Seeing Stars Page 19

  "Hey, Claire! We're just cleaning up and we'll be ready to work on the scope. You brought pizza—hey, Tim, pizza!"

  He scrambled down the ladder at a speed that made Claire catch her breath. "Mac's wasted," he announced. "Did you know he spent the whole night at the hospital, that he actually saw Grace's baby being born?"

  "Pretty amazing, isn't it?"

  "No kidding. Mac says tomorrow, if we want, he'll take us all up to the hospital. We can't see Grace 'cause she's resting, but we can look through the window at the baby."

  Claire smiled, thinking he sounded like a normal boy, excited and confident.

  "Where's Bla—Mac?"

  "He went to take some scrap to the dump. He's been cleaning up, sanding and stuff all day. A guy shouldn't use power tools when he's missed a night's sleep."

  "No," she agreed. "What about Tim?"

  "Over here," shouted the older boy.

  Easier this way, she decided. She'd talk to the boys now, before Blake returned. Then... well, she'd deal with Blake when he arrived.

  With the boat-building cleanup mostly done and the pizza half eaten, Claire asked, "Do you think Mac would be willing to shift around tomorrow's schedule a bit? I have to leave a day earlier than I thought, and I was hoping we could do our last session on the telescope in the morning."

  "And work on Lady Orion during the afternoon and evening?" said Tim. Jake was frowning, but Tim said, "Sure, Mac won't mind as long as we get our time in on the boat. He's into this telescope thing, too. He was saying, when we've got it done, he'd take us out on Mount Walker—no lights around anywhere, and we can set it up. Do you figure we'll see even more out there, Claire?"

  "Yes, if you do it on a moonless night." She started sorting through the already cut pieces of plywood with Jake, thinking of these boys and Blake out on the summit on a star-filled night, wishing impossibly that she could be there too.

  They were working when she heard the crunch of Blake's truck wheels on the gravel outside, and Claire said to Tim, "That's good enough. You've got all the wax off. Now, if you wipe the tube with a soft cloth you can put it aside to paint. You don't want to paint it with all this dust in the air."

  "Yeah," said Jake, bending over the half-built box as he worked on smoothing one of the joints. "Mac says we should try to get all the sanding done by tomorrow night, on the boat interior and the scope. Then we'll vacuum and give the dust a chance to settle, and we can put on the last coat of preservative and paint and varnish Saturday."

  She forced herself not to look up when she heard his footsteps, and she concentrated on the joint Jake was sanding. Then the boy stopped sanding and she had no choice.

  "Hey, Mac," Jake called out, "can we work on the telescope tomorrow morning?" Jake sounded less certain of the answer than Tim had been, and he added hurriedly, "We can still work on the boat the same amount of hours, just later—right until eight-thirty. Claire has to go tomorrow, and we need more time with her. She's got to show us about the rocker box."

  She looked up and found Blake staring straight into her eyes. "You're leaving tomorrow?"

  Words tumbled through her mind, but not the words she'd planned. More lies. She could say she'd had a phone call, an emergency.

  "Yes, I have to go tomorrow." She swallowed and said, "I can help the boys in the morning if you'll let them shift their work around."

  "Can we?" asked Tim.

  "Fine." His eyes promised her that they'd talk about this later.

  She'd just have to get through it somehow. After what she'd done, she didn't deserve to get away scott-free.

  "I phoned to order the mirrors and eyepiece today," she said. "They're coming from Santa Cruz. They'll be here in a week."

  "Rad!" said Jake.

  Tim said, "Nobody says rad anymore. It's way out of date."

  "I don't care," said Jake.

  She got through the work session by focusing on the boys, the pieces of plywood, the instructions. By keeping her head down and her eyes away from Blake. He knew something was wrong, of course he did, but he could hardly challenge her in front of the boys.

  Neither Jake nor Tim wanted to quit when quitting time came, and Claire encouraged them to carry on for another half hour, putting off the moment when she had to face Blake and say her piece.

