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Standing beside her in the line-up, he fidgeted. “I hate leaving you to handle the move alone,” she said, brushing some non-existent lint off the shoulder of the T-shirt his wardrobe had graduated to just this week. “I can’t pass up an assignment that will get this much attention. They said they’ll print a blurb with the article saying my book on you is coming out soon.”
“Of course you can’t turn it down. No problem anyway.Themoversyouhiredarecomingtomorrow. They’ll pack everything and move it and unpack it at the farm.”
“Iwishweweredoingitourselves.It’stheonlyway to make sure it’s done right and we know where at least some things are. And you should have peace and solitude when you first arrive at the farm, so you can settle in and sculpt. Now you’ll have to ride herd on the dogs alone. I don’t think you realize what a handful two dogs and six puppies can be.”
“How tough can it be?” Van grasped Mary’s shoulders, turned her around and swatted her rump playfully.
“Scram, go,” Van said. “Of course, I can handle everything. Move it or you’ll miss the plane.”
She moved forward a little in the line-up and laughed over her shoulder. “Heyyy, let some photographer catch you doing a sexist thing like that and I’ll never sell a single book about you.”
Van turned her back around, kissed her and spoke against her lips. “Yeah, well, let the photographers take a picture of you doing a sexy thing like this and you’ll sell a lot of books. Every businessman in the country will dream about kissing you too.”
“But, Van — ”
“Not another word.”
She turned to deal with her ticket and boarding pass, then stepped away from the counter. She kissed him again, putting her whole heart into it. He went weak in the knees.
“I love you,” she said.
He watched, disconsolate, as her blonde hair and trim bottom bounced away from him. He wished she weren’t going. One bright side to it: at least he wouldn’t have to hear her saying “I love you” for a while.
It always reminded him he didn’t love anybody, couldn’t love anybody. Oh, he cared, and sometimes a lot. He sure did about her. He was beginning to think he wanted to make it official. Sort of. That he wasn’t just camping out with her tonight. He was planning to be there tomorrow too. He was living with her. For a while, anyway. Maybe even a long-ish while.
But he couldn’t wrap his head around something called love.
He should get out of this airport, and go home, and be miserable without Mary, and play with the dogs for distraction, and count the minutes until she got back.
***
Finally, the movers left the farmhouse.
Van looked at the chaos around him and tried to feel as though this was home, that this part of his new home would someday be his living room. If he ever made any room to live.
Maybe he shouldn’t have moved. To his surprise, he’d been perfectly happy in Mary’s house, with all its quirks and warm, cozy charm, not to mention its quirky, warm, charming co-inhabitant.
But he’d planned this move to the farm, to his artistic retreat, for such a long time. Okay, maybe it wasn’t exactly he who had done the planning. Dolores, his long-time executive assistant, and his aunt had put it all together once he had decided the new bathroom should go here, the man cave should go there, and the studio should be wall to wall glass over there.
The actual moving should have been a piece of cake. Maybe it would have been if his aunt wasn’t on her honeymoon, Mary wasn’t away for her book, and his assistant wasn’t putting all her outstanding talents to work for the new-owner-to-be of Van Deventer Ventures, who showed all the signs of being only a signature away from taking final possession.Who could have known they usually did so much? Made his life so easy? He hadn’t known until they weren’t doing it. They had deserted him. He had no one to help deal with heaps of clothing, stacks of books, and who-knew-what in a hundred cartons. Yeah, he felt sorry for himself. He could see only one good thing about being here alone, incompetent and at sea. He washere alone. Mary couldn’t see how rotten he was feeling.
The movers had said they’d unpack for him. It turned out that meant they took things out of the boxes and piled those things in all their thousands on a flat surface somewhere. If he was lucky, the surface would be somewhere in the general vicinity of where that bunch of things should eventually go. When the movers ran out of flat surfaces, they unpacked every second box and used every first box as a flat surface.
He’d been lucky enough to catch the movers beforetheypiledfivehundredbooksonthecoffeetable in the living room. After all, the way he figured it, his wall units had flat surfaces that qualified as places to put things too.
That still left the other problem. The wall units stood in the middle of the living room, almost surrounding the TV. So much for watching the big game tonight.
He’d had even less luck with the kitchen stuff. He hadn’t made it in time to keep Mary’s monster of a stand mixer from being dumped on the kitchen counter on top of the Royal Doulton plates that had belongedtohergrandmother.Hewasrelievedtofind thechinahadsurvived.Still,thenear-missmadehim realize his sanctuary now contained a hundred other things needing rescue.
Who knew? Wasn’t he supposed to be getting out of the rescue business?
Life hadn’t been like this when he’d bullied Aunt Cynthia into moving in with him so he could protect her better. At least he’d thought at the time he was bullying her.
She’d made moving look so easy, effortless and painless. Her stuff had arrived, and his stuff had disappeared. She’d told him ahead of time his lumbering leather stuff didn’t go with her dainty antiques. He’d been prepared, and he’d been able to perch on her dainty couch that very evening, looking around at calm and order.
But this mess, in what was supposed to be his sanctuary …
It was all so strange, disorienting even, as though he had to look at things from a different angle. For one thing, he’d always thought, without even really thinking about it, that he’d spent his life protecting people. He’d wanted to step back, live his own life.
