Dance Away with Me - Susan Elizabeth Phillips Page 0,102
into mayhem, a beautiful nightmare of smeared paint on olive skin. She picked up one of the untouched canvas squares from the cart and pressed it to a smudge of paint on his side. She pressed another to his chest. Her hair tumbled forward, shrouding her face, the strands streaked with ultramarine and cinnabar. She stamped his thigh. His groin. One place after another.
He lay still and watched her work even as panic began to grow inside him, beating harder and faster. He hid it behind a smile and a quip. Hid it as they showered together, unearthing paint from all the secret crevices. Hid it as they took each other again.
When the sound of crying came through the baby monitor, Tess grabbed a robe and disappeared, her wet feet leaving imprints on the floor. He went back into the studio and set each of the canvas squares out to dry before he cleaned up the mess they’d made. Still, the panic wouldn’t leave him.
He had to get away from this place. From her.
* * *
Not even Tess’s belligerent co-workers could spoil her mood the next day. She picked up Wren at Heather’s and drove to the schoolhouse, still thinking about the crazy insanity of last night. When she reached the schoolhouse, a Nissan Ultima was parked crookedly in front, and a man she’d never seen stood on the porch ready to knock. As she got out of the car, he turned to look at her.
He appeared to be in his late twenties, unshaven, with rumpled light-brown hair and clothes he might have been wearing a few days too long: wrinkled chinos, a long-sleeved tan shirt turned at the cuffs, and an old khaki safari vest with multiple pockets.
Leaving Wren in the backseat, she walked up the path. “Can I help you with something?”
“Are you Tess Hartsong?”
“Yes. And you’re—”
“I’m Simon Denning.”
Chapter Nineteen
Tess stalled for time. She opened the front door and invited him inside then returned to the car to get Wren. As she reached in, she banged her head on the doorframe. She grabbed the car roof to steady herself and blinked her eyes hard against a sudden urge to cry, not from the bump but from the feeling that the world was once again poised to crash in on her.
Wren was wide-awake, her eyes the deep navy of a Van Gogh sky, her fist on an erratic course toward her mouth. Tess picked her up and tucked her into the curve of her neck. The pulse beneath the baby’s fontanel tapped against her cheek. She kissed the downy softness and turned to face the new demon who’d invaded their lives.
He stood in the hallway exactly where she’d left him. With her free hand, she flipped the light switch on the schoolhouse globes.
“Is that the baby?” he asked unnecessarily.
“This is Wren. Yes. My daughter.”
He shoved a hand in the pocket of his chinos. “You wouldn’t happen to have a beer handy? And a bathroom. I’ve been traveling for most of two days.”
She directed him toward Bianca’s old room. He stopped on the threshold and gazed at the geode interior. “Damn. I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“Yes, it’s unusual.”
“Incredible.”
She held Wren close as she retrieved a beer from the refrigerator. She moved robotically, trying to convince herself this man was a nomad with no desire to raise a child. But if he didn’t want Wren, why had he traveled all this way to see her? And where was Ian? She wanted him here, by her side, even as she knew this was her hurdle to cross alone.
Denning brought the faint smell of soap with him as he emerged from the bedroom. She set the beer at one end of the dining table and walked with Wren to the other end, as far away as she could get. He picked up the bottle but didn’t sit. Neither did she. The table stretched between them, loaded with land mines. “Your parents said you were in Afghanistan.”
“I was.”
“Have you seen them?”
“I’m going there after I leave here.”
Wren sucked at her collarbone. She waited.
He tilted the bottle to his lips and took a long slug before he spoke again. “I don’t know what Bianca told you, but that’s not my baby.”
A long, ragged sound escaped from somewhere inside her.
“I did the math,” he said. “The numbers don’t add up.”
Wren’s wet fingers touched her cheek. She grasped the baby’s hand. “But . . . You talked with your parents. You said . . .”