“What do we do?” she asked.
“We hope it’s in a nice mood today.”
The canyon echoed with its occasional derisive laughter, sometimes punctuated by muttered oaths, as they rode along. Their mounts seemed to edge closer to each other, sensing comfort in proximity, which raised an entirely new discomfort for Miles.
He liked this princess. He’d always wanted to be a brave hero, accompanying an adventurous princess on a dangerous quest. But like so much in his life, he’d doubted that would ever happen. Now it was happening, and he wasn’t quite sure what to do about it. Truth was, despite his confident demeanor, he really didn’t consider himself brave-hero material. There was fantasy, and then there was reality. And history…
“What’s wrong?” the princess asked him.
He wasn’t ready for this conversation. Not with her. Not with anyone. Not ever. Or so he told himself.
“Nothing,” he said quietly. “I’m just thinking about how to coax a couple of eggs out of the Kolakul.”
Their calves were almost brushing—their mounts were that close—and Drusilla reached over to touch the back of his hand.
“That’s not true,” she said. “I’ve seen your eyes when you were trying to solve a riddle. This wasn’t the same look.”
Just what he needed. To be a not-so-brave hero with an all-too-perceptive princess. “I’ll be fine.”
She simply nodded and rode on silently. Dammit, she was supposed to pry. She was supposed to draw the truth out of him, that he was a man who spent his life in the company of Behemoths because he had a genius for them. A genius that had set him apart from his classmates. A genius that his parents had never failed to cite as evidence that an “A” grade wasn’t good enough when an “A+” was available. A genius that had hung around his neck like a millstone, damning him to those awful words, “But you have so much potential! ”
In a world of his choosing, he would put Behemoths behind him and spend his days hammering out and polishing his dream, the great Morganian novel, a story that would lift hearts, elicit tears, keep readers turning pages into the wee hours of the morning and leave them begging for more. He would be comfortably wealthy, take long breaks between books to research, think, plan and crystallize each one into a perfect whole. He would travel, not to tame Behemoths but to experience more of the beauties the world had to offer, to learn about new cultures, to meet new people and enrich his writing.
And he would do all of that with the love and support of a woman who understood what it meant to have a dream and to chase that dream day after day, when it seemed so distant and unreachable, until finally they could claim it together as their own.
Instead, in a world not of his choosing, he tamed Behemoths, and his dreams were crammed into the fringes of his life. He tapped away at his story when the Behemoths were sleeping, scrawled notes as he rode in search of the next Behemoth, and fought sleep to get down just one more scene before exhaustion claimed him. And all of it in secret, for to fritter away his time on his dream was to betray his genius, his millstone, his potential.
The princess should have coaxed this out of him, word by aching word, until she took him in her arms and told him he should forget his potential and fulfill his dreams. But she hadn’t. She’d simply nodded and turned to the trail that lay ahead.
Anger surged within him, followed immediately by a mental kick to the seat of his pants. This princess was not a character in one of his stories. She couldn’t read his mind and shouldn’t be expected to perform to a script that only he knew. He was, he realized, being a fool.
He sighed.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
Confession was good for the soul and lousy for the reputation. Oh, well. “I got angry because I wanted you to pry. And I realized that was foolish and unfair.”
She smiled. Not a patronizing smile, but a smile rich with warmth. “No. We never know how much to reveal when we meet people. We don’t want to seem narcissistic or maudlin, so we follow social convention and wait for them to ask.”
Now she touched his hand again. “But I don’t like social convention, and I think people reveal things when they’re ready and for their own reasons. So I’m willing to wait.”
He nodded and fought the rolling lurch in his chest. She was gracious, honest and apparently patient. An endearing combination. And all the more frightening for that. His hand tightened on the saddle horn.
“Thank you,” he said.
She apparently felt the tension in his hand, for her fingertips began to gently push between his fingers, as if willing him to let go.
“I was raised to be a princess,” she said quietly. “I learned how to use a sword because I hung around the guard barracks. For a while, I considered entering tournaments. But the thought of losing, and disgracing my father, held me back. And I guess somewhere inside I knew that wasn’t really what I wanted to do, anyway.”
“You wanted to be a princess?” he asked.
She let out a short laugh. “Well, no, not really. But I don’t get any choice in that. My father is the king, and that makes me the princess by default. What I’d like to do is paint.”
He arched a brow. “Paint?”
