Twilight time, p.13
Twilight Time, page 13
She can chase the sun’s ribbons across the sea,
But she’ll always come home to me...
What was going on with his head? Ever since Maia had force-fed him those pop songs while they drove, he couldn’t keep loony tunes and bubble gum lyrics from bursting in his brain, beyond his control.
“Are you coming or not?” Maia’s impatient demand shook him from his thoughts of songs and Leah and most importantly, Chicago.
“Right behind you.” He strode forward to catch up to woman and dog.
As he drew near, she cocked her head at him. “You okay?”
He forced a blank expression. “Sure. Why?”
“You looked... I don’t know... aggravated or something.” The light disappeared from her face, leaving her eyes shadowed. “Did I tick you off somehow? I mean, I’m sorry if I—”
“You didn’t.” Before he could say more, she wrapped him in a tight hug, her head against his chest.
“Forget about your brother and his wife. They’re emotional vampires. They suck—literally and figuratively. They suck the joy and hope and creativity from everyone around them.” He didn’t know it was possible, but her tone grew even more bitter. “I know all about emotional vampires. I was married to one. They delight in living rent-free in your head. You wind up spending all your time wondering what you ever did to deserve their animosity, their censure, their disgust. I can tell you from personal experience, you didn’t do anything. They just need a victim to torment, and you were handy. Don’t give them that much power over you, okay? Stop thinking about them. Evict them from your brain and be happy. That’s the only way you win in the end.”
Any aggravation he still harbored over her calling him jealous set sail on a sea of appreciation. She was right, of course. Lawrence had always relished his ability to strike fear in his much-younger brother’s heart by threatening to destroy a favorite toy or in the later years, dreaming up horrific stories of kidnapping and poisoning him. The stories Lawrence now got paid buckets of money to share with strangers around the world were created and tested on poor young Spence.
Feeling himself stiffen as he recalled those days of cruelty, he took a deep breath and allowed his posture to relax in Maia’s soft embrace. That particular trick kept him placid for mere seconds before he stiffened again, this time when a pair of sandy paws landed on his back.
“Lily!” Maia chastised, though her giggles took all the sting from her disapproval. “I’m sorry. She seems to want in on our hug.”
Spence couldn’t keep the smile from twitching his lips. “Well, she is family.”
He lowered one arm from around Maia, bending at the knees to encompass Lily in their circle. They stood that way for several minutes while the sun disappeared into the faraway skyline.
Family. What a weird concept.
For Maia, Minnesota, the land of ten thousand lakes, lived up to its motto in the worst metaphorical ways. They arrived at their campsite under torrential rain and hoped to wait out the wind, water, and lightning before setting up their temporary home for the next several days. When the deluge didn’t let up after two-plus hours, Spence pulled a black garbage bag from a box on the shelf, ripped a hole in the bottom and tossed it on over his clothes as a makeshift raincoat.
“Stay here,” he ordered. “I’ll hook up.”
Yeah, right. Like she was going to sit inside where it was warm and dry while Mr. Not-So-Handy electrocuted himself so they could microwave popcorn later. She grabbed her jacket, zipped up, and flipped the hood over her hair. “Let’s go.”
He opened his mouth to argue, but apparently thought better of it. His lips turned upward into an indulgent grin. “You are the craziest lady...”
“And an idiot like you can’t be trusted to do this on his own, so...” She shrugged, rustling the vinyl on her shoulders. “Like it or not, we’re a team. Besides, two of us will get it all done faster than one.”
Even so, they were both soaked to the skin by the time they managed the task and sprinted back inside the RV. Of course, the minute they stripped off their wet outer garments, Lily began her antsy dance, letting them both know she needed a walk.
Maia slipped her sodden jacket back on, spraying droplets of rainwater on the floor. “I’ve got her. We can’t keep having you ruin our trash bags every time you need to step outside in the rain.”
“Thanks,” he said with a nod. “I owe you one. Soon as we get a chance, we’ll drive into town, and I’ll pick up a proper rain jacket. I can’t believe I forgot to pack one.”