  He was angry. She didn't know what she had expected, because now she realized she'd been focused on what she was going to do, what she was going to say, and she'd been assuming somehow that he'd just listen, maybe even agree.

  "Quitting time," said Blake at eight-thirty. "Let's clean up and get out of here."

  Claire helped with the cleanup, then shrugged into her jacket and picked up her purse because she wanted to get to the door with the boys, didn't want to be alone here with Blake once they left.

  "Not you," he said, snagging her hand as she stepped past him. "I want to talk to you." It sounded more like a principal's warning to a student than a lover's request.

  She pulled her hand away. "Why don't I meet you somewhere? The Surf?"

  "Too public, too noisy, and the way you're acting, I'm not sure you'd be there. What the hell's going on, Claire?"

  "Nothing."

  "That's crap. Grace said she phoned you. What did she say this time?"

  "It's not Grace." She shrugged, swallowed, and said, "I need to leave. This isn't... I'm not... I think the whole thing was..."

  "What?"

  "A mistake."

  She'd have understood his anger, but his laughter bewildered her.

  "I don't believe you, sweetheart." He caught her hand again and pulled her through the door. "Come on, let's go home. Whatever it is, we'll talk."

  She pulled to a stop, her hand still imprisoned in his, and he turned back, his eyebrows raised and fine lines of tiredness radiating from the corners of his eyes.

  "Not your place."

  He shrugged. "Yours, then."

  "If we go to your place, we'll go to bed. I don't want that."

  She saw anger flare in his eyes, and he snapped, "If you don't want it, Claire, it's not going to happen."

  "I didn't mean that. I meant... we can't make love."

  He let her hand go, standing in a way that reminded her of dangerous gunfighters in the Old West. "You're not making a lot of sense here."

  "I know," she said miserably. "I had it planned differently."

  "Planned?" He sighed. "Look, we can't talk here, and I'm damned if I'm up to sitting in a restaurant and listening to you tell me why you're heading for San Francisco or Timbuktu tomorrow. Get in my truck. We'll go to my place." He spread both hands out and said, "I won't touch you. You won't touch me. We'll talk."

  She gave in, because it was either that or just get in her Honda and drive away, which would leave her having to face him in the morning.

  "I'll follow you," she said, "in my car."

  "Will you?" He considered her. "You've got a look in your eyes, like a kid who's about to bolt."

  "I will follow you. We'll talk at your house."

  Outside, she thought, on the veranda. With night to mask her eyes, because last night he'd told her he liked her honesty, and today, somehow, he must have seen something in her eyes that told him she might lie.

  He locked the door to the boat shed. "You go first. I'll follow."

  He was probably right not to trust her, so how could she argue? She got in and started the engine. After she pulled out, she saw him backing out in her rearview mirror. When she stopped at the light at the highway, he pulled up right behind her. She turned left and so did he, and if she failed to turn right halfway up the hill, she knew he'd follow her all the way to the condo.

  When she parked at his house, she thought for a minute that he meant to park right behind her, trapping her vehicle so she wouldn't be able to leave unless he moved. Instead, he parked beside her, then got out and opened her driver's door so she lost the minute she'd needed to prepare.

  She walked beside him to the house.

  "On t
he veranda," she said. "We can talk outside."

  He shrugged and gestured to the chairs.

  "Pick your seat."

  She picked the one nearest the stairs.

  "A drink?" he asked.

  "Yes, please." A drink would give her something to hold in her hands, and maybe alcohol would help her get through the things she needed to say.

  Then she remembered the child who might now be growing inside her and said, "No. No, I don't want a drink."

  He walked into the house and came back with a beer for himself, but he didn't sit in the chair across from her. Instead, he went to the rail and leaned there, taking a long swig from the bottle in his hand.

  "I'm trying to figure out what's thrown you into a panic," he said finally, "and it seems to me it has to be the fact that I told you I loved you."

  She curled her hands around the ends of the chair arms. It was a wicker chair, its texture rough under her palm.

  "I'm not in a panic."

