Living With Lies Trilogy (Books 1, 2, and 3 of The Dancing Moon Ranch Series) (20 page)

***

Justine was shaking so hard by the time she shut the door to her room she could barely stand. She'd never encountered a man like the one downstairs. He'd pegged her from the start. It was as if she'd been standing naked in front of him, and not only had he seen her body, he'd burrowed into her psyche. She'd felt trapped and vulnerable. She'd even told him about her affair with Sean Elliot. She'd only said a few words, but the man got the whole picture.

Justine Page in a nutshell.

She was curious about the book though. She'd already gotten well into it before she found him watching her from across the lodge. She had no idea how long he'd been standing there, but when she looked at him, it was like an electrical charge was buzzing between them. Not so much the man's looks, though that hadn't escaped her—taller than Sean, broader shoulders, dark hair to Sean's blond hair, penetrating eyes that fixed on her like twin lasers. Hard eyes. Cobalt blue she'd realized when he got closer. And unshaved. Sean had never gone unshaved; did it morning and again before bed. Shirts always starched. Silk suits. Designer ties. Nothing but the best for Sean Elliot. Nothing but the best for the firm. And she'd been the best. She just made the mistake of screwing the boss. But that man downstairs... She couldn't begin to piece him together. He was like a mismatched puzzle. All the pieces fit, but the picture didn't match up.

And like her, he wasn't taking part in the activities at the ranch. Not the sleigh ride, and not the barn dance Grace insisted she go to the night before, where she'd stayed long enough to know barn dancing wasn't her thing. But she would have noticed the man downstairs if he'd been there. She could not have avoided it. She always gravitated towards men who would screw her over and drop her flat. She was setting herself up again for that scenario.

Concluding it was pointless to give further thought to a man she hoped would be gone by morning, and knowing she would not leave her room until the others returned from the sleigh ride, on the chance that the man might catch her alone again, she decided to waste away the remainder of the evening in her room, with the book...

By three o'clock in the morning she was still reading. The guests had returned from the sleigh ride hours before, but after a little chatter in the great room below, they'd gone to their rooms, and before long the place was quiet, but she'd kept reading throughout. It wasn't so much the unfolding of the story in the book, but the mind behind it. The story captivated her in a perverted way, but the mind behind the story truly bothered her.

Setting the book aside, she went to the window and peered out. The snow looked sparkly in the glow from the high utility lights, but beyond the reach of the lights she could make out the string of log cabins along the creek. In the one almost directly across from where she stood looking down, she saw a light. She knew Grace and Jack closed the guest cabins for the winter and only kept the lodge open after the first of September, yet, there was definitely a light in the cabin, the one with two bedrooms and a kitchenette.

She saw a figure pass by the window, casting a shadow on the rectangle of light thrown against the snow. A tall figure. Broad-shouldered. Restless. Moving back and forth. Then he stopped at the window and looked directly at her. She couldn’t see his eyes, or his face, but she knew who he was, and she knew he knew she was watching him. She turned away, but she couldn't stop wondering why the man would also be awake at three in the morning, pacing back and forth in a cabin that shouldn't be occupied...

An hour later, she went to the window and saw the man still pacing. It bothered her that he seemed so restless, but she didn't know why it should matter. The man made her uncomfortable. Yet there was a pull between them she couldn't deny.

Shrugging into a jacket and tugging on a pair of snow boots that Grace had loaned her, she slipped out of her room and crept down the bank of stairs leading to the great room below and left the lodge through the back door. She had no idea what she intended to do once outside, but she felt an urge to find out what the man was up to.

As she stood in the shadows beyond the glow from the overhead lights, she tried to reason why, at four in the morning, she was standing in snow that was still coming down, even dusting her coat and hair, staring at a cabin not more than twenty feet away. She couldn't see the man inside, and when she finally decided there was no logical reason to remain there, and still no sign of him, she turned to go back into the lodge.

And found him not more than eight feet away, watching her.

"Why did it take you so long to come?" he asked, making no move toward her.

She stared at the man, heart racing from its shot of adrenaline, mouth open to suck in enough frigid air to fill her lungs. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"You saw me from your window. You were watching for me here. Why?"

"I was restless. I'd been reading and couldn't sleep. It's the book."

"Pulp trash. Why should that keep you up?"

"Not the story. The mind of the writer. It bothered me."

"You're not supposed to be in the mind of the writer when you read," the man said. "You're supposed to suspend reality, get caught up into the drama of it. If you're trapped in the writer's mind, he failed."

"It's a twisted, perverted mind," she said. "I don't think I'd like the man."

"Most minds are twisted," he replied. "Isn't yours at times? Maybe right now? You're standing in the snow with me at four in the morning, and you came down here to find me. Did you change your mind?"

"About what?"

"About sleeping with me. You said you'd been to bed with your share of men and I wouldn't be one of them, yet, here you are, outside my cabin, waiting."

"I told you before I couldn't sleep because of the book."

"Because of the mind of the writer. It's twisted. And perverted. And you're here with me in the middle of the night. Maybe men screw you over because you let them."

"Maybe you're right."

"Do you want to come to my cabin?"

"Ask me if I will."

"Same difference."

"Not the same at all," she said. "One is, do I want to? The other is, will I? The answer to the first is, yes. The answer to the second is, no." She turned and went back into the lodge, wondering why she'd admitted something she hadn't considered until the moment he asked.

And that was the story of her life. But this time, she'd resisted the first man she'd ever truly felt something intense in a way she couldn't explain. So intense, she would not give herself to him, because to do so would drive him away.