She clipped Lily’s leash onto the collar and looped the handle over her wrist. “It happens. I once got an assignment to cover a story in upstate New York in February. I was so excited about the opportunity, I packed everything except pants. I kept hemming and hawing over which sweater would look best on camera and shoved five different colors into my carryon to choose from based on the background I’d have when I arrived on scene. But I totally forgot about anything I’d wear from the waist down. I wound up wandering into a discount store on the outskirts of town and buying a cheap pair of yoga pants with a gray plaid pattern that I thought could almost pass for dress slacks. I didn’t even have time to wash them before I pulled them on and raced to do the scene. Well, they itched like crazy.” She laughed at the memory. “I could barely stand still to do the interview. Then, when all was said and done, the segment was scrapped for time constraints. Never made it on the air. Thank God!”
“Too bad. I’d pay to see how you actually handled it, as opposed to how you remember it. I bet it wasn’t nearly as bad as you think.”
“No, it was baaad. I watched the replay when we got back to the studio and cringed through every second. There I was, standing with the mayor of this small Finger Lakes town who’s going on and on about how they routinely deal with extreme snowstorms by being better prepared than their counterparts, yadda, yadda, yadda, and I’m hopping from foot-to-foot like I’m about to pee my pants.” She gave Lily’s leash a gentle tug. “Speaking of which, come on, girl. Let’s make this fast.”
His rich chuckles followed her back out into the tempest. Luckily, Lily took care of business quickly, and they both scrambled to return to the comfort of the dry RV.
Maia had just hit the set of steps leading to the door when the first cramp sucker-punched her in the gut. The pain drove her down, and she stumbled on the metal steps with a bone-crushing thud to both knees, releasing Lily’s leash as she used her hands to keep her face from meeting the same fate.
“No, no, no,” she muttered, struggling to pick herself up in slow motion while floundering for the leash loop. “Not now.”
The RV’s door flew open, and Spence rushed to wrap an arm around her waist to get her upright on her trembling limbs.
“Hey, you okay? My God, what happened?”
“I’m okay,” she managed to say through gritted teeth. No way she planned to tell him about her PCOS and the related misery that hit her every month.
“Like hell. You’re white as a ghost!”
“I’m okay,” she repeated, a phrase she’d said so often for so long, she would’ve thought the words would come out easier by now.
Teddy had always hated hearing the slightest whimper or complaint from her during these episodes. You’re such a wuss, Maia. You’d think you’re the first woman to ever get her period, the way you carry on. Nobody else I know whines and moans the way you do. Climb off the cross and toughen up. I’m not about to rub your feet and feed you grapes just because it’s that time of the month.
“Let’s get you inside,” Spence said. “Can you walk? You didn’t break anything, did you?”
She shook her head and limped up the steps with his help, Lily trailing behind. “I’m okay. Really. A chipmunk or something ran across the grass, and Lily took me unawares when she lunged for it.” She tousled the dog’s head in a silent apology for the fib.
Spence pulled the door closed and locked it. “What do you need? Coffee? A hot shower?” He pointed to the new tear in the left knee of her pants. “A Band-Aid?”
Aw, shoot! She touched the hole in her favorite jeans and sucked in a sharp breath when her finger brushed against the bloody scrape stuck to the scrap of denim. At the same time, another cramp sliced her abdomen, and she let out a low groan.
“Shower,” Spence announced. “I’ll make tea in the meantime.”
Unh-uh. No way. Not with him stuck inside with her. It was one thing for them to share the bathroom and shower situation when the other person could step out of the RV to allow for some privacy. But not now. Not as long as the storm continued to whip up the atmosphere outside while another storm brewed in her uterus.
“I told you. I’m okay.”
“Maia.” His tone took on the cadence of a patient parent, and his expression turned probing. “I’ve lived with women before. And I come from a family of doctors.”
She bristled. “A., we’re not living together. Living together suggests we have an intimate relationship. We don’t. We’re simply travelling together. There’s a big difference between the two. And B., you are not a doctor, much less my doctor. So, my menstrual cycles are none of your business.”
