Runaway Mistress (13 page)

She went into the stacks, selected her books, making sure one was at least as large as the flyer. She went through the process of borrowing from Mary Clare, who always had a comment. “You’re going to love this one, Doris. It’s great.”

“I noticed a lot of titles by this author.”

“You can get through at least spring on her stuff, if you like it. How’s Alice?”

“She’s great. She gets a little more exercise with me than she could with Louise, and I think I’ve loosened up those stiff old joints. She’s moving around a little better.” She gathered her books. “Thanks, Mary Clare.”

Jennifer went to the end of the counter and took her time looking through all the flyers and leaflets. She slowly read through a bright orange advertisement of the community theater group’s new program, perused the local garden club’s meeting dates, gathered up sheets on Pilates, yoga and tai chi in the park. She put her books right on top of the flyers with her face on it and when she picked them up again, all the missing-person flyers came away with her.

Rather than panicked, she felt very serene about this move. That girl didn’t look like her. If Nick’s goons could look right at her and not see her, her disguise, hiding in plain sight, was working fine. She wouldn’t pass muster that easily with Nick, but Nick was very likely to hire this hunt, not participate personally. He was more interested in poker. Still, the flyers had to go.

A wry smile rose to her lips as she tried to imagine Lou even thinking to go into the library to leave them. She had always considered him too dense to connect her love of reading to the library. Was he smarter than she realized or had Nick made the suggestion? Nick was very conscious of her always having a book going. She was never without one.

She had a sudden and crystal-clear memory of her youth—in one of the schools she attended when she was fifteen or sixteen. She had tested well and her English teacher and counselor said, “You’re college material, Jennifer.”

“Funny, ha-ha,” she returned. “I don’t think anyone in my family could manage—”

“Your scores are incredibly high. You could get a good scholarship. You should think about this. Tell your mother.”

But she couldn’t tell her mother something like that. Cherie was too fragile. If she was manic, it could send her into a whirlwind of applications, visiting universities, and who knew what else. If she was depressed, feelings of inadequacy might send her to bed for weeks. In either case, she could never leave her. And her grandparents were teetering on the edge of poverty. Her grandfather had been a bus mechanic before retiring, and every bit of his savings plus most of the equity in their little house had been spent getting Cherie out of this or that jam. College was a notion no one in her family could even entertain.

But she had nurtured a secret dream that she could somehow further her education, collect some big fancy degree and feel, every single day, that she was making some kind of significant contribution. It wouldn’t hurt to pick up a nice paycheck at the end of the day. Like Louise—smart and independent and doing something that mattered. How about going off to a foreign country for months at a time to study and write? It was a rich fantasy, but short.

That was a long time ago.

She thought about the flyers clutched under her books. To be on the safe side, she went to the post office to buy a book of stamps and look around, but she didn’t see any reflections of her former self there.

Not only did she not look like that woman anymore, with every passing day she felt less and less like her. At first she had been so shocked by how plain she was underneath all the hair and makeup, but she was growing so comfortable in this new skin. She had even thrown caution to the wind and bought a pair of khakis that, while not tight, were not as loose as the men’s pants she had worn for a month. Khakis and a polo for work now. And at home she shrugged into a pair of jeans for her daily hike, right after she destroyed the flyers.

There was a small park across the freeway from which you could see the huge beauty of Lake Mead. She had spied it the week before and thought that in warm weather it would be the ideal place to lean up against a tree and read for an afternoon. It sat at the base of a small mountain and in front of a complex of condos and town homes. The landscape sloped down toward the lake, and there was nothing to obstruct the view. Since there were also swings, two tennis courts and a baseball diamond, she assumed it had been built for those condo tenants, but it was not fenced and didn’t appear to be private. Today seemed like a perfect day to relax under that tree.

