Chapter 10

“W here are we going?” Lillian asked John as he twisted the key in the ignition. The sun burned through the windshield and heated her.

“On a tour of galleries. It’s open gallery weekend in San Luis Obispo.” He shot her a grin that made her body react. His beautiful, full-lipped mouth spread, and the black hair on his jaw reminded her of the previous night when he buried his lips and tongue between her thighs.

She squirmed and touched a bead of sweat on her temple with her forefinger. “What a wonderful surprise, John.” She leaned to kiss that sensual mouth. “You know I’ve missed the art scene since our Chicago days.”

Hours later, immersed in oils of country houses and watercolors of children on the seashore, modern Bauhaus primaries and Warhol-esque knockoffs, they entered an airy loft brimming with sculpture.

Lillian froze. Every hair on her body stood erect as if her dream man had stroked her immortal tattoo. Her lungs constricted and a clot of fear wedged itself in her throat.

At the center of the space a podium held an object too small to identify. But that object was a planet, and she was its moon.

Still unbalanced from her dreams last night, she avoided the center of the room and instead revolved around it, fearful of glancing at it. John struck up a conversation with the gallery owner. His voice reached her, rising and falling in pitch depending on his excitement level.

The smell of her dream was still in her nose—musk and leather.

Her nipples bunched up as tight as knots. What can I do? How can I stop this? I will stop this somehow. I’ll stop it for John. She said this to Lillian, but did Lillian exist within the walls of her soul? She could feel only him .

The closer she got to the object on the podium, the more it pulsed like a heart. Tremors washed over her, and she felt jerky on her high heels. Slowly, she drifted toward it. Blood rushed in her ears.

She paused before the small stone and stared through teary eyes. He was all over it, had formed it with the smallest hammer and finest chisel, though it looked like he’d flexed a slip of clay. His image was reflected in the granite sheen of each curling petal, so fine and thin at the edge that Lillian thought the light would gleam though it. His rumpled hair tumbled over his face and carving dust clung to the sweat on his forearms. His mouth was solemn. She wanted to kiss it and make it laugh for her.

Her hand twitched toward the small, perfect rose sculpture, enthralled and terrified. Her thigh muscles burned as if preparing to run. The scent of Old Spice filled her nose and she realized the gallery owner was at her elbow. “Go ahead and touch it if you’d like.”

She extended one finger and stroked the rose’s center. “It’s rock,” she exclaimed, but of course she knew it was rock. She’d seen him carving it.

“It’s magnificent, I know,” the gallery owner was saying. “It’s made by an artist from Vermont. He specializes in granite and I think you’ll agree this is very finely executed. Look at the turn of these petals. Only a master can employ such skill. In fact, most stone artists can’t achieve it in a lifetime of work!”

Lillian knew this was not chance that brought her face to face with another of his artworks. Her soul was unraveling behind her and her dream man was coiling it in like a long rope. He was following her now. She could feel him.

“Who—who is the maker?” she asked in a faraway voice, thinking of the deep blue tattoos on his chest. Her breath caught in anticipation. She needed that name. If she said it, she could Call him from across all space and time, as he had Called her name in her dream, spoken it into her mouth.

When she heard it, she was unprepared.

“The sculptor is Nathan Halbrook.”

Her throat closed off. Her soul had known him, and her mind knew him now. She swung away from the rose sculpture, afraid if she didn’t she might crush it to her breast so her heart would know it too.

Nathan Halbrook. Nathan. Nate. Mine.

John’s voice drifted to her and she glanced around, disoriented, for half of her soul stood in a Vermont farmhouse with Nathan. John was ready to go, holding a white box. Lillian didn’t want to know what that box contained but could guess. It was a ticking bomb.

At the exit, John took her arm and led her across the street and onto a bench at the waterside. The briny wind blew at her face, but she smelled the close heat of two bodies entwined on a feather mattress.

John passed the gift into her trembling hands. She felt green, wanted to drop the box and run. But she desperately wanted what was inside. She wanted to hold the sculpture in place of the man. She parted the tissue paper, cupped the rose to her chest and introduced it to her heart.

* * *

The sun blazed through the window of the train and Lillian stared into it unblinkingly, trying to blind herself. She hoped to burn away all images of Nathan’s lips hovering over her throat. And she hoped to obliterate the adoring black eyes of John. The cool weight of the rose sculpture rested on her palm, fitting as though carved for her hand.

The train they had boarded barreled south along the California coast, and John paced the confines of the cabin as if caged. He threw worried looks at her as he passed, but she could find nothing within herself to comfort him. She counted his rotations…nine…ten…eleven…twelve. He threw himself in the seat opposite her and buried his head in his hands.

“Is it him, then?” he asked in a muffled way.

Pain rippled through her. His words shot her directly in the heart.

He knows, he knows.

“Him?”

“The name you saw on the USS Arizona Memorial. Robert Albright.”

She jerked. Her mind couldn’t be farther from Robert Albright just now, but at the sound of his name a sharp pain welled inside her. Through a glaze of tears, she picked at a fingernail. “My mortal husband,” she whispered.

John’s eyes snapped to hers. They glittered like coal. “Yes.”