  "Aren't you? How would you explain this sudden change of plans... of attitude? For the last three days, we've had some pretty intense lovemaking, and I think once you got a chance to think about it, that you got scared. You've been avoiding relationships all your life. That was the whole deal with me, wasn't it? You wanted a week of excitement, of romance, without the risk of a relationship."

  She tightened her fingers on the chair. "You said it yourself. Low-risk, no strings, not because I'm afraid, but because anything else is impossible. You seem to have forgotten that I live on the top of a mountain in Arizona."

  "I haven't forgotten, sweetheart." She watched his silhouette as he took another long swig of beer. "But it's just a mountain."

  This wasn't going the way she'd planned. She had lines to say, words to put between them, and she was doing a rotten job of it.

  "What do you mean, it's just a mountain?"

  "I mean," he said slowly, his tiredness showing in huskiness around the edges of his voice. "I mean, sweetheart, that I don't know how we can carry on a relationship between Port Townsend and Arizona, but we'll find a way."

  Meet in the middle, she thought, flights between airports. She'd worked it all out in the middle of her tangle, and maybe it would have worked if she hadn't lied to him. She was halfway out of the chair, halfway to pacing the veranda as she tried to talk, when she realized how vulnerable she'd be pacing. He need only reach out a hand, as he had so often in the last few days, to pull her close to him.

  She sank back into the chair and said dully, "It's impossible. I told you I had an appointment in San Francisco Saturday. I'm being interviewed for the position of research astronomer at an observatory in Chile. I expect to get the job."

  Another lie. How could she know who they'd choose?

  She heard the faint thud as he set the beer bottle down on the rail.

  "You're planning to take the job? Even now?"

  "It's what I've worked for all my life."

  She wished she could sink into the silence, wished she could fall into some Star Trek fantasy and that Scottie would beam her aboard, out of this scene.

  "You're telling me that after everything we've shared together, you don't want more?" His voice was harsh and she was glad she couldn't see his eyes.

  "If we... I can't. Not at the cost of my career. The stars are my life, Blake. It's what I've always wanted. You can't expect me to give that up."

  "The stars are everywhere, Claire. Just look up, right here. The sky is full of stars."

  "But not an observatory," she said desperately. "Observatories are on mountaintops, have to be, and mountains... most mountains are a long way from shipyards."

  His voice hardened. "Is that why you're so devoted to your career, Claire? Because it keeps you safe?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "You don't want a real lover, day after day. It's a lot safer to have the stars as your big love. The stars can't disappoint you, can't make demands the way a lover can. You're afraid to love, afraid you'll be hurt, left alone the same way you were when your mother died, then your father. The stars make a damned fine excuse for you to avoid getting too close to anyone."

  She couldn't stay still any longer. She pushed to her feet and paced away from him. "What is it you think I should do, Blake? Give up the thing I love most for you?"

  "I love you, Claire. I want to marry you. I want us to have children, a family."

  "Well, that's"—she gulped—"impossible. Unless you're planning to close up your shipyard and move to Chile. Are you willing to do that, Blake?"

  "You know damned well I can't. I've got people depending on me here. Who's depending on you, Claire? I'm prepared to make some sacrifices, but if you go to Chile, how do you expect we'll have a chance to work anything out?"

  She stopped her pacing at the far end of the veranda and said soberly. "We can't. I've wanted to be an astronomer ever since my father helped me build my first telescope. I won't give it up." She was tensed from her neck to her ankles, expecting him to come closer, to touch her and tangle her with sensation.

  "No," he said. "I can see you won't. But don't fool yourself, Claire. You may be honest and direct with other people, but you're lying to yourself. This isn't about your career. It's about you. You're afraid of living, afraid of loving."

  She shook her head although he surely couldn't see because she'd stopped in shadows, hiding from his words. "This is about who I am. My father helped me build my first telescope. If he were here now, he'd understand that I can't make any other choice. You say you love me, but if you did, you'd know... you'd understand."

