Dance Away with Me(2)

She stood there immobilized in her old bikini underpants and a wet, white cotton tank top that strained over her breasts. Braless, furious, half-wild herself, and very much alone.

He charged toward her, oblivious to the rain, the wobbly, wooden bridge swaying behind him. “I put up with this crap yesterday afternoon, and yesterday evening, and at two frigging o’clock this morning, but I’m not putting up with it any longer!”

She took him in with a series of quick impressions. Defiant waves in the unruly, too-long hair that curled wet against his neck. His workman’s clothes were rumpled, and a dozen different colors of paint spattered his cracked leather boots. His beard stubble wasn’t long enough for a crazed hermit, but he looked crazed nonetheless.

She wouldn’t apologize. She’d done enough apologizing back home for the burden her grief had put on her friends and her co-workers, and she wouldn’t do it here. She’d chosen Runaway Mountain, not only for its name, but also for its isolation—a place where she could be as impolite, as grief-stricken, as angry at the universe as she wanted to be. “Stop yelling at me!”

“How else are you going to hear me?” He snatched up her Bluetooth speaker from its dry spot underneath the splintered remains of a picnic table.

“Put that down!”

He jabbed at the power switch with a big, blunt-fingered paw, shutting off the music. “How about a little common courtesy?”

“Courtesy?” She relished having an outlet for the injustice life had thrown at her. “That’s what you call storming down here like a wild man?”

“If you had any respect for all this . . .” He made a slashing gesture toward the trees and Poorhouse Creek, the harsh lines of his face so rough-hewn they could have been carved with a chain saw. “If you had any respect, I wouldn’t have had to storm down here!”

And then she saw it. The moment he became aware of her dress—or undress. Eyes the color of slate grazed her disparagingly. But disparaging of what? Of her wet, tangled hair? Of her body, heavier than it should be from trying to suffocate herself with food? Her legs? Her ratty underwear? Or maybe just her audacity for taking up space on his planet?

Who was she kidding? With her breasts straining against a wet tank top, she must look like a grotesque cliché of a drunken college girl on a Cancun spring break. Her head swam, high on the rush of her anger. “All you had to do was ask politely!”

His gaze cut through her, his voice a low, deep growl. “Yeah, I’m sure that would have worked.”

She was clearly in the wrong, but she didn’t care. “Who are you?”

“Someone who’d like a little peace and quiet. Two words you don’t seem to comprehend.”

No one had reprimanded her since her husband had died. Instead, they all acted as if they were still standing in the funeral parlor with its overstuffed furniture and nauseating smell of Stargazer lilies. Having a target for her anger was sickly intoxicating. “Are you this rude to everybody?” she exclaimed. “Because if you are—”

Just then, a wood sprite flew across the narrow creek bridge, effortlessly skipping over the missing planks, her steps so light the structure barely moved. “Ian!” The fairy creature’s long blond hair floated behind her from beneath a big red umbrella. A gauzy, ankle-length cotton gown better suited to July than early February swirled around her calves. She was tall and lithe, except for the mound of her pregnancy.

“Ian, stop yelling at her,” the ethereal creature said. “I could hear you from the schoolhouse.”

So that’s where he’d come from—the renovated, white wooden schoolhouse on the ridge above the cabin. In January, when Tess had first moved here, she’d trudged up the trail to see what was there. When she’d looked through the windows, she could tell the place had been turned into a residence, but no one appeared to be living there. Until now.

“Don’t pay any attention to him.” The sprite was a blue-eyed Disney fairy, maybe in her thirties like Tess. Just past prime fairyhood. She breezed through the undergrowth bordering the cabin, oblivious to the wet grass brushing her calves. “He’s always like this when he’s having trouble with a painting.”

A painting. Not painting in general. The mountain man must be an artist. A temperamental one.

The fairy laughed, a laugh that didn’t quite make its way to those storybook blue eyes. Something about her seemed familiar, although Tess knew they’d never met. “He’s more bark than bite,” the fairy said, “although, he’s been known to do that, too.” She held out a slim, warm hand from beneath the red umbrella. “I’m Bianca.”

“Tess Hartsong.”

“Your hands are freezing,” the woman said. “They feel good. I’ve been so hot.”

Tess’s professional midwife’s eye took over. Bianca was short of breath, the way many women were as they neared their third trimester. Maybe around seven months. She was carrying high and to the front. Her complexion was pale, but not washed out enough to be worrisome.

“Ian, you’ve done enough damage,” the sprite said. “Go home.”

He was holding Tess’s Bluetooth speaker as if he intended to walk off with it. But he gifted her with another growl and set it down hard on the picnic bench. “Don’t make me come down here again.”