She read for a while, but her eyes and her mind wandered, drawn by the massive blue beauty of the lake at the base of the hill. She thought about the flyers, thought about what she would study if she could go back to that day the counselor had told her she was college material, and even thought about what wine she might buy to return the favor to Rose. She thought about how good it felt—having come so far despite the tough times. And now, who could argue that sitting here, under this tree, wasn’t the perfect life? She had a sense that nothing could go wrong, nothing could hurt her.

She nodded off and began to dream of wearing gardening gloves and a wide-brimmed hat, tending roses that grew along a fence from which she could see the ocean. Behind her was a house; an old country house with a peaked roof, dormer windows and a porch.

In this dream she became two people—herself and her grandmother. As she clipped the flowers, swept the porch, sat in a rocker with a bowl of snap beans in her lap, her grandfather sat in the opposite chair with his newspaper in his. They had never lived in such a house; theirs had been a brick rambler in a Columbus suburb on a fairly busy street. But this old house seemed familiar somehow. She could hear the ocean, the mighty waves, and feel the sea breeze on her face.

Her grandfather spoke her name. “Doris. Just don’t move.”

She heard the hissing of the water and told her grandfather she would be still. She smiled at him—why not move? she wondered.

“Doris,” he whispered.

Why did he call her that? That wasn’t really her—

She opened her eyes and for a moment she was not sure she was awake. She was surrounded by many beasts—four-legged, hairy beasts with incredible horns.

“Shh…” someone said.

She turned her head and there was Alex. He knelt beside her at the base of the tree. He reached for her hand and gently pulled, getting her up on her knees. “Slowly now,” he whispered, and quietly directed her behind the tree. Then he placed himself behind her, edging her knees apart so that he knelt between them, putting her between the tree and himself. “Just in case there’s any butting,” he whispered into her ear. “Just don’t move.” Kneeling there within feet of all these snorting, grunting, chewing animals, it no longer seemed much of an issue that recently this man had been staring gape-mouthed at her as she danced around in her underwear. In fact, feeling the front of his body against her back, she felt she knew him very well. His arms were around her, gripping the tree, pressing her close to it for safety. He had been less than friendly in the diner. Apparently he’d gotten over it.

“What are they?” she whispered back.

“Bighorn sheep. Ewes. Rams. They come down to this park to graze. We’ll be fine—be very still.”

She couldn’t take her eyes off their matted hair, their giant hooves and those
horns.
The rams’ were curled back around their heads and looked monstrously strong, while the ewes’ were straight, slanting backward. Smaller than horses but larger than goats, they grazed all around her. Some of them—males—were so large they might’ve weighed two hundred pounds. What she had thought was the ocean in her dream had been the convergence of these animals, perhaps thirty of them, grazing contentedly on the park’s grass.

Fifty yards to her left, where a street fronted the condos, she saw there was a bus with the label Vegas Fantasy Tours on its silver side. People had disembarked and were standing around taking pictures of the herd. On the other side of the park at a gratefully safe distance two rams suddenly butted heads, scraping their big hooves in the dust.

“If it were mating season, or if the lambs were here, this would be a very dicey spot,” Alex whispered. “We’d be in trouble. But the ewes are pregnant. Judging by their shapes, it won’t be long.”

“Really? When?” she asked, her voice filled with childlike wonder.

“Soon. When they come, we’ll look from a safer distance.”

A sense of anxiety suddenly came over her and she realized it was simply because he’d made a reference to something they’d do in the future. She’d always been very sensitive to any statement indicating future plans. Since childhood that had been a big issue. Promises of something to come usually meant disappointment. Or it could hold an ominous warning. No wonder she’d stuck to rich old men and had never put down any real relationship roots! She was afraid to depend on any person or event that might exist in the future.

“Do they scare you?” he asked in a whisper.

“No. No, not at all.”

He rubbed her upper arms with his hands. “It seemed like you got tense there for a second.”

She took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “No, I love them. Maybe I was just a little excited.”

The herd continued to graze without seeming to pay any attention to the humans behind the tree, or the ones at the roadside snapping pictures, but they did seem to be moving away from Jennifer and Alex. The ewes were heavy with their pregnancies and the rams seemed to prefer bachelor groups rather than staying with their mates.

