Dance Away with Me(37)

She took a few deep breaths. Wren would be fine. Ian wasn’t going to let her die. And Wren needed more than one person watching out for her until her father showed up.

What if Wren’s father was an unreliable jerk like Tess’s father had been? Or a drunk? If she thought like this, she’d tumble into a whole new realm of craziness. She forced herself to go on.

The back door stuck, and she shoved her shoulder against it. Inside, the cabin was cold and musty. A place so sad she couldn’t imagine bringing Wren here. She’d have to get new rugs. Buy decent furniture. Except Wren would never come here. By the time the new furnace arrived, the baby would be gone. Tess could leave things exactly as they were. Gloomy and unwelcoming.

The schoolhouse was spoiling her. She wanted something nicer for herself. Clean white walls, a sofa that wasn’t slipcovered in an English hunting print. Before, she hadn’t cared, but now she did.

Trav . . . I’m think I’m finally getting better.

That made her sad in a whole new way.

She tossed out a wilted bag of salad greens and a moldy cucumber. She ate an apple she didn’t remember having bought and filled a shopping bag with more clothes. She glanced at the pile of professional journals that had been forwarded to her post office box in town. Journal of Midwifery, International Journal of Women’s Health. None of them had anything to do with her new life, but she put them in the shopping bag with her clothes.

Her anxiety got the best of her, and she raced back to the schoolhouse.

She found North pacing the floor with Wren in the crook of his arm as if she were a football. But she was alive.

He stalked toward her, speaking in a whispering hiss. “She started to cry,” he said, as if it were Tess’s fault.

“No kidding? That’s odd.” She gritted her teeth. “And it isn’t even three o’clock in the morning.”

He got her point and tucked the baby against his chest, but only until Tess got her coat off, when he passed her back over. “My attorney isn’t getting anywhere locating Wren’s father, so I’m going to fly up to Manhattan tomorrow and do some investigating of my own. I’ll probably be gone a few days. Are you okay with that?”

The way he said it told her he didn’t much care whether she was or not. “You aren’t exactly a big help when you’re here.”

“When I get back, I have to work. I mean it, Tess . . . I can’t be distracted with you and the baby any longer.”

“I’ll discuss it with her.”

His gaze became critical. “Are you losing weight?”

He’d thrown her off balance. “I don’t know. Why?”

“Your face is thinner.” He sounded as if that were a bad thing.

“So what?”

“Nothing. Only that you don’t need to lose weight.”

“Thanks for your input. I’ll make sure I forget it.”

He had the nerve to look hurt.

*

The nightmare returned that night, worse than ever. Would she ever stop having this dream of blood and fear, or would it plague her sleep for the rest of her life?

By the time she and Wren got downstairs the next morning, Ian was gone. As she drank her morning coffee, she thought about the nightmare and then about the photos she’d uncovered when she was doing her Internet stalking. Photos of Ian with one exotic-looking woman after another. She kicked aside the sneakers she’d abandoned by the stairs. She didn’t want him hooking up with one of his lovers. She wanted—

She didn’t know what she wanted. Maybe a lover for herself? Even a few weeks ago, the idea would have been unthinkable. She blamed Ian. Living around his overly potent masculinity was messing her up.

She’d thought her sexuality had died along with Trav, and it was unsettling that a man who couldn’t be more different from Trav seemed to have resurrected it. But maybe that was the point. Maybe the fact that Ian was Trav’s opposite had given her subconscious permission to get turned on without feeling disloyal. Despite the wayward path of her thoughts, she’d never go to bed with North. If . . . when . . . she had sex again, it would be with someone like Trav. Except sexually aggressive in a way Trav hadn’t been.

Always the seducer. Never the seduced.

She was glad she’d never told Trav that she needed him to be more aggressive. Now her sexual greediness seemed petty. Considering how much he’d loved her, she couldn’t imagine having that conversation with him. He would have been so hurt.

She rearranged Wren’s baby Mohawk. “Distract me from my wicked thoughts, sweetheart. How about a little conversation?”

Wren blinked her sleepy eyes and screwed up her mouth.

“Don’t cry, okay? You did enough of that last night.”

Tess fed her and poured some Cheerios into a bowl for herself. As she ate, she faced the dismal prospect of being holed up alone with Miss Crabby Pants while Ian dined in fine restaurants and rumpled the sheets with a beautiful woman. Maybe more than one.

She heard a car and peered out the window in time to see a woman she didn’t recognize emerge from a muddy SUV and head toward the house. Tess opened the door.

The woman looked like a sixty-year-old fashion model for the alternative, boho, yoga crowd. She had shiny gray hair in a single braid, a glowing complexion, and bright hazel eyes with delicate lines at the corners that bespoke character. Her lithe frame was packaged in an embroidered tunic top, skinny jeans, and ankle boots. Long turquoise earrings dangled from her earlobes, and a mala bead necklace completed her outfit. “You must be Tess,” she said. “I’m Heather.”