the glint in her mother’s large, brown eyes, Lark stopped and embraced her.

Pam put her chin on Lark’s shoulder. “I want you to know how much I love you, okay? I know it’s been a long time, but you’re still my little girl, and you always will be. Even when you’re an old, wrinkly lady in a nursing home.”

Lark’s eyes stung, and she shut them. “I know, Mom,” she whispered back. She pulled back sooner than she wanted to, opened her eyes, and patted her mother’s shoulder. “Before all this is over and I have to go away to the UK, I promise we’ll have a good, long talk, okay?”

“All right, honey.” Pam wiped the corner of her eyes with her hand.

When she returned to the house, Lark meandered in the library outside her father’s office. She shuttered her fingers across the plump spines of the weathered works she found on the bookshelf and named them off in her mind: Shaw, Ibsen, Hemingway, Shakespeare, Thoreau.

How many times as a child had she been in this room, lying on the large merlot Persian rug in front of the fireplace, surrounded by piles of books and listening to her father on the phone in the next room, comforted by the sound of his deep voice? She longed for those days as a child when she could remain content from the sound of her father’s voice. She envied the ease with which children were satisfied. If only it were so simple as an adult. Lark walked into the office. He’d modernized it; the only remnant from the earlier years was the small, rectangular wooden table. A nice, new, and large cherrywood desk upstaged the bright room. It sat close to the window, with two black leather chairs in front of it. A treadmill and couch bordered the rest of the room, and a flat-screen TV was mounted on one wall.

Lark sat in the chair behind the desk. The soft leather soothed her sore thighs. From the corner of her eye, she spotted an old photograph on the desk. She scooted forward in the chair to retrieve it.

She swore under her breath as she picked it up. Her big hair and straight bangs stared back at her. Aaron had been eight at the time, and his cute, soup-commercial-kid-with-the-basin-bowl-haircut face beamed out at her. Pam’s arm wrapped around his shoulder, and he stood between a teenaged Lark and their father.

“I’d forgotten this,” she whispered, staring at how young and happy they had been. She was surprised at the clear quality of the photograph, taken so long ago. They had all been close. Happy. Her dad appeared to worship the ground her mother walked on.

Yet it was all an act.

A flood of emotions—mainly rage—took her over. After all her hard, diligent work in high school, she’d graduated as valedictorian, then won a scholarship into Berkeley with an informed English composition she’d written about the fruitlessness of supremacist organizations. Her academic scholarships had seen her through four years of college.

Before Berkeley, she’d taken the summer off and, along with her high-school friends, had gone on a parent-chaperoned European excursion she’d saved for. Upon returning a day earlier than planned, she’d driven home from the airport to surprise everyone, but the house stood empty and quiet. She’d gone upstairs to her parents’ bedroom to borrow her mother’s quick-drying nail polish.

The smells, the sounds, the grotesqueness of finding her father with a woman who was not her mother, in the bed he and Pam shared, were imprinted on her mind’s eye forever. She’d flown out of the house, threw up in the yard, and escaped to her car. Her father threw on clothes and came after her, but she had shifted gear into drive by the time he got outside.

Revolted and distraught, she’d called her mom and told her what happened. Her mother further broke her heart by rushing to Rick’s defense.

“It’s okay, Lark,” Pam had said when Lark called her on her cell phone. “I’ve known for some time now. Please come home so we can talk about this.”

Lark had hung up, paid a cash deposit, and checked into a cheap Motel Six for a week before her first semester as an on-campus student at Berkeley. She used a local laundromat to clean her travel clothes, ate instant noodles from boiling water she made in the coffee pot in the small hotel room, and lived on cheap fast food the entire time.

She refused to go back home and was too mortified to tell her friends. This all took place after they’d made a big public-service announcement for Rick’s Man of the Year award. His deceit and infidelity imploded her world. Her family was her one true stronghold, and it had been the last time she’d ever seen him.

A bitter laugh escaped. “I haven’t thought of you for years now. I’ve kind of shoved it all on the back burner and gotten on with my life. Isn’t that sad?” She took her cell phone out of her back pocket and flipped it over in her palm. She frowned and set it on the desk. Emotions had a shelf life, and this late in the game she ought to let bygones be bygones. But certain scars festered and didn’t heal the same.

Her dad made every effort to reach out to her, but she wouldn’t forgive him. He’d sent her a letter of apology and a fat check. She never read what he wrote, but she did cross her name out on the check, put Pam’s on it instead, and sent it back to her mother’s attention without a note. She’d made her own way, right until the end, summa cum laude, and Pam and Aaron had come to visit her a few times throughout college and at graduation.

When she was twenty-five, Ultimately You headhunted her for the position in London before her graduate ceremony. She’d kept in touch with her mother and Aaron, but it was awkward. She’d never been able to understand how Pam could have forgiven him. It seemed as though she didn’t think twice about it. Twenty years of marriage shot to shit, and she lay down and took it. Like it never happened.

Lark stood, folded her arms, and walked over to the window. She couldn’t be near her father’s photo anymore. “I was so devastated, Dad, and she went about her life as usual, not a care in the world. You didn’t deserve her, and I resent the hell out of you for what you did. I love Mom. With all my heart, I do. But I can never respect her for forgiving you so fast.”

A strange, cold sensation flitted through her, as though someone was in the room with her. Lark glanced around, grabbed her cell phone off the desk, and headed upstairs. She dialed Charles’s number on the way. It hit his voice mail on the first ring, so she hung up and called his office number instead. He said he’d put in late hours due to the merger. The line answered on the third ring.

