big house, see every corner of the world before they died together in
their sleep. But just three years later they were. . . gone.”
“I’m sorry, Jim.”
He shrugged. “It’s a long time ago. Twenty-five years.” He looked at
his wristwatch. “Come on, let’s go. It’ll take us four hours to reach
the farm, and it’s already nine o’clock.”
At the Laguna Hills Motor Inn, Holly quickly changed into jeans and a
blue-checkered blouse, then packed the rest of her belongings.
Jim put her suitcase in the trunk of his car.
While she returned her room key and paid her bill at the front desk in
the motel office, she was aware of him watching her from behind the
wheel of his Ford. She would have been disappointed, of course, if he
had not liked to watch her. But every time she looked through the
plate-glass window at him, he was so motionless, so cool and
expressionless behind his heavily tinted sunglasses, that his undivided
attention was disconcert.
She wondered if she was doing the right thing by going with him to the
Santa Ynez Valley. When she walked out of the office and got in the car
with him, he would be the only person in the world who knew where she
was. All of her notes about him were in her suitcase; they could
disappear with her. Then she would be just a woman, alone, who had
vanished while on vacation.
As the clerk finished filling out the credit-card form, Holly considered
phoning her parents in Philadelphia to let them know where she was going
and with whom. But she would only alarm them and be on the phone half
an hour trying to reassure them that she was going to be just fine.
Besides, she had already decided that the darkness in Jim was less
important than the light, and she had made a commitment to him. If he
occasionally made her uneasy. . . well, that was part of what had drawn
her to him in the first place. A sense of danger sharpened the edge of
his appeal. At heart, he was a good man.
It was foolish to worry about her safety after she had already made love
to him. For a woman, in a way that could never be true for a man, the
first night of sexual surrender involved one of the moments of greatest
vulnerability in a relationship. Assuming, of course, that she had
surrendered not solely because of physical need but because she loved
him. And Holly loved him.
“I’m in love with him,” she said aloud, surprised because she had
convinced herself that his appeal was largely the result of his
exceptional male grace, animal magnetism, and mystery.
The clerk, ten years younger than Holly and therefore more inclined to
think that love was everywhere and inevitable, grinned at her. “It’s
great, isn’t it?”
Signing the charge slip, Holly said, “Do you believe in love at first
sight?”
“Why not?”
“Well, it’s not first sight, really. I’ve known the guy since August
twelfth, which is. . . sixteen days.”
“And you’re not married yet?” the clerk joked.
When Holly went out to the Ford and got in beside Jim, she said, “When
we get where we’re going, you won’t carve me up with a chainsaw and bury
me under the windmill, will you?”
Apparently he understood her sense of vulnerability and took no offense
, for he said with mock solemnity, “Oh, no. It’s full-up under the
mill.
I’ll have to bury pieces of you all over the farm.”
She laughed. She was an idiot for fearing him.
He leaned over and kissed her. It was a lovely, lingering kiss.
When they parted, he said, “I’m taking as big a risk as you are.”
“Let me assure you, I’ve never hacked anyone to bits with an axe.”
“I mean it. I haven’t been lucky in love.”
“Me neither.”
“This time will be different for both of us.”
He gave her another kiss, shorter and sweeter than the first one, then
started the car and backed out of the parking space.
In a determined attempt to keep the dying cynic in her alive, Holly