His jaw dropped, and his eyes rounded in surprise. “Your mens...”
Dang. She’d overreacted about the wrong thing. He’d been trying to put her at ease about showering around him, and she went straight for defending her gynecological condition. Was it a HIPAA violation if you blew your own personal healthcare confidentiality?
She stared at the floor, wishing for a hole to appear she could dive into. “Oh, God. Forget I said anything, okay?” She covered her face—and the blush heating her cheeks—with her hands. “I’m okay. That’s all you need to worry about.”
“Hey.” She ignored him, and he repeated the single syllable, this time louder and with more force. “Hey. Look at me, Maia.”
Keeping her face buried in her hands, she shook her head.
“Fine. Be stubborn. But at least, listen to me. You’re right; we’re not in an intimate relationship, but we’re living together in some pretty close quarters. Regardless of whether we’re talking about you being uncomfortable taking a shower with me close by or your menstrual cycle, my background hasn’t changed. I’ve lived with women, and I come from a family of doctors. I’m not some Neanderthal who can’t control himself, knowing there’s a naked woman one story below him. Nor am I a juvenile who gets squeamish about tampons and hormone influxes. And I know that each woman needs different care during this time, so you tell me what you want or need, and I’m happy to oblige. If you want to be alone for a while, I can climb up to my bunk and take a nap. If you’d like me to make you a cup of tea and then disappear so you can shower or enjoy some solitude, say so. If you’d prefer coffee and a spirited party game, I can get a pot brewing in minutes, and I spotted a box of Uno cards in one of the overhead cubbies the other day. We don’t have a heating pad if that’s what you need, but we can add that to the shopping list along with my rain jacket, and in the meantime, I’ve been told I give great backrubs. Pick your poison.”
She spread her fingers wide to peek through them. “How great are those backrubs?”
“Top notch.” His wolfish eyes and smug grin radiated intimacy and temptation, two things she’d rather avoid.
“Great.” She dropped her hands to her sides. “I’ll take the tea and shower to start. That should be enough. Thanks.”
“You’re making a mistake, not taking me up on the backrub,” he wheedled.
“My back doesn’t hurt,” she replied in a saccharine-rich version of his wheedle.
“Well, if you change your mind, you know where to find me.” His aged-brandy-smooth tone sent shivers up her spine.
Were they even talking about the same thing anymore? She had no idea.
“Thanks. The tea and shower should do it. And I should probably cut back on my carb intake for a while. All those burgers and sandwiches I’ve been eating wreak havoc with my system. I know better. Thank God we’ve found a bunch of farmers markets along the way. I can live on the rest of the fruit and make some decent salads for a few days.”
She knew she babbled but couldn’t help herself. Better to babble about food than discuss her period or his sexy invitation. And it had been a sexy invitation. Her radar might be rusty, but it did still work. Lucky for her, Spence seemed to sense her misgivings—or he had a few of his own because he busied himself with the glass teakettle and water.
“We’ve got regular, decaf, and a couple of those chamomile teabags you swiped from that breakfast place in Pennsylvania.’
“Ooh. The chamomile would be perfect.” And precisely why she’d swiped those particular blends when the waitress brought the selection of teas to their table that morning.
“You need a pain reliever, too? I think there’s some stuff in the first aid kit.”
“Yes, please.”
Minutes later, in the solitude of the lower cabin of the RV, she sipped the tea, let the warmth pool in her belly, and said a silent thank you to Spence, who’d done as he promised, provided her tea and a couple of ibuprofens, then gone upstairs to sleep. Poor guy had put in a long night of driving to get them here, yet still, he’d been kind enough to try to make her comfortable before he sought some shuteye. She got lucky with him. In so many ways...
Over the years, she’d done everything in her life by the seat of her pants—mostly, with disastrous results. Battling with Leah for information about Lily that day a few weeks ago was just one in a long line of impetuous decisions she’d made since childhood. But this time, unlike when she ran away from home at eighteen, unlike her elopement with Teddy—followed by her hasty escape several years later, unlike her agreement to accept a position as an as-needed correspondent with the local television station instead of staying in her steadier but boring desk job where she might have had a better chance of flying under the radar, this time, she’d lucked out and made a decent choice when she threw her fate in with Spence. Or maybe, she should thank Leah, who’d chosen him to watch over Lily.