Memories circled her mind, soft brown eyes and gentle caresses, riding on the handlebars of Robert’s bike and sharing ice cream cones, the day Robert had his head shorn when he joined the service, crushing her against the kitchen sink and kissing her, kissing, kissing.

A tear slipped from beneath her lashes. “He was a good man, and I loved him.”

John twisted his gaze from hers.

Seeing his pain filled her with remorse. She climbed into his lap. “John. My love for Robert was a mortal’s for a mortal. What I feel for you is different.”

He tucked her head beneath his chin and encircled her with his arms. She felt the tension flood out of him, but her anxiety was just beginning. The deep, sickening tremor in her core grew. Yes, her love of John was different. But how to explain her overpowering need for her dream man?

* * *

Lillian eyed the cotton sleeves concealing John’s immortal tattoos. The first time she saw those blue-black bands circling his biceps, she was awestruck. Where did he get them? Had he traveled to an exotic land where such acts were common? No, he explained. It was the mark of immortality. She possessed such a mark on her spine. And then he had spun her to the mirror and made her look.

She gasped, not in shock, but at its loveliness. It was perfectly fitting, as were John’s. The Celtic knot pattern reflected his Irish descent. She knew she could gain comfort by touching his tattoos. The shocking sensation would grant them both calm. He was offering it—his shirt sleeves were rolled up against the fuggy heat of the train car and they beckoned to her. But lines of the same color lived on the chest of another man, and she could not touch John’s.

Nathan Halbrook was following her. She saw his face, sunk in the cradle of his hands, and knew the blame for the hurt he experienced was hers.

When John went out of the train car to retrieve drinks, Lillian put pen to paper and slipped a note into the crack between the seat and wall.

An hour later the train drew into the terminal and she disembarked, still jittery from leaving her gift. Yet she knew he would find it.

The chaos of the train terminal brought violent images of Nathan to mind. Voices of travelers and the barking of announcements echoed off the high ceilings. A wave of dizziness struck her. She felt Nathan’s roar of fury, the pounding of feet on pavement, the thud of fists against metal.

Surfacing from this shaking and dizzy, she released John’s arm and made a beeline for the ladies’ room. She shoved the door against the wall of a stall with an unsteady hand, and for long moments hovered over the toilet, thinking she might vomit. She hadn’t been ill in over half a century, but the back of her tongue was ticklish and her eyes streamed.

She sat abruptly on the toilet seat, weak-kneed, and unrolled a length of toilet paper to wipe her eyes. The paper was frail and rough and separated beneath her tears. Visions flashed through her mind like snapshots. Crooked smile. Mouth to hers. Mouth to spine.

Diving into the perfumed depths of her handbag, she retrieved the rose sculpture. Beneath the flickering fluorescent lights, it glowed like alien rock. She brought the cool, smooth rose to her lips and murmured, “I’m sorry.”

When she returned to John, he wound a supportive arm about her waist and led her into the sultry San Diego air. But he could not help her from the confusion of her mind.

In the back of a taxi on the way to the airport, she was haunted by Visions of Nathan’s sensual mouth set in his blond beard. She had seen those lips on her too many times to remain indifferent. She also saw his rigid forearm slung over his face, making her realize she had never seen his eyes.

She thought of John’s, deep and black. Robert Albright’s were hazel and gold-flecked, and her own were grey and almond-shaped. She bit her lower lip brutally.

John stroked the crest of her cheek. “I promise you can sleep on the plane, Lily.” Then he loaded her onto another plane carrying her to yet another city separating her from Nathan.

The past few days were a cyclone in her mind. The cities blurred together, the taxis, the jets and hotel beds all merged into one. She stared at the dusting of black hair on John’s knuckles, thinking of the blond.

As the jet engine vibrated to life and John fastened her seatbelt around her waist with a smile and pat of her knee, she panicked. Where was she headed? Behind her, she heard the strains of a song bursting its confines of a man’s headphones. The pilot’s voice sounded through the white walls of her prison, tinny and distorted.

She was so isolated and treasured these past decades in John’s care that she had failed to enter this new world. She streaked through the atmosphere at a thousand miles an hour, when once she had lain in a quiet bed with Robert and listened to the rain patter the roof of their home.

Lillian.

The voice slammed her, defying all laws of space and time. It Called to her.

Beside her, John was deep in conversation with a Christian minister and oblivious that Lillian’s soul had been caved in by this voice.

She wound her arms about her torso to hold him in. Nathan.

Can you see me?

Yes , she immediately answered. Oh, God, he’s inside me. He is part of me. And I need him.

Through his eyes, she saw the bit of paper she had left for him on the train.

Thank you . His voice reverberated in her soul, a balm to her tremors.

I had to.

Are you alone?

No. Please go away.

Never . His mental voice low and passionate. I’m coming.

Horror filled her. She squeezed her eyes shut and thought with all her strength, Don’t. You can’t.

I’ll follow my star . His voice dissipated, falling away, leaving her empty and breathless.

The exchange was as blinding as the sun on the train to San Diego. It blocked all thought, memory, sense of time. She might have spoken with Nathan for seconds or days, she didn’t know.

When he said, I’m coming , her hair stood on end. As the sensation of Nathan’s voice engulfed her from all angles disappeared, Lillian’s heart plummeted. Oh, God, she thought. Make it quick.