  "Claire..." He left the rail and walked half the distance to her, stopping near the door. "Honey, he wouldn't understand at all. Nobody would, because you're lying to yourself, and if your father were here now, he'd probably tell you that some things are more important than a job."

  "You have no idea what he'd say." She mustn't cry, mustn't let the tears escape, and if they did, if the moisture leaked down her cheeks in the dark, whatever happened, she couldn't let a sob break from her throat.

  "Maybe I don't know what he'd say," Blake admitted, "but what I do know is that he left the job he loved, turned his back on success in his own career, for his motherless daughter."

  Even the tears leaking from her eyes froze. "That's not true. My father loved learning, he loved... he valued knowledge above everything."

  "He valued his child above everything. Why else would a brilliant physicist like Frederick Welland come to a backwater town like this and take a job teaching school for the rest of his life?"

  "That's not how it was. You weren't there. He wanted to move, wanted us to live someplace quiet, wanted to teach."

  His laugh rang harshly on the night. "Do your research, Claire. You've got a Ph.D. You should know how to research a scientist." He closed the distance between them, bent his head and pressed cold lips to hers.

  "So long, honey. It's been memorable."

  "If you... if you..." She fought back tears. "This is so mixed up. I shouldn't have—"

  "Probably not, but you did, and it's time you hopped in your red SUV and lit out of here, the way you've been wanting to."

  "No. I..." She had to tell him. How could she have thought she could keep a secret like this? He would hate her, if he didn't already, but he had a right to know what she'd done. "Blake?"

  "I've had it, honey. Get out."

  She'd do it in a letter. Maybe it was the coward's way, but at least she wouldn't have to witness his reaction.

  "Now," he growled. He grabbed her arm and started walking her to the stairs. "I'm tired, and I'm mad, and... just get the hell out of here, Claire, before I do something we'll both regret, like grabbing you and proving to you exactly how many lies you're telling yourself."

  "I told you I didn't want to make love."

  He rammed his hands into his pockets. "Yeah, you did, and we both know it's a lie."

  "You said you wouldn't—"

  "So I did, which makes it jus
t about time you left."

  "Past time," she agreed. She hadn't told him she loved him, and she'd wanted to do that, but he wouldn't believe her if she said it now. Maybe it wasn't right to tell him anyway, because it couldn't help him understand. "I'll... I'll write you."

  "No. Don't."

  Mac watched her walk down the stairs, then he turned away and slammed into the house because if he stayed, he didn't know what he'd do. Go after her, probably, which had to be one of the stupider options.

  There came a time when a man with any sense packed it in. So far, he hadn't exhibited much sense, because the lady had been clear about her priorities from the start. One week. An affair.

  He was the one who'd gone out of bounds, and he'd been called on it.

  Halfway up the stairs he heard her Honda start, but she didn't drive away until he'd reached the bedroom. Gone, he thought. Good. He hadn't seen a bed in thirty-six hours and he needed sleep the way a man in the desert needed water.

  He wouldn't get it here, he thought sourly, staring at the tangle of sheets they'd left behind Monday morning. He was so tired it shouldn't have mattered who'd been in the damned bed, but it did.

  Two doors down the hall, he yanked open the door to Bobby's old room. The bed was stripped, had been for months, ever since Bobby's last visit. What the hell was he doing, living in this rambling mausoleum of a house with the kids all gone? He should sell it, rent an apartment somewhere handy to the shipyard.

  He prowled back to the linen closet, ignored the neatly folded sheets and blankets, and yanked out a sleeping bag. He'd get some sleep. That's all he wanted, all he'd been aching for since somewhere in the middle of the night.

  Grace....

  He'd cried, real tears flowing over as he gripped her hand there in the delivery room and stared at the brand-new baby, still covered with slick fluids. Life, and as he held his sister's hand, an inadequate substitute for her husband, he'd remembered being deep inside Claire, their eyes tangling, their souls together as deeply as their bodies, and he'd had one clear vision of how it would be when he held her hand and tried like hell to be what help he could as she fought to bring their child into the world.

  Damn fool.