Stony River (69 page)

“No, Willy,” Sevana contradicted, looking into his face and wishing he wasn’t so handsome. “It’s not my head that keeps me from you, it’s my heart—if you can understand. It makes perfect sense for us to be together, but I have dreams that keep getting in the way.”

“Still dreaming?” he asked derisively. He took her by the shoulders. “If you must dream, dream of me!”

“Willy, please.” She was trying to think clearly, which wasn’t easy to do with his eyes so intently on hers and his hands gripping her collarbones so compellingly. “I told you from the start!”

“I know you did.” His voice was hard and mocking. “But somehow I just didn’t hear you. Maybe you should tell me again.”

She looked at him with the intention of doing exactly that—but after a baffling minute, dropped her gaze without speaking a word.

“See?” He was triumphant. “You don’t mean it.”

“I do mean it,” she said, like someone fighting for air.

“Look me in the eye then, and tell me you don’t love me as I do you,” he challenged her.

Her head jerked up, and as the seconds ticked by she stared at him, stunned by the words he’d never spoken before. “You—love me?” she repeated, wondering if she’d heard him correctly.

“What do you think, Sevana—that I would ask for your heart if I didn’t? That was never the question. The question is—what about you?”

Too many emotions rushed together at once, and she felt herself flush under the combined pressure of their intensity. “Of course I love you!” she wrung out in a very odd, strangled way. “How can I help it, Willy, when you are so full of life and so good to me? I’ll always hold you dear! But our first agreement must stand, and must ever be so.”

“Why, Sevana?” asked Willy softly, his fingers tightening imperceptibly into her flesh. “Why must it stand, when everything you want is here in your hand for the taking? Don’t think I haven’t figured out what’s behind all this. I never did buy your friends-only story. I saw how you looked at him at the Roadhouse. But you’ve got to face the fact he’s not yours to have.”

She gave a gasp and tried to pull away as tears sprang to her eyes, but he held her captive.

“Be reasonable, and consider what is real and what is not. I’m real,” he continued in a dangerously persuasive tone. “Where I’m going and what I can do for you is real. Will you throw that away? What is that compared to dreams and delusions?”

She swallowed a gulp of air. “I don’t know, Willy. It’s like your name in Lethbridge. It should be enough—but it isn’t.” Her eyes flashed as she looked up at him.

He kissed her then, and he did it well. “Truly?” he asked afterward, his voice husky and yet defiant, as if he meant to prove her wrong.

“Truly,” she said in a choked voice. “I’m sorry, Willy, honestly I am.”

“So am I.” He turned from her to get the lights. Wordlessly they went out into the breezy March evening.

“Goodnight, Willy,” she said on the sidewalk, tenderly, very sad.

“I’m going to Calgary for a few days,” he said. “Open the shop for me if I’m not back Tuesday morning.”

She didn’t ask questions. “All right. I’ll see you when you get back.”

He careened away in his car, and she walked out past the city limits, feeling that nothing was right and could not be again. She was too upset to appreciate the beautiful evening—the soft hues of green fields and lavender sky melding together in the lingering brightness of a higher sun. Spring had come to the plain.

CHAPTER 48

Sevana unlocked the shop by herself Tuesday morning. It wasn’t until afternoon that Willy showed up. “Hi, Sevana,” he greeted her tonelessly.

“Hi, Willy. How was Calgary?”

He came behind the counter and sat on a stool. “Looked it over better,” he said, drumming his fingers on the countertop. “And I liked what I saw. Found a few more possibilities to rent.” Seized with a fit of restlessness, he stood up again. “I’ll go back in a few days, look around some more. How are things here?”

“We had a lot of business this morning.”

“Good, good.” He started to the other room.

“Are you working on a new picture?” she called after him.

“No, I’m going to write down some things for tonight’s class,” he said without turning around.

Sevana watched his retreating back with a heavy heart. She felt responsible for his cheerless manner, his unsmiling eye.