“I know, I know,” she said, smiling. “Fierce, strong, independent warrior princess who’d rather be smearing oil on canvas. Doesn’t fit, does it?”
“Actually, it does.”
“Oh?”
“Sure,” he said. “First, while you’re certainly strong and independent, you’re not fierce. A fierce princess would have ordered Tertio to go on, despite his fears. You’re compassionate.”
She seemed to consider the thought for a moment, then nodded. “And second?”
“Strength and independence aren’t inconsistent with being an artist. I’d say they’re essential, in fact.”
“Perhaps.”
“No, think about it, Drusilla. As an artist, you don’t have a boss. You have to discipline yourself to sit down and do it, knowing that someone else may look at it and see nothing but meaningless smears of paint. If that doesn’t call for strength and independence, I don’t know what does.”
“It’s hardly Behemoth taming,” she said.
Now it was his turn to laugh. “Behemoth taming isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Believe me. Yes, there’s a lot of skill involved, but often as not, one Behemoth has pretty much the same anxieties as the next. It’s not what I want to do for the rest of my life.”
“Oh?”
And damn if she hadn’t coaxed it out of him anyway! She was good at this conversation stuff, far better than he was. She’d probably had to learn it hanging around court, watching her father deal with emissaries and ministers of state. What was it he’d once read? Diplomacy is the art of letting the other person have it your way.
“I like to write,” he said simply. “If I could do whatever I wanted, that’s what I’d do.”
Her fingers wove in between his. “What do you like to write? Behemoth-taming adventures?”
He withdrew his hand. “No.”
“I’m sorry, Miles. I didn’t mean it like that.”
He nodded. “It’s okay.”
“No, it isn’t. I’m sorry for assuming. What do you like to write?”
He looked away, studying the canyon walls. That was the rub, wasn’t it?
“Miles?” she asked, her voice gentle and reassuring.
When he turned to face her, her eyes offered comfort. She nodded quietly. He drew a breath.
“I like to write love stories.”
Oh, now this just wouldn’t do, Drusilla thought, jerking herself out of the daydream. She was pleased to discover that her fingers had been busy tapping the keys. At least the shift supervisor wouldn’t be looking over her shoulder. She sipped her soda.
Love stories?
Was it some law of the universe that nothing could go according to plan? Not even her daydreams? She was supposed to be hacking her way through hordes of monsters en route to slaying a dragon, with a brave, handsome hero beside her, looking for the treasured key that would save her kingdom. Winning eternal fame and her people’s everlasting gratitude. Becoming the stuff of legend.
Love stories?
Love was for other people. Soft, simpering women who fell into men’s arms, murmuring vacuous words while giving in to their pulsing desires as their bodices ripped and their heaving bosoms burst forth. Then came the happily-ever-after of waking up to dishes in the sink, dirty socks on the floor, kids wailing for breakfast and a skin-raking stubble-flecked peck on the cheek before he went out to work while she tried to bring order to domestic chaos.
Or worse, sinking into his warm embrace, finding two hearts that beat as one, watching the sun rise in his eyes, seeking out soft, tender kisses, working through the trials and joys of life together, hand in hand, heart in heart…until the morning when she woke up and he didn’t. Then came the aching, ripping, clawing, cavernous, insatiable emptiness of eternal absence.
She’d watched her parents live out that scenario, two people whose lives and souls seemed so perfectly enmeshed that it was difficult to tell where one began and the other ended. Until the day her mother simply hadn’t awakened. Despite her father’s kisses, passionate and then desperate, and his plaintive pleas. Heart attack, the doctor had said. She’d gone painlessly.
And he had survived. Painfully.
He’d never been the same since. It had been three years, and her clothes still hung in the closet. Love had gone, and disease had taken its place. For months after he’d learned he was sick, he’d done little or nothing about it. It didn’t matter, he’d said. We all have to go sometime, and he would be with her mom again. The downward spiral had continued until finally she’d gone over and screamed in anger and pain and frustration that yes, Mother was gone, but he was still here and she still needed him. Then the tears and the hugs and the resolutions, and the months of chemo and putting her painting on hold to sit with him while he fought nausea and finally began to regain his strength.
That was love.
It bound you to endure someone else’s pain, to bear someone else’s burden, to cherish someone else’s hopes and needs and dreams above your own, until death wrenched them away and left you empty and grieving.
Love stories? No thank you.
