Today the sound was unusually deep, almost hypnotic. A southern storm was churning off of Baja California, sending tropical clouds and ten-foot breakers up to Laguna Beach.
For a few minutes Cat closed her eyes and let the powerful, unhurried thunder of the surf lull her. But she resisted the temptation to stretch out on the couch. She was having enough trouble sleeping at night without taking a nap during the day.
Besides, when she was working she wasn’t thinking about Travis “Hell-on-Women” Danvers.
After a last look at the couch, Cat reached for another piece of paper, rolled it into the typewriter, and began writing to yet another Dear Sir who hadn’t found the time to pay her.
It was five o’clock before Cat remembered lunch. Only the thought of having to write down “peanut butter and crackers” for Dr. Stone drove her to the kitchen upstairs. She looked in the refrigerator, hesitated, then decided on a cheese-and-whatever omelet. Tonight whatever turned out to be limp scallions and two dubious mushrooms. She assembled the ingredients, then cooked and ate the omelet without enthusiasm.
Fuel, not food. Food was something you prepared with pleasure and shared with someone.
Like Travis.
Abruptly Cat pushed away from the table. Her stomach was gnawing on the omelet as though uncertain what to do with it. The muscles along her shoulders and spine felt like braided, red-hot wire.
Ignoring the tension and tiredness that warred for control of her body, Cat wrote out a grocery list on the pad hanging next to the refrigerator, cleaned up the kitchen, and tried not to listen for the phone to ring.
In the pauses between the muscular thunder of surf, there was no sound but that of her own footsteps. The rhythmic surf should have soothed and relaxed her. It didn’t. Between listening for the phone and dreading the sulky poet’s visit, she was wound tighter than a roll of film.
“What I need is a long, hot bath,” Cat told herself briskly, trying to break the silence that never had bothered her before Travis. “The bath will be therapy, not a waste of time. It’s either lazy bath or a glass of wine. Maybe both. Yes. Both. Definitely.”
Cat had to be more in control than she was now if she hoped to cope successfully with the Crown Prince of Treacle. At the very least she had to stop listening for the phone, stop straining to see the Wind Warrior flying across the evening sea, stop remembering . . . too much.
“And while I’m at it, I’ll stop breathing, too,” she said bitterly.
The continuous rush and thunder of water into the tub drowned out the surf. Cat sank into the welcome heat with a groan of pleasure. By the time she finally dragged herself out of the tub, her skin was flushed pink and steam hung in every corner of the bathroom.
She took a long time drying her hair, enjoying the thick, silky weight of it as it tumbled in auburn waves below her shoulder blades. Subdued fire licked through her hair, gold and bronze, flame and orange, hot colors burning beneath the darker auburn.
Travis had enjoyed her hair, enjoyed burying his face in it, enjoyed having it fall cool and sleek across his naked skin.
He had enjoyed it, but not enough to stay.
Blindly Cat set aside the hairbrush. Working from habit alone, she lifted her hair and sprayed a subtle perfume on the back of her neck. When she glanced in the mirror, her face was pale. She flinched at the taut, wan face that even a steaming bath hadn’t been able to warm.
“I look like something the cat dragged in and decided not to eat after all.”
Automatically Cat reached for some makeup. Then she changed her mind. The bath had been for herself. The makeup wouldn’t be. She didn’t care if she looked—or smelled—like dead fish for Blake Ashcroft.
With quick motions she twisted her hair into a coil on top of her head and pinned the slippery mass in place with an ebony comb. Black underwear, black jeans, and a high-necked, long-sleeved black cotton sweater completed her outfit.
Cat measured the image in the mirror and nodded with bleak satisfaction. No one could mistake her somber clothes for a come-on, not even a man as self-absorbed as Ashcroft.