“Ultimately You, Gemma speaking. Oh wait, it’s the States. Charles?”

Lark glowered at the sound of Charles’s young, pretty assistant, who was also London’s biggest tart.

“Is that you, darlin’?”

A coldness shot through Lark’s body at the way Gemma intoned darlin’. She kept quiet and held on to the door frame.

“Hello? Baby, are you there? There must be a delay. I’m glad you landed, though. Call me back when you can, yeah? Okay, bye now.”

The line went dead, and the phone slipped from her hand to the floor. She shut her bedroom door and leaned against it, covering her mouth so she wouldn’t make a sound as she sobbed. She slid to the floor, tucked her knees into her chest, and rested her forehead on her arms. This couldn’t be happening.

“I don’t know why I dream of you,” she whispered aloud to her dream lover. “But I need you tonight. I need you.”

****

Everyone was quiet on the way to the funeral home later that evening. Aaron drove them, and they arrived thirty minutes before the viewing.

The funeral home was nice. Classical music played in the background as they milled around the foyer. It was a closed-casket viewing. A poster-size canvas print of Rick in his twenties sat on a nice easel. In it, he dressed to the cowboy nines in simple jeans and a red plaid shirt as he guided a beautiful, smoke-colored Appaloosa by the reins.

She trudged through the meet-and-greet line. She managed to interact, but every word came out automatic, each gracious, quiet smile fabricated as reality sunk further and further in. After the call to Charles’s office earlier and hearing Gemma’s sultry, insinuating tone which all but screamed affair, she wanted to go back home, close her eyes, and disappear into her dreams.

“Well, the funeral’s tomorrow.” Aaron yawned as he took a seat beside her on the sofa in the foyer.

“Seems weird, doesn’t it?”

He nodded. “Yeah. I mean, Dad never slowed down for anything. When he was alive, he was alive.” He waved a hand. “He lived his life, you know? Well, no matter what, sis, I’m glad you’re here.”

She squeezed his hand, and put aside her own problems. “Me too, Aaron. I’m glad I came back.”

****

Lark drew in a sharp gasp of air through her nose and bolted upright. It was the middle of the night, and she had the distinct feeling of being watched. She reached to switch on her nightstand lamp, but a low Irish voice stopped her.

“Don’t. Keep it dark.”

He stood in front of the window, his gaze riveted on her. The contour of his powerful frame and halo of thick, dark hair etched against the moonlight. She was pretty sure he didn’t have any clothes on, and a thrill of excitement shot through her.

She touched her face and blinked. “This can’t be a dream. I’m awake.”

“Well, good. I want you awake for what I’m about to do to you.” He moved toward the bed. She sat up. This wasn’t a dream at all. He sat next to her and leaned in to kiss her with those thick Cupid’s bow lips. Thrown off-kilter, she put her fingers up to stop him.

“W-wait. This feels way too real. I mean, we’re in my old room.”

“I don’t choose the location, Lark.”

His fingertips caressed her cheek, and in the shadow of night, his eyes were like dark gems. His lips tickled her ear when he leaned forward.

“I’m here to please you, and right now, that’s all I’m interested in doin’.”

He pressed his lips to hers, and at first, it was soft and sensual and everything she missed about what it was like to be touched, to be loved. She’d forgotten what raw love felt like, when someone wanted you so much it was like powerful medicine to a dying man. Then he moved forward, pushed her onto the bed, and braced himself over her. He groaned and sucked her lower lip into his mouth. A current traveled through her. She opened her mouth to him and returned his passion. He thrust his tongue deep into the cavern of her mouth, mimicking what his cock might do, and she nearly lost it. She mewled. He made a low noise of approval in the back of his throat and continued to plunder her mouth, ruthless in his utter and total possession. Lark laced her arms around his neck.

He was on her then, touching and exploring her with a careful but roving hand. As he continued his blissful assault, his fingers hooked into the band of the pajama bottoms she slept in. She let out a sigh as he slid them down her legs, marking a path with his hand along her skin. She groaned with encouragement when he took them off.

“I want to see you. All of you,” he muttered as he slid her T-shirt up. Deep in the fog of lust, Lark helped him tear off the garment, and the shirt soon sailed across the room into the darkness.

“Yes.” He stared at her bare breasts with tender reverence. Lark bit her lip and followed his glance as heat colored her cheeks. She was sensitive when it came to her breasts. Some body issues would never go away, no matter how much weight she lost.

He lifted her chin with his index finger. “Your breasts are sexy as hell, Lark,” he said, his voice rough. “I want to put my mouth on them and suck your sweet nipples.” Hot wetness flooded her pussy. She nodded as he enclosed a nipple in his warm mouth, tugging it with his teeth and suckling it as if he’d never have enough. Cool air kissed her nipple when he moved to do the same to the other, and she gasped as her pussy clenched. As if he sensed her predicament, his other hand smoothed the flat plane of her stomach. She blushed as his hand explored her mound. His mouth released her nipple, and the soft curls of his thick head of hair brushed against her flesh as he lowered himself.

“Yes. I love the way you touch me,” she breathed as he marked a trail of tormenting kisses down her stomach, past her navel, until the first long, flat stroke of his skilled tongue had her whole body bowing toward him. She let out a whimper and entangled her fingers in his thick curls, frantic to have him closer. “Feels so good. Please…”

He growled his approval below, sending delicious frissons of pleasure through her oversensitive body. “I’m going to make you come on my tongue, Lark.”

Lark cried out and clenched her fists in his hair as he fucked her pussy with his mouth. She wished she could call out a name or tell him she loved him; anything. But all she could manage to say was please.