“I should probably hire Lily to vet all the choices I make in life,” she muttered to her almost-empty teacup. “God knows she’s better at it than I am.”
Once she drained the cup, she rinsed it in the mini sink, left it on the counter to dry, and headed for the shower. The stall was tiny, made smaller by the toilet tucked into it, but the water was hot and managed to mix with the tea and tablets to ease most of the ache in her gut.
When she dried off and stepped out with the towel clutched tightly around her chest, she found a clean T-shirt and a pair of men’s plaid pajama pants folded on top of the table. Where the heck...?
Spence.
The man was one-of-a-kind in so many ways. When was the last time anyone showed her so much generosity? She couldn’t remember, which gave her an inkling how long it had been.
Slipping into the dry, clean clothes, she sighed. He didn’t deserve to be stuck with a pain-in-the-butt loser with a ton of baggage like her, even for a month or two.
Maia shook her head to clear her brain. Stop, she told herself. Around this time of the month, her hormones always wreaked havoc with her psyche, but she had no time to indulge in a bout of self-pity. She had work to do.
After grabbing her laptop and setting herself up at the table, she ran through various videos of Lily’s antics over the last few days to try to come up with something to use in today’s broadcast. The best she found was a couple of minutes of footage from the Navy Pier she hadn’t yet posted. But she’d already told her viewers they’d left Chicago, and the small bit they’d captured, with Lily stalking an errant squirrel holding a Cheez Doodle, wasn’t much. Sure, she looked cute, crouched low to the ground, her rear haunches twitching while the rest of her body remained completely still, but it wasn’t exactly riveting, must-see entertainment.
Well, she needed some kind of interesting content to keep her few viewers happy and hope they’d want to share the link with friends. Forcing a happy expression, she turned on the record feature on her phone and faced the camera head-on.
“Hey, everybody. I don’t have a lot of Lily to share with you all today, since we spent most of our time traveling, and the weather at our current site is dark, wet, and chilly. It took all our energies to get the RV hooked up with the wind and rain slashing at us. Spence and Lily are both upstairs asleep, which pretty much tells you how exhausted we all are. Anyway, it’s just me at the moment. Except for the occasional rumble of thunder outside, it’s pretty quiet right now. So, in lieu of Lily footage, how about I give you all a tour of the RV we’re traveling in, show you where we spend our downtime? Starting with where I’m seated, this is the eat-in kitchen area. I’ve just had a shower. Want to see the glamorous bathroom we use? Brace yourselves...”
She opened the door, displaying the teeny stall and toilet with a wave of her hand. “Ta-da! It isn’t much, but it’s minimal.” Swerving to her right, she focused on the tiny sink and two-burner stove, panned up to the microwave, then down to the small refrigerator under the counter. “The kitchen. I know what you’re thinking. As hard as it is to cook like this, you really have no idea ‘til you try. We wind up doing a lot of barbecuing, takeout, and quick stuff like pre-made sandwiches grabbed from convenience stores.” Her stomach rumbled, and she suppressed a frown. “I admit, it takes a toll on your body after a while.”
Best not to continue traveling down that path. Better to keep her mind off the pain. She strode to the front of the vehicle and sat in the passenger seat, then showed her audience the driver’s area. “Here’s where all the traveling gets done. Spence sat in that seat for the last ten hours or so, getting us safely to our current homestead. You’ll have to wait to see the sleeping quarters another time. I won’t dare wake him—especially after he’s been so nice to me.” She settled into the seat, crossed her legs, and placed her phone on the mount in the dashboard so she’d have her hands free. “I may as well go into more detail about how we wound up on this road trip and what we’ve been through personally along the way. Would you believe me if I told you that up until a few weeks ago, neither of us knew the other existed? Yeah... it’s been a weird journey.”
