Ride the Rainbow Home (22 page)

Strong? No, I'm not
, Meg thought silently.
But being with you makes me strong. If you stay beside me, I can brave the snakes, maybe even try my hand at marriage and family. Do you want that too?
She sat in the cozy cab of his pick-up truck, her heart nearly bursting with emotions, trying to reach him with her thoughts, hoping the magical warmth she felt would touch him as it was touching her.

As they left the Hopi reservation and crossed into Navajo land, the traffic around them thinned. "Look at that," Jim said, pointing toward the distant hills where the rains had already begun. "It looks like the Hopi got what they wanted."

Meg thought of how the dances had ended, the dancers breaking with a shout and running to the four cardinal directions, sending the snakes home with a message that rain was needed on earth. "Looks like the gods were listening," Meg said, then, "Oh, Jim!"

It was the rainbow, just as she'd seen it on her first day back in Rainbow Rock, or on the day Jim had taken her to his home. Poised just beyond them, almost close enough to touch, it striped the sky in a shimmering arc of brilliant light.

"Magnificent," Jim said. He pulled the truck to the roadside and turned off the engine, then put an arm around Meg's shoulders and gathered her to his side.

She unfastened her seat belt and slid close, snuggling against him. "It looks so close, as if we could drive into it," she said.

"Or onto it," Jim said, "like a giant escalator in the sky, or a ladder, maybe There are tribal stories about using rainbows that way, moving between earth and heaven. This one looks like we could just drive on at this end and ride the rainbow home."

Home
. That word again, but this time it had a ring of nostalgia, of perfect rightness. "You're a romantic, Jim," she said, her free hand toying with his hair.

"I am when I'm with you." He leaned to kiss her, a moment full of tenderness, but when he drew away, his expression was pensive, filled with sadness and a kind of breathless desperation. He searched her eyes and the words spilled out, as if from an overfull cup. "Meggie, please don't leave me. Don't go back to Walnut Creek. Or if you have to, take me with you."

She smiled softly, thinking of her surprise, of all that she had planned to tell him today. "You know I can't do that, Jim. You belong here in the desert, with the Indians and the sagebrush and the endless sky. You'd never be happy in the city."

"I travel there all the time. I could learn to live there too." He paused. "In fact, part of what I was doing in Phoenix this week was talking with my connections about moving my operation to the Bay Area. I think I could work it all out, that is, if you want me to." His jaw was tense, his eyes full of longing. Meg knew she was seeing Little Jimmy again, as frightened of rejection now as when he'd asked her to the senior prom.

“Are you asking me if I want to be with you?''

His words were so laden with emotion that he almost choked on them. "Yes, that’s exactly what I’m asking. If you do, I’ll uproot here and come to Walnut Creek."

She touched his cheek. A tear formed in the corner of her eye and rolled, unheeded, toward her chin. "Oh, Jim, you know I want to be with you, more than anything."

He leaned toward her, tenderly cupped her face in his hands, and kissed her with such tenderness it almost broke her heart. "I love you, Meggie," he said as he broke the kiss and drew her against his chest, his hands stroking her hair. "I think I may always have loved you."

"I love you too. I didn’t know it when we were in school, or even when I first came back to Rainbow Rock, but I know it now. I love you, Jim—enough to want it all."

“All of it?” he asked. “Home, family, children?”

“All,” she repeated firmly.

“Wow,” Jim murmured, holding her close.

They sat embracing each other, watching the rainbow as it doubled, spreading color and light over the desert. After a time, Jim spoke. "When do you have to go back to California?"

"I don't, except to move my things."

"What?"

"Remember that surprise I told you about? The one Kurt and I have been working on together?"

"Yes, but—"

"We're going into business together, your brother and I. We're going to make management training videos and other kinds of programming out of a studio in Rainbow Rock. I just finalized the plans this week. And I signed the papers on my condo yesterday. I sold it."

Jim blinked, and then blinked again. He seemed to be absorbing what she'd just told him. "You sold . . . ? You're going to stay here? Permanently?"

"That's right, darling love. You don't have to move your business to California, or leave the desert or your family. This time, I'm coming to you."

"You planned that even before..." He let the sentence trail into the silence of the desert, then lifted Meg's face and looked into her eyes. "Even before you knew what I was going to say?"

She smiled, her fingers tracing the outlines of his lips. Tears of love and gratitude formed in the corners of her eyes. "You don't have to do all the giving, Jim. Not anymore." To prove it, she lifted her hands to the back of his neck and pulled him into a warm, inviting kiss. It began gently, but quickly flared into passion. Again it was Jim who, breathless and looking like a tortured soul, drew away from her.

With frustration lacing her voice, Meg asked, “Why do you keep stopping this before it can go anywhere? Are you willing to tell me now?”

“Yes,” he said with a sigh that sounded like relief. “Now seems the perfect time to tell you.” He cleared his throat. Then he took her by both shoulders and set her a little apart from him. She knew the words were coming from some deep, private place as he began to speak. “I may have loved you forever, Meg. Really, I don’t know how long, but I know I’ve
wanted
you ever since I was old enough to know what it meant.”

“Me? The Piggy from high school.”

“You were always beautiful, even if you didn’t know it.” His voice grew huskier as he said, “I knew that nothing between us could ever be casual. You weren’t someone to be used and cast aside, no ‘friends with benefits’ deal. With you it would be all or nothing. After you came back to Rainbow Rock, after the first time I kissed you, I promised myself, I swore it to myself, that I’d keep it that way—all or nothing. If you were going back to Walnut Creek and ending it all in a few weeks, then what happened between us had to be nothing.” He grinned. “Or not much, anyway, and I had to be the one to make sure that it always stopped with just kissing.” Then his look filled with desire as he added, “Even if those kisses were burning me up inside.”

