No River Too Wide (40 page)

“Much later?”

“I had a big breakfast.”

They took his car, which was parked closer than hers. The drive was short. He told her how pretty she looked in one of the few dresses she owned, and she told him about the church service. His phone rang as she was describing Analiese’s sermon, and he turned it off without even checking to see who it was.

In his apartment they shed their clothes right along with their inhibitions and fell into bed together.

Today they took their time, not rushing to conclusion, but letting the inevitability sustain them. He touched her with his wrists, his fingers, his palms, caressed her with his lips and tongue, made the simplest movements breathtakingly erotic. She forgot to wonder what would please him and simply tried, gauging his reaction and gathering information along with pleasure. If Friday night had been like the outline of a story, this afternoon was about expanding the plot, understanding the nuances, the unexpected twists and, most of all, the characters.

Adam, who always weighed his words, was surprisingly communicative in bed. He asked if something pleased her, made adjustments, asked again, just enough to let her know her satisfaction was important. At the same time he let her know what mattered most to him, what excited him and what excited him too much.

Patience was eventually eclipsed by need.

Afterward, lying in the crook of his arm, one finger tracing the scar on his chest, Taylor wondered out loud, “Does this ever get old, do you think?”

“You’re asking me?”

“Well, if it does, maybe I ought to prepare. You know, lower my expectations.”

“You have high expectations?”

“I guess I think it changes, but gets old? I just can’t see it, though I could be wrong.”

“From what you told me it got old for you right after you tried it the first time.”

She laughed. “But not for you?”

“I’ve been pretty happy moving on afterward.”

She knew enough about him to realize how true that must be. Adam had never settled anywhere. Of course, men and women in the military had spouses and families, but nobody would ever claim it was easy to nurture intimacy while serving on foreign shores.

“You never thought about settling down?” she asked.

“Not much.”

“We’re so different. You’ve been everywhere. I’ve been nowhere.”

“Everywhere’s not all it’s cracked up to be.” He stroked her hair. “Everywhere is just what I was used to.”

“Maybe we should trade places. I should wander, and you should stay in Asheville and find out what it’s like to see the same people, shop at the same stores, eat at the same restaurants.”

“From what I can tell, in this town they open a new restaurant twice a week.”

“I think I would go to Paris first. Maybe hang out on the Left Bank with the students. Isn’t that where they hang out?”

“I was never there.”

“Next I’d go to Sydney. I’ve always wanted to go to Australia.”

“Practically next door to the Eiffel Tower.”

“You haven’t been in Sydney, either?”

“Have. My dad was stationed at Nurrungar in South Australia. We went to Sydney on holiday.”

“You’re like a geography lesson.”

“New places get old after a while. You find yourself looking around for somebody to talk to about what you see, and there’s nobody who knows you or cares. You make friends, sure, but they move on, and you lose touch before the plane door closes. When I was wounded I must have gotten a hundred cards from people who knew me, men I’d served with—”

“Women you’d slept with,” she finished.

“You may be blowing the number out of proportion.”

She smiled, but she sobered quickly. “And there was nobody hanging out at your side? Nobody to help?”

“Professionals. My mother called a lot, but she has arthritis and traveling is brutal for her. I was used to being alone, but I can’t say that’s what I needed.”

She wanted to tell him she was sorry, but she knew he would be embarrassed. “It would be different here. You would be bombarded by people wanting to help. When Maddie was born, there were people everywhere. Friends of my father’s, Jeremy’s parents and some of their friends. Girls I’d gone to school with, even teachers. My mother wasn’t there, though. We fought about the pregnancy. She told me if I went through with it and didn’t give the baby up, I would learn how much fun it was to raise a child on my own.”

His arm tightened around her, pulling her a little closer.

“She and my father fought over that,” Taylor went on, “and
she
left instead. It was years before I spoke to her again. She tried to fix things, to say she was sorry, but I wouldn’t let her. I was so angry, and I just let it eat me up. Right before she died I finally let her back into my life, but I’ll never forgive myself for waiting so long.”

“Did she forgive you?”