The shop grew busy again. A man had a question for Willy about his most expensive painting. Sevana went to the doorway. Willy was seated at his desk staring out the window with uncharacteristic idleness. “Willy, a man wants to ask you about your geese picture.”

He spun to meet her eyes with a veiled gray gaze, and acknowledged her words by rising from his desk. The man ended up buying the watercolor, and Willy returned to his lair a great deal richer, but with no discernible change in countenance.

Near closing he came out to look through the mail. “Did you take care of the new supply order?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Let’s see.” They went over the list until he was satisfied and laid down his pen. “See that it goes out in the morning’s mail.” Until then he had been very businesslike and had hardly met her eyes, but now he regarded her purposely. “I don’t know how I ever got along without such an efficient manager,” he said in distinct syllables. “You’ll have to come with me when I move the shop.”

She didn’t answer. She remembered she hadn’t told him about Adriel’s offer. As she closed the drawer on the paper and pens, she said, “You know what?”

“What?” said Willy, who was putting on his sport jacket with a dark look in his eye.

“Mr. Thane said I should come to Vancouver to study painting under him.”

Willy snorted. “He did, did he? I suppose he thinks my instruction isn’t good enough!”

“He’s a conceited man!” she said, unable to deny his supposition.

“He’s also a brilliant artist, an icon.” Willy snapped off the lights. “You’d be a fool to turn him down, Sevana.” He strode away from her down the sidewalk.

Sevana set off for the prairie. A strong wind was gusting under a leaden sky. The spring weather had been capricious—sunny one day, dark and sullen the next. Change of seasons—she felt in transition herself. All at once she had an overwhelming longing to go home, if only she had one to go to.

She stopped at the scraggly tree that was bravely unfurling a few blighted greenish-gray leaves, and gazed across the smooth land under the low rolling gray clouds. She could see the buildings of the city, but she couldn’t see the mountains. Swallowed in glowering clouds, it was as if they didn’t exist—as if the plain stretched without limit.

She went back to the apartment and prowled through it objectlessly. She wasn’t even hungry. She got her paint box and trudged down to class.

When the session was over that night she left with the rest of the students, and Willy didn’t try to detain her. He was right behind them all, locking the door. Sevana took home a lot of pent-up energy and confusion which she began pouring into a new assignment for class. Once she stopped to make coffee, but then forgot to drink it. She had no sense of time or tiredness or hunger. All she could feel was her heart—it was stirred up, in anguish, and the gusting wind outside did nothing to settle it. And very late, through the wind and her semiconscious state, she thought she heard a car pull up and cut the motor. She rose from the table, only then feeling her cramped muscles, and looked out the window.

In the streetlight she recognized Willy on the walk. She went to the door. “What brings you here so late, Willy?” she called as he appeared up the stairs.

“Good evening, Sevana,” Willy said thickly, and sort of fell against the door jam. Right away she saw he’d had too much to drink.

“Willy, come in!” she cried in great concern and even greater indiscretion. “You’re in bad shape. I’ll get you some coffee.”

He came in, but didn’t sit in the chair she pulled out for him, nor did he make any comment about the picture with the wet brush beside it—which was a bad sign. When she poured a cup of coffee, he didn’t even look at it as she held it out to him. His eyes were locked on hers, and for some reason she felt he was towering over her, even though he wasn’t as tall as Fenn or Joel.

“Don’t you want this?” she asked, wishing he would take his eyes off her and look at the object to which she was referring.

“No,” he said.

She backed away and set the cup on the counter. “What
do
you want?” she asked, slightly exasperated. “Don’t you know it’s after midnight? What are you doing here?”

“I came to talk to you.” He spoke precisely, with exaggerated dignity. “It all came to me very clearly while I was out at the Roadhouse tonight. I can’t let you slip through my fingers, and I don’t intend to. I’m not going to let you put me off for some silly notion you have in your head. I’m not going to let you go—it isn’t going to be that easy.” He took a step toward her. “I want you, do you understand? I’m not going to let you go so easy.”