She leaned to kiss him, but he held her away. “Tease,” she accused.

He smiled. “I still have a little more to say.”

She sat back, pouting, and folded her arms. “Okay then. Say it.”

He grinned, and she remembered the mischievous boy she’d once known. “I talked about the ‘nothing’ side, but I haven’t gotten to the ‘all’ part yet.”

“Ooh.” She shivered in anticipation. “I can hardly wait.”

He grasped her fingers and tenderly kissed them, then looked up soulfully. "I knew that if it happened between us--that is, if I ever made love to you, it had to be ‘all’—all you, all me, all commitment with a ceremony and a ring and a promise of forever. Everything, the whole enchilada. I didn’t want to cheapen our friendship by having you any other way.”

He turned his body sideways so he could get one knee on the floor of the cab, and then he took both her hands in his. “This isn’t quite the way I’d planned this,” he said, “but now seems the perfect time. Meg Taylor, will you marry me?"

"Oh yes! Absolutely yes,” she declared, throwing herself into his arms. When they came up for air again, she asked, “When?"

"As soon as is humanly possible," he declared, a hungry twinkle in his eyes.

Meg smiled, joy spreading over her face. "Sooner," she said.

Jim let out a cowboy whoop and crushed her against his chest. As his lips came down on hers again, Meg snuggled into his arms. She was ho
me.

Discussion Questions:

1. One of the major themes in this book is the idea of “home” and how each of us defines it. Meg feels she has never had a home. For Jim, home has always been the same place and the same people, including some who have never been kind or supportive of him. By the end of the story, how is Meg defining what home is to her? How do you define home?

2. Another theme is the idea of change through time. Meg revisits her past, returning to her high school home after ten years away, and is surprised at the changes she finds. Review and consider some of the changes Meg sees. How has time changed you? How has it changed those around you? Does time alone bring change, or is it the choices people make? What choices have Jim and Meg made and how have those choices helped them grow toward or away from one another? What other characters in the story have changed in different ways?

3. Another theme is stereotyping. On page 39, Sally comments to Meg, “You did leave here with some unpleasant stereotypes, didn’t you?” Consider some of the stereotypes that appear in this story. What are some stereotypes you know of, or some you have seen in the world around you? Is there a difference between cultural norms (example: Many Asian cultures value education. Parents expect their children to work hard and achieve well) and racial-ethnic stereotypes (example: Asians are smart and good at math)? Can understanding cultural norms help us to appreciate difference, or does it lead to stereotyping and mistrust?

A Preview:

AT THE RAINBOW'S END

Book Two

In the Rainbow Rock Series

SUSAN AYLWORTH

Chapter One

A stiff breeze scoured the desert floor, catching powdery snowflakes and drifting them against the roots of the greasewood and creosote bushes. Kurt McAllister watched the would-be storm with tepid interest, idly reminded of the way his mother used to sift powdered sugar onto freshly baked gingerbread.

It had been a good meeting in Gallup that morning. If all went as planned, Rainbow Productions would soon have a contract for an exclusive series of educational videos. They had a funding proposal in for a documentary on Navajo weaving and were already paying their bills with pickup jobs for weddings, birthdays, graduations, and family reunions. In the four years since he had established his business with the woman who was now his sister-in-law, Kurt and Meg had built an inventory of successful management training programs that were bringing in steady income.

They were earning a strong reputation in the field and had recently moved into a larger storefront office in Holbrook. All was going splendidly, better than expected.

So why, Kurt wondered as he gunned the engine of his shiny new pickup and pulled into the I-40 fast lane, did he feel like chewing rails and spitting spikes? Frustration seemed to dog his heels these days, faithful as a bloodhound and not one bit prettier.

The road sign showed that Holbrook and his turnoff were still twenty-seven miles away as Kurt punched up the speed to pass a black touring car, but the added speed did nothing to decrease his restlessness. Neither did the fact that there was no apparent reason for it.

Things were going splendidly in the business. The only weak area they'd had from the beginning had been scriptwriting. Meg wrote the basic script when they did a management training video, and his brother Jim, an expert in Navajo and Hopi art, wrote most of their documentary pieces. So far, there had always been someone at the community college in Holbrook who could refine their scripts. Though he and Meg had spoken of hiring a professional scriptwriter—and they'd
have
to get someone if they got the documentary on Navajo weaving—that seemed more an opportunity than a problem. So it had to be something else that was wringing his stomach.

Whenever they had a problem in the business, Meg always sat down to analyze it. Maybe he should try... But thinking of Meg only made him more uneasy. Was it something about Meg that was bothering him? True, she hadn't been kicking in her usual full share in the business lately. Normally, she'd have been with him at that meeting in Gallup, but her burgeoning pregnancy was slowing her down. Kurt hadn't minded picking up the slack. Rainbow Productions was his dream, and he never would have been able to start it without his sister-in-law.

Besides, he was delighted to see Jim becoming a father. He loved Jim as he loved all the McAllister clan—fiercely, and Meg had made Jim happy. They were a dynamite couple and Kurt had no trouble imagining the beautiful, intelligent child that would result from combining those two gene pools. He fully expected to be an insufferable uncle, bragging to anyone who would listen. So the problem wasn't with Meg's contribution to the business, or with the pregnancy.