Wyoming Wildflowers: The Beginning (13 page)

“Me, either. We’ll go find a burger joint, eat all the stuff we shouldn’t and not say a thing.”

****

Henri kept his word. Yet she felt the strain on the bubble — his unhappiness pushing against it from the outside, her dread scratching at it from the inside.

She just wanted these last days with Ed in peace. Every hour. Every minute.

He was there for the evening performance. She knew as soon as she came on stage.

Now he stood at the stage door, waiting for her.

She would slip back into the bubble. Ed would keep it whole and safe. She could rely on him for that.

For now.

Donna dropped her brush on the scarred makeup table.

“You used my brush again, didn’t you, Lydia,” she demanded.

“When would I have a chance to use it? You carry it back and forth in your bag, and you’re never in our room because you’re always off with your cowboy.”

“Rancher,” she snapped.

“He wears the hat, he’s a cowboy. Not that I’m complaining, since I’m getting a single room at half the price.”

Donna ignored all that, refusing to think about Ed’s room, Ed’s bed. “You must have used it in here then, because it’s clogged with long blonde hairs with dark roots.”

Nora barked out a laugh. “Listen to yourself, Columbo. You’d have to arrest the entire cast. You’re just in a funk because you broke the simplest rule — you let yourself fall for a local.”

“Nora—” warned Lydia. She had a roommate’s prerogative to chastise. Nora didn’t.

“And I don’t care if he is good-looking or the best —”

“Shut up,” added MaryBeth.

“— you’ve had. You’re an idiot. You could have just had good sex, but you try to make it something more. You had to —”

Donna raised the brush.

“— go and fall in —”

Henri came from nowhere, wrapped his arms around Nora, and yanked her out of the room like a hawk with a mouse before Donna fully assimilated that he was there.

Into the frozen silence Maudie calmly arrived, taking Nora’s now empty seat.

Donna turned her back on the room, facing the mirror, seeing nothing, yet aware of looks zinging around the room behind her.

“Boy, did you see the snow today?” said a voice Donna didn’t bother to identify.

Eager affirmative murmurs followed.

“ — hardly see my hand in front of my face — ”

“ — Nearly froze —”

“— slipped into a puddle —”

“— looks like Christmas.”

The last comment drew a new flurry of comments.

“— decorations —”

“— found a present —”

“— haven’t started shopping —”

“— getting in the Christmas mood.”

“Me, too. Christmas in San Francisco, that’ll be fun. I can hardly wait,” Raeanne said.

Donna focused on her makeup.

“Don’t you think, Donna? The cable cars and —”

“We’ll be onstage. Doesn’t matter where we are.”

Donna knew she’d snapped. Knew that everyone in the dressing room looked at her again. Then at each other. She wiped off eyeliner and started again.

“Yes, well, in the meantime,” Maudie said. “We’re here in Denver, and it’s being very good to us. Another full house tonight.”

The chatter resumed, no longer about the schedule.

Doesn’t matter where we are
.

That was the issue, wasn’t it?

Because wherever they were, Ed Currick wouldn’t be there.

“Tell me about snowberries, Ed.”

“You want to talk about vegetation?” Implicit was the added question:
Now
?

“Yes,” she said firmly.

They’d made love twice since returning to the hotel.

If she were ever asked the highlight of Denver, Colorado, she could never top this room in the Rockton Hotel.

“All right. Snowberry’s a bush. Not real big. Like I told you, it reminds me of you.”

“Hey,” she protested, yet loving his chuckle.

“I’m just telling you, like you asked. As I was saying before you interrupted, it’s —”

“Short. I got it, Ed. I’ve already heard all the lines — stumpy legs, sawed off, when are you going to stand up?”

“I wouldn’t say short,” he said judiciously. “More like it mixes in well with other bushes, doesn’t tower over them, keeps their spirits up.”

She grinned at that.

“It’s happiest a little higher up, right along where timber starts. Maybe if a stringer of pines grows down a ridge, it comes along. Only on northern slopes. Sometimes down in a gully, especially if it’s fed by a stream. They don’t like getting dried out, and that’s what would happen on a south-facing slope. Southern slope would make no sense at all.”

“Okay, never on a southern slope,” she said slowly. Where was this vehemence coming from? As if he were arguing the point. “Does it bloom?”

“Yeah. In the spring.”

He sounded grim, which made even less sense than his vehemence.

“Are the blooms pretty?” she ventured.

“Sure. They hang down in a clump. Look sort of like narrow bells, like in Christmas decorations. Only, instead of red and green and gold, snowberry’s bells are white and pink and . . . in between.”

His gaze had dropped to where she held the sheet over her breasts.

“And then the blossoms turn into those smooth, white berries.”

His wonderful voice lingered over the final words, while his gaze never shifted. She felt her nipples pushing at the sheet. She sucked in a breath.

He kept talking in that low, almost hypnotic way.

“The clusters of flowers become clusters of berries that stick around well into winter — must be where they got their name. Because the berries are white and they’re still around in the snow. Not the best forage for cattle, but lots of small wildlife and birds wouldn’t make it through winter without snowberry. Snowberry feeds them and snowberry shelters them. Takes them in with open arms and makes them feel like they’ve never felt.”

