Maybe that’s a fantasy. But I can’t help staring. The dark, rich brown of her skin stands out against the delicate blue of the dress. And that dress, by God, it shows what a real woman looks like in her own beautiful skin--just like it was made for her. I don’t know much about any of that shit, but I know a knockout when I see her, and I can’t stop staring.
“What are you looking at?”
“A beautiful woman walking down my staircase. One who’s going to make every other bachelor jealous.” She smiles, and brightness fills her eyes. The quickness of her response is unabashed and totally natural, and she even puts her delicate fingers to her chest.
“Stop it,” she says as she walks down the last few steps, hanging her head a bit like she’s remembering to be embarrassed. “They’ll just wonder what you’re doing with the girl from out of town.”
“Well Star and her husband already know you. And a lot of the parents do too. As for the investors, they’ll warm right up to you. Trust me--I don’t pick out people who I don’t like to work with. Stuck up bullshitters aren’t really my sort.”
“I guess not. They wouldn’t be, would they?” Her voice is soft, and I hear desire hidden there. But instead of throwing her over my shoulder, I offer my arm. To my surprise, she takes it, not casually like when we walked together through the Coming Home Foundation--but more like she’s decided this really is a date.
Or like she’s play-acting it is.
Either way, I don’t give a shit. The most beautiful woman in possibly the entire state at this given time is letting me walk her out to my Range Rover, and I’ll be damned if I don’t feel like the luckiest man alive.
“You’re immature, Rowan. You’ve been with a hundred women, but you act like a geeky high school boy when you ask me out. For a man with so much money, you shouldn’t be acting quite like that...”
Joanna had said that shit with a smile on her face when I first took her out. Back then, I didn’t take in the significance of her words. I didn’t see the red flag for what it was.
I look next to me and see the woman sitting beside me, really see her. She’s sitting there, craning her neck out of the open window to see the stars, completely without pretense, clutching her scarf so it won’t fly out of the window. The air is cold and bitter, swirling around both of us, but I don’t give a damn.
“The stars are amazing out here,” she shouts and looks over at me, her eyes bright. We roll down a steep hill and she clutches at the seat, but she’s still smiling. “I can’t quite get the color right on the mural, so we’re adding a bunch of different colors and mixing them together.” She looks out the window again and back up at the stars. “But I think we can afford to add more purple. That’s what it really needs. More. Purple.”
“It’s looking damn good. I’ll be sad when you’re done with it.”
“Why? Don’t you want to see what it looks like?”
“Hell yes, woman. But I’m not keen on seeing you go back to that damn city.” The words are out before I know what I’m saying, and Cadence rolls up the window and looks at me. I keep my eyes on the road. The lights of Ruidoso are spreading out before us, and soon we’ll be pulling into the Coming Home Foundation.
Cadence turns her eyes back to the road and pretends to ignore what I’ve just said. I can feel her thinking beside me, thinking instead of saying what’s on her mind. I clear my throat and drive on, but the pressure inside of the car makes me feel a little like I’m going to explode. Cadence isn’t saying anything, and the ten minutes remaining for our drive to Ruidoso seems like it’s dragging on into eternity.
“There are a lot of men in the world who think it makes them a pansy to say something like that to a woman. But to me, that means they aren’t real men. They don’t know what they want, but I do.”
I hear her sniff and move around in the silken dress like she’s thinking about what to say. “I’m not quite sure what you mean.”
Dammit woman, how do I get through to you?
Not for the first time, I think about that sad distance I see sometimes in her eyes. This is a woman who moves between confidence and doubt on a daily basis. But it seems to me like the confident woman is the real Cadence. It could be that I don’t know her all that well, but hell, I got a good feeling about that woman the moment I saw her, and I’ll be damned if I let the night go by without telling her what’s what.