Naomi had stood there with mouth open, unable to speak, unable to think. She’d turned and slammed back into the house.
Jamison had still been on the roof when she emerged again, dressed. Julie had climbed up the ladder to take Jamison coffee. Both ex-lover and daughter looked over the edge of the porch roof at her as she’d stalked to the greenhouse to check on the poinsettias she’d promised to take to the Ghost Train celebration.
Damn him for still looking so good. Black hair, brown eyes, honed body, at home in jeans and jacket and cowboy boots. A Navajo shaman with a gorgeous ass.
She heard the door to the greenhouse open behind her and knew it was him. Naomi walked around the table, hap pier with it between her and Jamison and her emotions.
“What are all those for?” he asked, his voice as dark and rich as she remembered. He’d lulled her with his voice the first night she’d met him, and if she wasn’t careful, he’d lull her with it now.
“The Ghost Train.” She leaned over to pluck off a dead leaf.
“You don’t believe in the Ghost Train.”
“Neither do you,” she shot back. “But it brings in my biggest week of business for the year. No way am I going to argue that it doesn’t exist.”
Jamison didn’t answer. The Ghost Train legend—that a ghostly steam train glided into Magellan on the empty railroad bed every Christmas Eve—was bullshit as far as Naomi was concerned. Plenty of people believed it, though, including the loads of tourists who came every year to the festivities.
Jamison also knew it was bogus, but he kept his mouth shut. People liked to believe in things.
Jamison’s silence continued. He could do that, stand in place and simply be, for hours on end if he wanted to. She’d liked that about him—liked that he’d brought equilibrium back to her life. Peace.
Which he’d shattered by disappearing one fine morning. Naomi had awakened to her daughter standing sorrowfully by her bed and signing, Jamison’s gone.
“What do you want, Jamison?”
“To tell you why I went to Mexico, and why I came back.”
Naomi finally glanced up at him. Mistake. He was even better looking than she remembered, his body harder and stronger, his face bearing a new grimness.
She viciously squirted water on an ailing poinsettia. “Don’t bother. I know what you’re going to say—
that you needed ‘time,’ but then you changed your mind and decided you wanted to see me again. Well, guess what? I don’t want to hear it.” She made her voice firm but couldn’t bring herself to look at him again. “I got over you, Jamison. I don’t want you back, and I don’t give a shit where you were or what you were doing. So clear your stuff out of your studio and go.”
“I checked the studio this morning. I was surprised you didn’t throw everything out. Or burn it down.” Naomi slammed the water bottle back to the table. “I couldn’t risk that some half-finished sculpture might be worth a frigging fortune, and that wouldn’t be fair to your family. It’s not their fault you went walkabout. They say you do this all the time. I can’t believe how sick I got of people asking me if you were off working on a new sculpture.”
“I’m sorry about that,” Jamison said. “I really am.”
“So, what, after two years without hearing anything from you I should just say, ‘Golly gee, glad you’re back, let’s kiss and make up’? Forget it.”
She swung away but felt Jamison move behind her, his warmth on her back.
“I’m not leaving again, Naomi,” he said softly. “That’s what I came to explain. I’m here to stay. For always.”
Naomi tried to make herself pull away, maybe put the table between them again. Instead she turned and let herself look into his dark eyes, to see again the man she’d fallen in love with.
She’d met Jamison through one of her cousins in the vast Hansen clan, Heather, who owned Magellan’s New Age store called Paradox. Heather had invited Jamison, a noted Navajo storyteller, to come down from Chinle to talk to her study group about Native American myth. Naomi had gone and taken Julie, thinking it would be good to teach her about Navajo culture, since they lived so close to the Navajo Nation.
She’d expected an old man with a lined face and white hair. Instead, Heather had brought out a broad-shouldered, muscular man of about thirty-five, easy in his own skin, with sin-dark eyes and a mesmerizing voice.
Jamison had asked to be introduced to Naomi after his talk, because he’d watched Naomi sign his entire lecture to Julie. He’d smiled at Naomi, the sensuality of him making her breath catch. Jamison had invited Naomi and Julie to grab coffee with him, so Julie could ask him questions, he said, before he made his long drive back to Chinle.
Then next thing Naomi knew, Jamison was spending the night in her bed and making pancakes for breakfast the next morning. He never did go back to Chinle.
Jamison had made Naomi fall in love again, had taught her to feel again against her better judgment.
He’d made love like an angel, his body sealed to hers, his mouth taking away all pain. Deep in the night he whispered that he loved her, that they were soul mates, together forever.
Soul mates, my ass.