“Absolutely. She understood. That’s the funny part. Because forgiveness wasn’t Mom’s strong suit, either, but by the end she’d gotten really good at it.” Tears filled her eyes, and she blinked them away. “I miss her, and I miss all those years we wasted.”

“There are lots of ways to keep yourself apart from people. Moving’s not the only one.”

“Maybe it’s a talent we share.”

“Maybe not. Maybe we’ve both figured out it’s not a good thing.”

She liked the sound of that. Adam wasn’t making commitments, and she hadn’t asked for any, but maybe he wasn’t going to move on right away.

Maybe he had found something here in Asheville that had convinced him a few roots might not be a bad thing.

Her stomach rumbled at that moment, and he rubbed it before he sat up. “There’s a little place just a few blocks away with decent takeout. They make a good pumpkin curry. Why don’t I run over and pick up whatever they have ready? You can take a nap.”

“You don’t want me to come?”

“I like the idea of walking into my place and finding you waiting.”

“I like the idea of a nap. Somebody wore me out.”

“Somebody tried.” He kissed her, then sat up and began to pull his clothes on. She admired the view until he was clothed again.

“Anything you don’t eat other than meat?” he asked at the door.

“Beets.”

“I’ll go easy on the borscht.” He smiled before he closed the door behind him.

She snuggled deeper into the mattress and closed her eyes, relaxing into sleep almost as soon as she heard his car leave the parking area.

She didn’t know how long the nap lasted, but not more than minutes. On the floor below somebody slammed a door. She jerked awake, and that was that. No matter how badly she wanted to fall asleep again, a longer nap was out of the question.

She tried anyway, then gave up and lay with arms under her head and stared at the ceiling. When she considered her life to this point, this relationship was a major detour. From the moment she had found she was pregnant, her life had centered on her daughter.

And now there was Adam.

Strangest of all was how little she really knew him. Adam was a man a woman could live with for years and still not know completely. He wasn’t used to sharing. He wasn’t used to staying around long enough to try. He hadn’t asked her for anything except sexual satisfaction. Yet this was the same man who had risked his own life to save her daughter. A man a woman could trust with her life and maybe even someday with her heart.

She realized where her thoughts were heading, and she sat up, not willing to go there. If Adam had asked little from her, she had asked just as little from him. They had been—and were still—wildly attracted to each other. They enjoyed each other’s company, liked many of the same activities and, as far as she knew, shared common values. But if this could be called a relationship, she was sure the rest had to grow slowly. She wasn’t going to make demands or ask for promises. This was a one-day-at-a-time proposition, and overthinking could mean the end.

And the end? That was the one thing she knew she didn’t want.

Since the nap had ended, a shower sounded like a plan. She was sure Adam wouldn’t mind if she used his shower stall and a towel. Once they ate, she needed to head home. She might invite him to come and watch a DVD that evening, maybe serve dessert instead of dinner since they were eating a large meal now. She wasn’t ready to say goodbye.

She straightened the bed and retrieved her clothes off the floor. In the bathroom she smiled at how neatly Adam kept his things, the toothbrush hanging in a holder, his razor on a folded washcloth on the edge of the sink. Granted there wasn’t much room for a mess, but his military background was obvious. Everything had a place. She wondered how he would like living with a child who had to be reminded daily not to throw her belongings every which way.

Adam’s towel was hanging neatly from the lone towel rack, but replacements were out of sight. There was a corner storage unit, and she opened it hoping there would be a fresh towel on one of the shelves. She was rewarded by a short stack, neatly folded, but when she removed one from the top and the others slid forward with it, a manila envelope fluttered to the floor. She bent to pick it up and photos slid out.

With more time to think, she would have wondered why Adam kept photographs under folded towels. But there was no time. Because staring back at her was her own likeness, a shot taken from some distance, judging by the fuzzy print quality, a shot of herself with Jan, talking in the front yard of Taylor’s house.

The photo wasn’t recent. She saw that immediately. Jan’s hair was still long. She was wearing one of the few outfits she’d brought from Kansas. Maddie was lounging in the doorway.

