Home to Laura

chapter EIGHT



NICK SECURED A room in the small library for Monday afternoon.

Salem Pearce brought half a dozen elders with him, one man so old Nick thought they should have emergency responders stationed nearby. Just in case.

Soft-spoken and intelligent, Pearce seemed noncombative and open to solutions that might not be readily apparent. If Salem had come to the meeting with harsh or unreasonable demands, Nick would have tossed him out and torn down the house and built without a touch of conscience, but he liked that Pearce was strategic and subtle.

Not that Salem needed to know that. In business, it wasn’t smart to give in too easily.

Nick had researched Salem on the internet. Heavily involved in his tribe’s history, he devoted his days to bringing it to light and to life, and to educating the young of his tribe.

When asked, the professor had raved about Salem. If this project were going to work, so that Nick could still build his resort while honoring the native culture, he wanted to work with someone intelligent and reasonable.

While they waited for the library to get the key, Nick talked to Salem and took his measure.

“Tell me about what you’re doing to preserve your culture.”

“I’ve been making CDs. I talk to the elders and they teach me the language and I record it. They are the last who know the language. If my generation takes no steps to preserve it, it will disappear.”

Nick tried to imagine losing his language. It would be gut-wrenching.

“What else?”

“I want to preserve women’s art. Beading moccasins. Painting on tepees. Preparation of the food the elders grew up on.”

“You’re really into it, aren’t you?” Nick asked, while the librarian approached from down the hallway and unlocked the door.

“Totally.”

Admirable.

They seated themselves around a small conference table. Nick would have to make sure the resort housed good conference facilities to entice business people who wanted to hold meetings in the morning and then enjoy a round of golf in the afternoon.

“The challenge, as I see it,” he said, broaching the heart of the problem, “is that there are no clearly marked burial grounds. There’s no way to know where individual bodies were buried.”

He turned to the elders. “Isn’t that so?”

“Yes, that is so, but they are there. On that land.”

Nick glanced at the historian, who said, “It’s true. I’ve looked through what limited archives there are and a migratory route did, indeed, run straight across your land.”

“Is there any way that you—” he gestured toward the professor “—and you—” he gestured toward the elders “—could confer and come up with a good guess exactly where that route ran?”

“What do you have in mind?” Salem asked.

“If it didn’t actually cross where the house now stands, I can go ahead and build.”

When Salem would have objected, Nick raised his hand. “I know that you won’t want tourists running roughshod over burial sites, so I have an idea.”

Salem smiled, a restrained slip of his lips, willing to listen but maybe taking things with a grain of salt. Native Americans had been burned in the past. “What’s your idea?”

“There must be college students studying archaeology who would be happy to spend the summer on a dig in Colorado. I would fund the operation. The elders and the professor could make an educated guess where we could start. Every artifact or bone would be handed over to you.”

“That would disturb our dead.” Salem shifted in his seat. “I’m not comfortable with that. Where would we bury them?”

“If you can’t find a place, we can come up with a solution together.”

“Still, uprooting our ancestors...”

“There’s more,” Nick said. “I would be willing to build an education center on a piece of the land and devote it exclusively to Indian affairs.”

“Okay, I’m intrigued. You have my interest.”

“Enough to consider running it? I would pay a good salary.”

Salem sat up straight. “Me?”

“Are you interested?”

He grinned, his teeth white against permanently tanned skin. “Hell, yes.” Handsome devil.

“There will be a lot to work out, but I’ll pay you, the elders and Professor Hampson a consultant’s fee until we build.”

Nick stood. “Professor, the second you and the elders have any idea where it’s clear for me to build on the land, let me know. I’ve got a construction crew sitting around on my dime doing nothing. This delay is costing me a fortune.”

He left the room, but Salem stopped him in the hallway.

“About the design of the building?”

Nick nodded.

“Could the architecture incorporate our heritage, our sensibilities, the things we used to use to decorate our clothing and tepees? Can the building harmonize with nature and honor the land as well as the people?”

“Fair questions,” Nick said. “I’ll call the architect to see if he can get down here this week. He can look at the land and talk to you before he starts. Later, he can fine-tune it so it fits the land and the history of your people.”

Salem looked taken aback. “Why are you doing this?”

“Because I learned the hard way it doesn’t always have to be all my way. Sometimes it pays to listen to other people.” And sometimes you had to give to get.

This could be a win-win situation rather than a knockdown drag-out fight that could land in the courts and stay there for years.

He shook Salem’s hand and walked away, secure that he’d found the right man for the job.

He was a good judge of character and Salem was a good man.

Back in his car, Nick called his architect and arranged for him to fly down the following day.

He rolled down the window and called out to Salem. “My architect is flying in tomorrow. Are you available to meet on the Jordan land on Wednesday?”

Salem smiled broadly. “Yeah.”

“Good. 10:00 a.m. See you at the Jordan house then.”

* * *

OLIVIA CAME OUT of one of Aiden’s bedrooms where she had been changing and walked down the hallway to the garden room at the back of the house. Her knees were shaking. She couldn’t seem to stop them. She’d tried.

Lord knew she was trying to be sophisticated about this. An artist wanted to sculpt her. It flattered her. It terrified her.

She wore only a white bedsheet and her bra and panties. The only person who ever saw her in so little, or less, was her doctor, and she wasn’t the least bit attracted to him.