***

Justine looked around the living room of Grace and Jack's home, a rustic log and cedar place just down the drive from the lodge. Homemade Christmas decorations were everywhere—sprays of fresh holly decorated with little red bows, crocheted snowflakes hanging from threads in the front windows, hand-knitted stockings with the names of each of the three boys, and sandwiched between two tall red candles was the Santa-in-a-sled centerpiece Grace always put on the dining room table. The Christmas tree, which sat on its own table out of reach of the boys, also had Gracie written all over it, with fir cones edged in glitter, and puffed rice balls wrapped in plastic, and beautifully decorated gingerbread men, all hanging from the branches by tiny red satin ribbons, and draped between the limbs were garlands of popcorn.

Justine looked at Grace, who was standing at the kitchen counter, surrounded by the makings of a fruitcake, and said, "Ever since you were a little girl you knew exactly what you wanted to be when you grew up. You never played with Barbies. You only played with baby dolls. I remember how you'd feed them, and bathe them, and change them—your baby dolls also wetted. But I always played with Barbies. It was all about dressing them in high-fashion clothes, and undressing Ken and wondering why Barbie had boobs and Ken was missing a cock. I guess my mind was twisted even when I was ten."

"I thought about that too, some," Grace said.

"When? When you were eighteen?"

"Maybe a little before."

"Can I ask you something, Gracie? Don't answer if you don't want to," Justine added.

"Sure," Grace said. "You're here to talk things out and try to come to terms with things and maybe set a new direction in your life. What do you want to know?"

"How old you were when you lost your virginity."

Grace took so long to answer Justine wondered if there was a side to Grace she didn't know, a side she could actually relate to. "Like I said, you don't have to answer."

Grace turned and looked at her, and said, in a contrite voice, "It was when I married Marc. But it wasn't as if I didn't want to before," she added, as if in apology. "It's just that we decided it would be special if we waited."

Grace never asked her about losing her virginity, Justine noticed, and she knew exactly why. Grace knew when it was. "You're not surprised I was fifteen, are you?"

Grace shrugged. "No, but it makes me sad you thought you needed to do it. All the boys liked you."

"Well, now you know why. Not that I did it with all the boys," Justine amended. "Actually, in high school, only Ross and Mitch and maybe a few others, but mainly Ross and Mitch."

"Because Ross was captain of the football team and you wanted to be cheerleader, and Mitch drove a BMW and you knew his father had connections," Grace said, but not in accusation, just stating a fact.

Justine nodded. "I never gave marriage a thought, only that the boys would be a means to an end. Why have I always been like this?" she asked, "and why can't I be happy with a man like Jack. He's the perfect man. Don't get me wrong, Gracie. I look at Jack like the big brother we always wanted and never had, and his twin too, but even knowing Sam and Susan are having problems, I still don't see Sam as a potential love interest, and he's not the problem in that marriage. It's Susan. But why can't I want men like Jack and Sam? You never attracted the kind of men who'd screw you over. And Marc, he was devoted to you until the day he died."

"I guess I'm just lucky to have had the love of two really good men," Grace said.

"Do you still miss Marc?" Justine asked. "You were such a young widow, and I know you adored Marc, and he'd treated you like you were God's gift to him."

"I think about him when I see little Marc," Grace said, "but Jack's the love of my life. Jack and my boys. They are my whole life. All I want is to make them happy."

"Why can't I be happy with simple things?" Justine asked. "I've seen you and Jack walking hand-in-hand and talking and smiling at each other and not seeming to need anything but just to be together, but I've always needed action around me, rooms filled with people drinking and laughing and cutting each other to shreds and talking innuendo. I'm the one who laughs loudest at the lewd jokes, and I'm the one men at the top of the corporate feeding chain haul off to bed. But why do I go when I know it won't lead to anything but the glass ceiling?"

Grace stopped what she was doing and came over to sit beside Justine on the couch, and said, "You've stayed here several times but you've never ridden a horse, or hiked in the hills, or fished in the stream, or even watched the squirrels and chipmunks and birds at the feeders. A squirrel comes down, chasing the chipmunks away, but before long a Stellar Jay arrives with a squawk and makes such a commotion the squirrel leaves. And you've never walked on top of snow in snow shoes. It's awkward, and you step on your snowshoes at first, but when you can walk on the snow without sinking in and you're able to go into the hills and see the trees and everything covered in sparkly untouched snow, it just makes life worth living. That, and having a man like Jack in your bed every night, and a house filled with kids to make sure you don't stay in bed too long. The temptation's always there."

"So I noticed," Justine said, "along with the two extra stockings hanging on the mantle, so it seems you're expecting again, and obviously it's twins."

Grace put her hands on her belly. "We just found out. We don't know whether they’re boys or girls or one of each yet, but we're pretty excited."

"That's what I mean. I've never even babysat. You babysat all through high school while I was partying and drinking and having sex. I wouldn't have any idea what to do with a kid."

Grace squeezed Justine's hand. "I think you would, but you've never opened your heart in that way. You've been too focused on what you need to do to get where you want to go. But maybe you don't really know where that is. While you're here this time, I hope you'll try to enjoy what we have, and to get started, you and I are going to make a trip into town to a store that sells upscale resale wear and get you some ranch clothes."

"I've never been to a resale shop," Justine said.

"I know," Grace replied. "It's a beginning."

"Of what?"

"The rest of your life." Grace looked at her solemnly, and said, "You're here for a reason, Justine. Things will work out. They always do."

Justine smiled. Grace had the most hopeful expression on her face, like things would just fall into place as they had with Grace when, after an accidental mislabeling of two vials of sperm at a fertility clinic, Grace learned she was pregnant with the sperm of a stranger instead of the sperm of her dead husband, then ended up adopting the son of her dead husband, and marrying the stranger. Her Jack. Her perfect man. But that was Grace. She'd always led a charmed life.