Maddie, her
daughter.
In a photograph taken with a long-distance lens.

With trembling hands she shuffled through the small collection. She and Maddie only appeared in the first. But either Harmony or Jan was in every photo, and each shot had been taken from a distance. No one had given this photographer permission. He hadn’t been close enough to ask.

Adam was working for Rex Stoddard. Taylor could think of no other explanation. The self-defense class? A useful ploy to get close to Jan, whom he’d traced to Taylor’s, and maybe even close to Harmony.

She couldn’t imagine the reason. If Harmony’s father knew where his wife and daughter were, why hadn’t he shown up to reclaim them? From everything she knew, he was the kind of man who would think that way. His wife and daughter belonged to him, the way his car or lawn mower did. If they’d refused to go back with him, and of course, they would have, he probably would have employed desperate measures to get his way.

If not his first choice? Something far worse.

Adam was obviously being paid to work undercover. Most probably he was a private investigator whose responsibility began and ended with a paycheck. He had been paid to locate the Stoddard women, and now he was finished.

Only he
wasn’t
finished. Adam was still here in Asheville. He was still teaching in her studio. He was even having sex with her. And why? What did he hope to find out now? Was he watching Jan and Harmony to be sure they didn’t move on before the man who had hired him could get to town? Two months had gone by. Unless Rex Stoddard was in jail or a hospital recovering from a terrible illness, he’d had plenty of time to arrive. He could have walked from Kansas by now.

She didn’t have all the pieces. She needed more.

First she needed to leave.

A shower was out of the question. While she considered what to do with the photos, she tugged on her clothes. Taking them home made sense. When Jan returned she could show the photos to her, and they could decide what to do together. She remembered that Harmony had been looking for her mom. Taylor would call Cristy and see if Jan and possibly Harmony were at the Goddess House. Together they could decide on their next steps.

She was forced to sit on the bed to pull her shoes on. It was that or a beat-up rocker, since the room was noticeably light on furniture, and the rocker was neatly piled with books. Her stomach clenched when she thought about what else she had done on this bed. She had been used, and she knew that once Adam had gotten everything he wanted—whatever that was—she would have been just as easily discarded.

Clearly she was a walking target, a woman without a scrap of judgment. She was no smarter now than she’d been at sixteen when she’d had sex with Jeremy on his rec room sofa.

Ready to go, she paused. Adam would return, wonder where she had gone, even wonder
how
she’d gone, considering that they had driven here in his SUV. Fortunately she could walk downtown to retrieve her car. It might take thirty minutes, but by the time she got there, maybe she would have some idea what to do next.

She burned to leave him some hint, or better yet an unmistakable sign that she was onto him. He hadn’t gotten away with this. She had discovered the truth.

In the end she left the photo of herself with Jan and Maddie on the bed. Just that one photo, right in the middle.

As far as she was concerned, that said it all.

Chapter 32

When he saw all the takeout possibilities, Adam considered calling Taylor. The restaurant had half-a-dozen specials, all of which looked promising, but since he’d told her to take a nap, he didn’t want to be the one to wake her. Instead, he ordered too much food, just to be sure she was happy. At least this week he would have decent leftovers to keep the stale bagel company.

People streamed in and out as he waited, the usual Asheville mixture who frequented vegetarian restaurants. Retirees or tourists in casual resort wear, some in suits after morning services at their church of choice. Hipsters who had assembled outfits from the Salvation Army or eBay and finished them with neon high-tops. Hippies with their finery imported from Third World countries and an assortment of dreadlocks, piercings and tattoos. Harmony would blend right into this crowd, even though her style was a little more upscale. And oddly so did he in his dress shirt, short hair and jeans.

At first he hadn’t been much of a fan of the city. Asheville had felt disorganized, as if its residents couldn’t make up their minds who they were, so they had landed here temporarily while they figured it out. Everybody fit in and nobody did. The most average middle-aged, middle-class man or woman might mention that he or she had been Napoleon or Marie Antoinette in a past life. Once a man in a conservative gray suit had approached him on the street to say he could see Adam’s aura, and he was afraid Adam was seriously screwed.