How was she to get through today without embarrassing herself? Without letting her hopeless infatuation with Aiden show?

She would have to do what she always did with him—act the prude, like an uptight, classy little prig.

John had always told her she had an innate elegance, but she turned it into something cold and brittle in her dealings with Aiden.

She had no choice.

When she entered the solarium, Aidan approached and placed his hands on top of hers where she had the sheet in a death grip against her chest.

“Easy,” he whispered. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

He urged her to the far end of the glass room where he’d draped a white backdrop from the ceiling and across the floor. She stepped from the carpet and onto the backdrop and found it warm on her bare soles, from the sun that poured in through the windows.

“Stand right here,” he directed. “Let me drape this differently. Let go.”

She eased her hold on the bedsheet. When it fell from one shoulder revealing her bra strap, Aiden made a sound that Olivia couldn’t interpret.

Before she knew what he was about, he reached his hands into the back of the sheet and unhooked her bra.

“Take it off,” he ordered.

No. Not at her age. She’d never been a big woman, but she had enough. She’d had a good figure, but even smaller breasts lost the fight with gravity over time.

“I’m fifty-eight years old,” she said, appalled by how stuffy she sounded. Today, I’m fifty-eight. I’m getting older by the minute.

He stared for a long time. “You’re beautiful.”

“For my age, you mean.” There was that bitterness again. Why, oh why, couldn’t she grow old with grace and acceptance? Because she loved a much younger man.

“Don’t,” he said.

“Don’t what?”

“Put words I don’t mean into my mouth. You’re a beautiful woman. When a man gives you a compliment, smile and say thank you.”

She smiled, but it felt brittle enough to crack her cheeks. “Thank you.”

“I’ll turn my back,” he said. “Take off the bra. I won’t see anything.”

Her fingers trembled but she managed to remove a frothy bit of lavender lace and tossed it onto a settee.

He turned back around and eased the sheet from one of her shoulders until he could pull one arm out and then the other. He hadn’t wanted her bra straps to show. But did it really matter? He wasn’t photographing her. He was sculpting her. So he could add or take away whatever he wanted.

Behind her now, he eased the fabric down her back. Farther. And then farther still. She pressed it against the tops of her breasts so it wouldn’t slip down at the front. How low did he intend to go?

She found out when she felt his wet lips against the small of her back. She yelped and gripped the sheet while his big hands spanned her waist. She started to throb in all of the right places.

Oh, she hadn’t felt this in such a long time.

Sunlight warmed her closed eyelids.

His fingers traveled her spine then around her waist and up until they brushed the bottoms of her breasts. She gasped and her eyes flew open. He was inside the sheet.

“Let go,” he whispered in her ear, his warm breath feathering her neck and collarbone.

“What are you doing?”

“Loving you.”

His fingers moved with authority under her hands and the sheet fell away. She caught it over her stomach and leaned her head back against his chest. He cupped her breasts, his calluses rough and abrasive and delicious against her nipples.

Then those calloused fingers slid down her stomach, moving quickly. Too quickly.

When he drew the sheet from her nerveless fingers and the warm sun caressed her skin, all of it, she gasped. Standing in a room drenched with light from floor-to-ceiling windows, her poor body had nowhere to hide. Aiden would see everything, every stretch mark that three children had inflicted upon her, every bump and groove of cellulite, every flaw.

“I can’t do this,” she cried and ran from the room, hoping that he wasn’t watching her inelegant retreat. In the bedroom where she’d undressed, she grabbed her clothes and put them on, her hands shaking. Her bra was still in the other room.

She didn’t care. He could keep it—a souvenir of her humiliation.

She stepped out of the room.

“Don’t go,” he said, striding down the hallway toward her. “Do you think I care about imperfection?”

“You’re an artist. You look for beauty.”

“When I saw you naked—” she cringed but he plowed on “—I saw you, Olivia. You! A mature, beautiful woman. I want to love you. We can do it in the dark. We can do it wherever, however, you want. I want you.”

“I thought I was here to model, not to be mauled.” Her voice shook, because his mauling had been so delicious.

“Is that how it felt?” he asked, staring down at her in both puzzlement and understanding. “Like I was pawing you?”

No! “Answer my question. Did you ask me here to model?”

“Yes.”

“Then what was all that about?”

“You’re an attractive woman, Olivia. I’m crazy about you. I want to make love to you.”

To me! He wants to make love to me.

Hope arose, but not as quickly as fear. “I’m fifteen years older than you.”

“What difference does that make?”

“Look at you! You’re in your prime while I’m over-the-hill.”

His expression hardened. “There’s nothing over-the-hill about you.”

She leaned back against the wall, because the strength of his personality weakened her knees. “What would people think?”

“I don’t care. There’s passion under that contained poised exterior of yours and I want to unlock it.”

“Then what?”

“Does it matter what comes next? We’re a pair of grown-ups. We should be able to love without worrying about age or what society will think. We should be able to burn up the sheets if we want to.” He stepped close, the heat from his expressive body singeing her. “And we could, Olivia. You and me. We could.”

His hazel eyes bored into her, deep into her quaking cowardly soul. Cowardly, yes, because she couldn’t do this.

She stepped away from him.

It was easy enough for him to say age didn’t matter when he looked like a god and had a body that wouldn’t age for years to come.

When she drove away, she wrapped her shaky equilibrium in anger, because it was easier to do than to try to overcome her terror.