She’d seen the best and the worst that love had to offer, and she couldn’t face the prospect of having to endure what her father had gone through these past three years. Better to have her own soul, even alone, than to have half of it ripped away by a scattered electrical discharge across the surface of a muscle that lay in the chest of the one you loved and left that muscle and that person limp and lifeless.
“Drusilla?”
She turned, ready to lash out at Cal for his constant interruptions, but it wasn’t Cal. It was Miles from upstairs. The real Miles, not her dream Miles. She wiped a hand over the corner of her eye.
“Yes?”
If he’d seen the glistening in her eyes, he had the courtesy not to let on. “The mainframe says there’s a glitch in your terminal.”
“It’s probably me,” she said. “I haven’t…I probably hit the wrong key.”
He smiled. It was a reassuring smile. “Maybe, but that’s not the problem. It’s reporting a system error. I need to check your hard drive.”
“Okay.”
He stood there for a moment, still smiling. Not a geeky, goofy grin. Just a patient, reassuring upward turn of the lips, matched with a softness in his eyes. It was a face she could get used to all too easily.
“May I?” he asked.
“Oh! I’m sorry.” He’d been waiting for her to move, so he could do his job. “I guess I’m kind of in space tonight.”
“We all have nights like that,” he said, offering a hand.
It was a chivalrous gesture offered without a hint of self-consciousness. She normally cared little for urbane courtesies, but his was offered with such casual ease that she couldn’t resist taking his hand as she rose from the chair. It was a soft but strong hand, steady. She could get used to that hand in hers.
Stop it! she told herself, remembering her thoughts from only moments before. No. No!
She released his hand and he sat, his fingers flying over the keyboard, her data screen giving way to a blur of arcane scripts, seemingly indecipherable codes and file trees. Yet he seemed to know exactly what he was doing, homing in like a guided missile until he finally leaned back.
“Do you go on the Internet here?” he asked.
It wasn’t an accusation, although that was strictly forbidden by company policy. It was simply a question.
“No,” she answered.
“Then someone on the day shift does.” He tapped another couple of keys. “Yeah, it was downloaded this afternoon. Dumb.”
“What is it?” she asked.
“Oh, the day shift person downloaded a game. I guess things were slow, or he was just lazy. What he didn’t know is that he also downloaded a virus.”
“Yikes.”
“Relax,” he said. “It hadn’t detonated yet. It had only just propagated to the mainframe. Just give me a moment and I’ll have the little bugger gone.”
“Of course.”
He tapped a few more keys, and the computer made a self-satisfied beep. He turned in the chair. “All done.”
“Thank you.”
He smiled. That smile again. Dammit. “No problem. That’s why they pay me to be here. And don’t worry, I’ll make sure the report says it was the day shift guy who did it. You won’t get in any trouble.”
She nodded. That smile was cruel, tearing the scar tissue she’d wrapped around her heart. No. No!
“Oh, your chair,” he said, a quiet laugh escaping. “Now it’s me who’s out in space.”
He rose and edged around her in the cubicle as they traded places and she sat. He paused for just another moment at the entrance to her cubicle; then the smile fell. “Well, back to the salt mines for me.”
“Me, too,” she said. “Thanks again.”
“My pleasure,” he said before walking away.
Moments later
Cal’s head poked over the cubicle wall, a conspiratorial smile on his face.
“Don’t even think it!” she said.
“Consider it not thought,” he said. “At least now I know how to get you to take a break, just send you a virus.”
“Cal…”
He raised his hands. “Okay, okay. But he was cute.”
Her brows arched. “Huh?”
He chuckled, then stopped. “Oh, my. You didn’t know. You thought…”
“Well, if you’re…why are you always fawning over me and pestering me?”
He patted the top of the cubicle. “Because there’s more to life than this. And you’re missing too much of it. I figured you needed a friend.”
A distant part of her said she ought to scrape her jaw off the floor. Instead she simply nodded.
“Back to your salt mines?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
Something in his voice wavered. She realized he’d just taken a risk, and though she was turning away for her own reasons, he could read that as something else. There were days when life was just too damn complicated.
“Cal?”
His eyes and nose poked back above the wall, like the World War Two-era Kilroy drawings. “Yes?”
“Thanks.”
The eyes smiled. “No problem. Now let me get back to work, will ya?”
She laughed. “Yes. The salt must be mined.”
And a love story had to be avoided at all costs.