What she didn’t see was the effect of her hair quietly burning above an unsmiling face. Sleepless nights had made her eyes larger, more silvery, reflecting the emotions seething beneath her pale surface. Just below her high cheekbones were velvet shadows, gentle hollows to tempt a man’s lips. Though her sweater and jeans weren’t tight, they revealed the woman beneath in the same way that her hair revealed fire—with each breath, each movement, aloof and alluring at the same time, a red-haired sorceress with eyes of ice.
In one way Cat was correct in her view of herself. She was a woman to tempt a warrior, not a poet. At least not a poet like Ashcroft.
The doorbell summoned with three impatient bursts of sound. Ashcroft had arrived. Cat yanked on black ballet shoes and went to the front door.
“Somebody die?” Ashcroft asked the instant the door swung open.
“Don’t tell me, let me guess. You like your women in pink ruffles.”
Ashcroft bit back whatever he was going to say and followed Cat down the twisting stairs to the next level. Without a word, she flipped switches until the only illumination in the room came from the light table.
“Where’s lover boy?” Ashcroft asked, looking around.
“In the freezer with the other things I don’t have time to eat.”
The poet blinked. “I never can tell when you’re kidding and when you mean it.”
“No problem. As long as you keep your hands off me, you don’t have to worry about ending up with the ground meat.”
Ashcroft shrugged. “Your loss, babe.”
“I’ll survive it. Here.”
Cat handed him a photographer’s magnifying glass. It was about four inches high, a topless cone that was wider at the base than at the eyepiece where the magnifying lens was. It was a tool that had been specifically designed for use with slides that were laid out on a light table.
“What’s this?” Ashcroft asked.
“A way to look at slides.”
“What about a screen and a projector?”
“Too much heat from the projector light will fade the colors on the slide’s emulsions, which means that whatever print you make from the slide will be washed out.”
Doubtfully Ashcroft looked at the magnifying glass. “Which end is up?”
“Watch.”
Cat opened one of the boxes she had stationed around the light table, pulled out a slide, and put in on the glowing white surface. She took the magnifying tool and put the wide end down on the plastic that framed the delicate slide.
“Here,” she said. “Close one eye and look through this with the other eye. If you like what you see, put the slide in the tray to the right. If not, put it in the one to the left.”
Ashcroft looked at the magnifying glass and the boxes of slides stacked around the luminous table. “I still think a projector would be easier and quicker.”
“It’s your book. Your choice. I’ll set up the projector and cook some slides.”
“Okay, okay. I’ll try it your way for a while.” He bent down to the first slide, then realized that Cat was walking away. “Where are you going?”
“To brew a cup of tea.”
“Sounds lovely. Make one for me.”
“You’ll have to drink it somewhere else. I don’t allow food or drink at the light table.”
“Then forget it,” Ashcroft said curtly.
He bent over the first slide.
With a sense of relief, Cat closed the door behind her and hurried up to the kitchen. After she made a cup of tea, she went out on the deck by her back door. The deck was cantilevered, jutting out from the steep slope of the bluff. Twenty-five feet below, surf prowled and growled over rocks concealed by darkness.
At one end of the patio a cement stairway zigzagged down to the beach. During the rare storms that whirled up from the south, the cement stairs took the full force of breakers two or three times as t
all as Cat was. The stairs had been built with just such storms in mind. A cold iron railing as thick as her arm lined both sides of the concrete stairway.
And for the last ten feet leading down to the beach, the rails were twisted and bent, a silent reminder that the ocean could be as violent as it was beautiful.
Tonight the sea was quiet, a dark playground where moonlight danced to secret music. Cat looked longingly at the stairs that led down to the beach. She could tell by the low sounds of the surf that the tide was retreating, drawing back into the restless body of the ocean. The beach would be wide and empty, perfect for someone who wanted to feel the gentle kiss of foam on her feet while she watched the moon’s tilted smile.
Cat scuffed off her ballet shoes and rolled her pants to her knees. With her teacup in one hand and tension whipping through her body, she walked down the stairs to the sea. The sand was dense, dark, infused with spent waves. As her feet squeezed water out of the sand, her footprints gleamed, only to return to darkness within seconds as the sand drank back the moisture.