With this magnificent speech behind him, while Sevana stood regarding him in astonishment, he locked her in his arms and crushed his lips into hers. She could taste the wine in his mouth, strong and sweet.

She shoved away from his chest, gaining space enough to order: “Willy, please, you’re not in your right mind. I want you to leave.”

“Not on your life,” he said, his face only inches above hers and his arms still pinning her from escape. While the wine on his breath was strong, it was also—she tried to push away the thought—strangely appealing. “I’m tired of being put off by some pie-in-the-sky guy up north who’s not even in love with you. Your made-up fantasies are no match for me, and I’m going to make you admit it.” And he crushed his mouth into hers again.

His strength was like steel, and it terrified her. But though she struggled with all her might, she accomplished nothing by it. Then, as an idea came to her in desperation, she stopped resisting him and melted into his embrace, as if in all the world she was in the place she most wanted to be—lifting her face to receive his wine-stained kisses. Willy noticed the change in her and drew back warily to search her face, while still holding her from escape.

What he saw was very convincing, as there were real tears in her eyes—for she had been surprised by the force of the emotion she felt, and shaken by what was meant only as a charade. Nevertheless she relentlessly pursued her purpose.

“Willy, it’s no use,” she whispered, running a hand softly up and down his chest. “You don’t have to try to convince me you’re right. You’ve been right all along, and I guess I’ve always known it. I should have listened to you from the start.” A teardrop slid down her cheek. “I’ve tried my best to keep from loving you, but I can’t—and I won’t fight against it any longer. I won’t keep my heart from you.”

“Really, Sevana?” Willy asked hoarsely.

“Yes.” She was crying as she clung to him. Some of it was an act inspired by fear, and some from overwrought emotions and the lateness of the hour; but some of it was an actual felt relief to give in to him—to voice the words she’d sometimes toyed with saying, without ever really intending that she would.

“Oh, Sevana.” He loosened his hold on her and gazed down at her with a look of dawning gladness. “I’ve been waiting forever to hear you say that.”

Sevana gazed into the happiness in his eyes, and had one wild thought that she would let it be true. But then, like Brook bolting down the hillside, she broke out of his arms and escaped out the door and down the stairs before he could stop her—for he was not as quick as she, either physically or mentally, in his inebriated state.

She heard him yell, a cry of rage and heartbreak as he understood her treachery, but she kept running along the sidewalk without once looking back until she reached the shopping centre. Then she stopped and tried to detect movement or activity down the street in the darkness—prepared to duck into the all-night diner and consume an all-night dinner if necessary. After a minute she saw distant headlights sweep across the road as a car careened around a corner, heading deeper into town.

She looked around the parking lot, feeling vulnerable and alone. The centre was closed except for the café, where two cars were parked. Surprisingly, the lights of the church blazed out from the north prairie—now, at well past midnight—seeming brighter than they should for their distance. David must be working late again, unless he had just forgotten to turn out the lights. She felt drawn to the thought of his presence as someone hungry and cold is drawn to warmth and shelter. She started walking that direction, acknowledging the risk of being out on that lonely road with Willy on the prowl, but pulled overpoweringly toward the refuge those lights represented.

A stretch further, and she could make out the toylike car parked against the building. All her uneasiness vanished then, to know David was there. But when she reached the church steps, she went no further. She would not disturb him—caught up in writing one of his sermons, most likely; she knew he was very studious, pouring hours into his work. It was enough to know that he was close by if anything threatened.

She sank onto the cement slab as if all her strength had deserted her just then, and buried her face in her hands. Everything that had happened was too awful to contemplate—Willy’s desperation to make her his own, and her lie to set herself free! She had hurt him wickedly, and it had not been without expense to her own self as well, for she was shaken to the core at how nearly true the words had been, which she had meant for a lie. She felt as if everything in the world was tumbling around her, and she felt sick at heart—too sick to even cry.