She breathed slowly and quietly, enjoying the incredible experience of being amid these creatures she couldn’t remember ever seeing before, even in a zoo.

“They don’t smell all that great, do they?” she whispered.

She felt his body shake in silent laughter.

It was a long while—a good thirty minutes—when one large matted male sauntered out of the park toward the road. A second followed and a third. It was as though he had called “time” and all the animals were to leave. They formed a perfect thin line of rams and ewes as they walked down the road a few blocks to the mountain. She noticed a trail snake its way up the hillside to the very top. She watched in fascination as they made their way slowly toward home.

Her legs were getting stiff and sore, and her knees were numb, but she didn’t want this to end. She wanted to stay in this little pocket forever. Alex seemed in no hurry to move, either.

When the animals had left the park and the air cleared somewhat, she realized that Alex wore a very alluring cologne. She lay her cheek against the tree and closed her eyes, inhaling the attractive scent.

He could have gotten up and moved away. There was no danger from the sheep—if there ever had been—as they were starting up the hill. It wasn’t until they could hear the engine of the bus start up that Alex scooted back and stood up, as did she. He grinned a very handsome grin. “Have you ever seen anything like that in your life?”

“Never,” she said, a little breathless. “I’m still seeing it,” she said, looking around the tree at the sight of the sheep moving up the mountain to the top. “I thought I was having a dream about the ocean—it was their hooves all around me, I bet.”

“Probably.”

“How did you find me?”

“I didn’t. They’ve been grazing in this park for years. I was on my bike and I like to see them come down. There you were,” he said with a shrug.

He turned toward the condos and waved. There were several people sitting on their front patios just to watch the sheep, and probably more were looking from inside.

“The sheep don’t mind people being here?”

“I don’t think they really noticed you. They’re used to a human scent around here, it being a park and all. And you were asleep,” he said, bending to pick up her forgotten book. “If there had been people using the park, they’d have gone back over the hill. I don’t think they’d attack unless threatened or provoked. But during mating season, they’re pretty oblivious to everything but getting their girl, and you don’t want to get in the middle of that. Believe me.”

“And there will be babies soon,” she said dreamily.

“You might want to give them a little space when they have the lambs. You just never know.”

“Oh, sure,” she said, leaning back against the tree. “I’m nothing if not polite.”

“Did you walk here?”

“I like to think I hiked,” she said, and forgetting herself completely, she smiled. “There are the greatest trails and parks around here.”

“Want a ride home?”

“On your bike?”

“I’m afraid that’s the only option I have.”

“That’s okay. I’ll go ahead and walk.”

“You sure? When was the last time somebody bucked you home?” He grinned boyishly, full of trouble. This was a whole new Alex.

“Bucked?” she asked with a laugh.

“Isn’t that what you called it as a kid? That’s what I called it. You jump up on the handlebars and I do all the work….”

“We used to do it the other way—one sitting on the bicycle seat and the other one standing to pedal.”

“Girl stuff. We did it the
dangerous
way. Come on,” he said, taking her hand. “You don’t weigh hardly anything. But those legs…” He looked down the length of them. “Spoke material. You’ll have to keep them out of the way.”

“I don’t think this is a good idea….”

“What the hell, Doris. From what little I know of you, I thought you were the fun-loving type.” She blushed despite herself. How was it, she wondered, with her level of experience with men, that this simple guy on a bike could make her
blush?
He dropped her book in a leather pouch fastened on the back of the bike. “Come on—live a little dangerously.”

Little did he know…“I’m heavier than I look.”

“You’re actually pretty skinny. But another month of eating Adolfo’s food should get you right. Come on. Jump on.”

“Really. There’s a hill and everything—”

“Nothing I can’t handle,” he said, puffing up a little. At least he didn’t flex his muscles.

She struggled onto the handlebars, gripping the bars on each side and tucking her feet back out of the way. “This is so nuts,” she said.