The first touch of the ocean was chill, almost cold. Cat didn’t retreat. She stood where the water had found her, letting waves curl around her calves and sift sand over her motionless feet.
Staring with unfocused eyes into the night, Cat remembered what it was like to sail a silver moon trail and to see sapphire light glinting in the crests of black satin waves. She wondered if Travis was out there somewhere, moonlight like a benediction on his hard features, strong hands holding the helm of a huge black ship.
Is he looking at the fluid curl of waves and thinking of me?
There was no answer but the emptiness of the night and the sigh of the sea spending itself on the shore. A cool breeze lifted from the water. Cat barely noticed. She wanted Travis so badly that the wind could have been acid and she would have felt nothing at all. The tearing ache of loss was so great that she couldn’t feel anything else.
When Cat finally lifted the teacup to her lips, she was startled to find that the tea was colder than the ocean. She had been outside for a long time, long enough for the waves to retreat beyond her feet. Lost in the moonlight and night, thinking of many things, of black waves flexing, of sea gleam and moon smile, but most of all she had thought of Travis.
And now she was cold.
Cat shivered without looking away from the sea. She knew she should go back inside, yet what she really wanted to do was to walk a few feet farther down the beach and let the waves wash over her calves again, setting her mind adrift . . . spindrift gleaming on a hot, distant shore.
And then Cat knew why she was drawn to the dark body of the sea. It made her feel closer to Travis. The same ocean that touched her also touched the Wind Warrior.
Touched him.
Cat spun around and ran up the stairs, spilling cold tea at each step.
“Where the hell have you been?” Ashcroft snapped as soon as she reached the deck. “I’ve been looking for you.”
“Here I am.”
She set down the nearly empty teacup, washed her feet at an outside faucet, and turned to face the surly poet. A single look at his face told her that he hadn’t liked the slides. Yet she had been counting on the money she would get when he approved her work.
“Finished?” she asked curtly.
“I’ve seen enough, if that’s what you mean.” Ashcroft’s full upper lip lifted slightly. “I don’t like them.”
Cat walked past him into the house.
He hesitated, eyed her almost warily, and then followed her into the house.
She didn’t look back to find out if Ashcroft was coming to the workroom with her. She simply wanted to see the extent of the problem.
As soon as Cat opened the workroom door, she knew there wasn’t a problem. There was a disaster.
The tray she had told Ashcroft to put the slides he liked in held precisely two slides. Two out of the two hundred she was contracted to supply. The reject tray was a disorderly pile of slides. Most of the boxes of slides stacked around the light table hadn’t even been opened.
Apparently Ashcroft had indeed seen enough and then decided not to waste his time looking at any more.
Automatically Cat sorted out the mound of rejected slides, putting them correctly into the tray. She was neither hurt nor particularly surprised that Ashcroft didn’t like her images. After all, she didn’t like his poetry.
Unfortunately she needed his money. And she was a professional. If he could tell her what he wanted, she could deliver it.
Cat picked a handful of slides at random from the reject tray and put them in a vertical line on the light table. On the opposite side of the table, she put the two slides Ashcroft had selected. Only then did she turn and face him.
“Look,” he said quickly. “I want you to know that this has nothing to do with what happened a few days ago. I mean, nothing personal. Hell, even if you were sleeping with me, I still wouldn’t like those pictures.”
She watched him with unblinking gray eyes, measuring the emotions in his voice—uneasiness, frustration that had nothing to do with sex, irritation. He was telling the truth. He didn’t like the work she had done, period. Nothing personal about it. Just a simple, fundamental difference in taste.
“Babe, I’m telling you the truth. It has nothing to do with sex!”
“I believe you.”
Cat turned away, bent over the light table, and picked up the magnifying glass. She began with the two slides Ashcroft had selected as suitable to accompany his poetry.
The first slide was a breaking wave, a side view that showed many shades of blue-green fading into creamy foam. The lighting was correct if not particularly compelling. The image showed everything in the first glance.
