Where Aspens Quake by Tory Cates

Author:Tory Cates
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pocket Books

Chapter 8

Sleep was a long time in coming that night. Kristin was reminded of the other restless Christmas Eves she’d spent as a young girl, straining to hear the clatter of eight tiny reindeer upon her rooftop. But there would be no happy surprises to wake up to this year. Only the prospect of meeting Harrell Langston the next day could keep thoughts of Gray at bay for sporadic bursts of time. Then prickles of nervous anticipation would replace the grief that deadened her spirit every time she veered too close to thoughts of what might have been.

She tried not to let any excitement build within her about the next day’s possibilities: The work of very few was deemed good enough to grace the walls of the Langston Gallery. Then again, Kristin reminded herself, very few even got to meet the owner of that esteemed gallery. Contenting herself with the consolation of an introduction, Kristin slid into a shallow trough of sleep.

“Kristin, are you about ready?”

Gray’s voice melded seamlessly into the dream she was having in which he was the lead character. It took several moments for her to rouse herself enough to realize that the pounding on her door was being done by the flesh-and-blood version.

“Just give me a few more minutes,” she croaked in a sleep-roughened voice. In the emotional upheaval of the previous night, she’d forgotten to set her alarm.

“We need to be on the road in ten minutes or we’ll be late,” Gray cautioned patiently. “Do you still feel up to going?” His voice had the walking-on-eggs hesitancy people adopted when they addressed the sick or emotionally disturbed.

“Of course I feel up to going, you ninny,” Kristin shot back with a forced comic feistiness. “It’s not every day I get to meet a living legend.”

“All right, then, shake your buns. The bus leaves in ten minutes.”

Kristin breathed a sigh of relief. She couldn’t have endured it if Gray had begun treating her like a psychological invalid, weighing every word he spoke to her. She had accepted the necklace she now wore around her neck in the spirit of friendship and she was going to act like a friend, not some moony scorned lover.

“Do you always drive this fast?” Kristin asked later, clinging to the door handle of the high-riding Bronco as they screeched around a curve in the mountain road.

“Sorry,” Gray apologized, gearing down to cut the vehicle’s speed. “I’m so used to driving these roads alone that I forget that not everyone knows every twist and turn that’s coming the way I do. Are you nervous?”

“About your driving or about meeting Harrell Langston?” she joked.

“How about ‘all of the above’?”

“That would cover it,” Kristin concurred. Hesitantly, she asked, “Is what I’m wearing all right?”

He slid a sideways glance toward her. His attention on her was as palpable as his touch had been. She regretted that she had invited his scrutiny as it took in her old standby jeans-and-cashmere-sweater ensemble.

“You look fine to me.”

“That’s fortunate, considering I have nothing else to wear other than ski clothes.

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