Technically there was nothing wrong with the slide. It was simply rather shallow. Pret-ty. Cat had included it more for contrast than content.
The second slide showed Jason working over a ragged sand castle. He was smiling, his cheeks and lips rosy, his blue eyes like cut glass, his black hair curling every which way. He looked cuddly and adorable, the image of a perfect child.
Cat bit back a curse. Again, there was nothing technically wrong with the image Ashcroft had picked. Light, focus, composition, everything was in place. But after one glance there was nothing more to see. The picture lacked complexity.
She had another picture of Jason that she liked much better. He was standing at the edge of the ocean, holding his cupped hands in front of him, watching water drain back into the sea. He was unsmiling, intent. The sidelight picked out his round cheeks and tiny teeth, shadow of the baby he had been. The same light also illuminated the intelligence behind his deep blue eyes and the intensity of his taut body, foreshadow of the man to come.
It was a riveting image, one that repaid study. But it wasn’t pret-ty.
Cat turned to the five slides she had picked at random from Ashcroft’s reject pile. The first slide was a close-up of a single shell lying on wave-smoothed sand, sidelit by the setting sun. A thin line of spindrift glittered in an irregular, curving diagonal across the damp sand above the shell, a line that was echoed by the transparent gleam of a retreating wave below the shell. The shell itself was old, imperfect, its spiral worn by the ceaseless roll of waves, its exterior milky rather than opalescent, matte-finished rather than gleaming.
The purity of line and colors had appealed to her, the sensuality in the contrasting textures, the feeling of time and completion and peace. But again, not pretty. This shell would never end up in a tourist shop along with bright plastic fish and beach thongs.
The third slide was of a rock at the instant a wave broke against it. It was a late afternoon shot, and she had deliberately underexposed to silhouette the rock against the molten sky. The wave and spray were liquid gold, the rock a black dragon rising out of the sea, orange blood running from its jagged mouth. Mystery and power, fire and night, myth and violence, darkness and light defining and refining one another.
No, not pret-ty
at all.
Yet to Cat, it was an image well worth nearly losing her cameras for. And lose them she would have, if a tall stranger hadn’t grabbed her off the dragon’s back and carried her to shore.
Travis, she thought bitterly. Always Travis, everywhere I look, every breath I take. Everything.
With a hand that wanted to tremble, she set aside the magnifying glass and turned toward Ashcroft. He looked very bland after the midnight and fire of the last slide, about as appealing as skim milk.
“I think I know why you don’t like the slides,” Cat said neutrally, “but I’d rather have you tell me. That way there’s no chance of a mistake.”
Ashcroft hesitated, then shrugged. “There’s no nice way to put it, babe. Your pictures are as cold and empty as you are.”
Alone, Cat stood at the light table, her fine-boned face illuminated from below. Shadows haunted her eyes as she stared down at her rejected slides lined up in rows on the light table, their tiny squares of color gleaming like gems . . . blues and greens, ebony and cream, silky flesh tones and fiery sunsets.
She saw none of the colors, none of the grace, none of the beauty.
Your pictures are as cold and empty as you are.
She didn’t need to wonder anymore why Travis had stepped into the wind, leaving her alone. Obviously she wasn’t capable of returning the pleasure he gave her.
Cold and empty.
The sweet burning had gone no further than her own skin.
Cold.
Ecstasy’s golden shadow of peace had shimmered only in her own mind, her own dreams.
Empty.
Cat’s slender hands became fists as she fought not to cry out against her own inadequacy. She didn’t even feel her fingernails cutting into her palms. She felt nothing but the bleak discovery of her own emptiness.
Gradually she became aware that she wasn’t alone in the room. From behind her came the slow, measured breathing of another person.
Damn Ashcroft, she thought fiercely. What more can he have to say to me?
Despite Cat’s anger, she forced her hands to relax and thought quickly. Before he left, he had agreed to let her try again. If he was back, he must have changed his mind. She couldn’t let that happen. She needed the money too badly.