He slowly raised his head, bringing his gaze to hers. The air in her lungs heated, caught fire.

“Makes them feel like they’ve never felt before,” he repeated.

She knew what he was saying. She knew what he felt. She felt it, too.

But if they went too far down that road . . .

She tried a smile. “And then the, uh, the birds and the wildlife move on. Happy to have had that time. That —” She cleared her throat. “— magical time. Grateful. But knowing they were moving on, while the snowberry . . . wasn’t.” He’d said snowberry reminded him of her, but
she
was the wildlife,
he
was the snowberry. “Because it grew in that spot, drawing strength from the land through deep, deep roots.”

Tears glazed her eyes, but she didn’t let them fall. She looked at him, letting him see into her, looking into him. It was all there in that look.

All that they couldn’t have.

“Christmas music,” he said abruptly.

Even as she blinked at the harshness in his voice, she recognized what he was doing.

She should be glad. But she didn’t want to play their game. She wanted — No. She couldn’t. It wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t her fault. It just was.

“Perry Como,” she said after a long moment.

“Bing Crosby.”

“Nat King Cole.”

“The Chipmunks.”

That snapped her out of robot mode. “Really? The Chipmunks”

“Sure. ‘Christmas Don’t Be Late.’ I sing it to the cattle.”

“Surprised you haven’t started stampedes.”

“Who says I haven’t?”

She grinned. Creaky, but a real grin. She suspected Ed Currick could make her grin under any circumstances if he set his mind to it. “ ‘Oh, Holy Night.’ ”

“ ‘All I Want For Christmas Are My Two Front Teeth.’ ”

He settled against the headboard, circled her with one arm and drew her in, so her head rested on his shoulder.

“ ‘What Child Is This,’ ” she said.

“The weather outside is frightful.”

“That’s called ‘Winter Wonderland.’ ”

“I like the part about Parson Brown, marrying them when they’re in town.”

She tried to look at him without moving her head, but all she saw was his chin. She swallowed. “Which carols don’t you like?”

“ ‘Blue Christmas.’ You?”

“ ‘I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus’ — I foresee therapy in that child’s future.”

“Good point. My favorite was ‘I’ll Be Home for Christmas’ until I found out what it’s about — a World War II soldier who can’t be home for Christmas and dreams about it.”

She sat up. “It is?”

“Yup. Your guy Bing made it during World War II.”

“But the dreaming helps him. Or . . .” She thought of the undercurrent of melancholy in the words. “Or maybe it’s better not to dream.”

They’d lost track of time while figuring out a new way to make love in the shower without flooding the bathroom.

A cab got them to the theater just in time for her to make call for the matinee.

With time to kill before he joined the audience, he went to a drugstore and found a phone booth.

“Slash-C,” his father’s voice came.

“Dad.”

“Ed? Are you o— Is everything okay? You sound, uh, tired.”

“Everything’s okay. Just wanted . . .” What did he want that anyone could give him? He wanted Donna. He wanted Donna to be happy. He didn’t want to imagine walking in a world where Donna wasn’t happy.

Since that college girlfriend, he’d been sure he’d marry a ranch girl. Someone who knew his way of life. Knew the land, the animals.

Donna didn’t know any of that.

He closed his eyes and saw the Slash-C, and she was there.

On a horse, laughing down at him. Sitting beside him on one of his favorite rocks, looking out across the land. Standing on the home ranch’s back porch, waving to him as he rode out for the day. Standing on the porch, welcoming him home at night.

No matter what he did now, he couldn’t see it without her.

He’d never marry a ranch girl.

“Ed?” his father said.

“I’ll be home Monday night, like I told you. Just wanted to let you know.”

Between performances, they ate at the little Mexican restaurant again.

Not the best choice before a performance, but it didn’t matter because she ate very little. They talked even less.

She tried a few times.

Bright, Ado Annie comments about the food, the season, the weather. The weather for heaven’s sake. What did she care? Unless a blizzard or monsoon or hurricane roared in and kept the company and Ed marooned here. Days, weeks, years, like Robinson Crusoe, except they’d be together.

Everyone was checking their makeup for the last time, taking that final breath before “places” for the evening performance when Angela appeared at the doorway in full Charity regalia.

That was the first surprise, since she usually ran right up to, sometimes past, the time she needed to be on stage.

“This afternoon’s show was not up to standard,” she announced.

That silenced the surprised murmurs at her arrival. She was wrong, for one thing. Plus, she never commented on performances. As far as anyone could tell, she wasn’t aware of what anyone else did on stage. Henri said she acted from inside a glass booth.

Angela’s gaze raked down the row of those at the communal makeup table, flicked to Nora, then to Donna. It stayed there as she moved to behind Donna, leaning over, as if needing the mirror to adjust an eyebrow hair with a fingernail.

“Donna, if you hope to push out Nora and grab that Helene role, you need to hit your cues. Very sloppy. You’ve let yourself be distracted by that country bumpkin cowboy. Screw whoever you want, but don’t let it show on stage.”

She met Donna’s gaze in the mirror for an instant, then picked up the brush.

Before Angela completed a first step toward the door, Donna stood, jostling her with a hip on the way up, and snatched back the brush.

“You’re wrong, Angela. On every point. This afternoon’s performance was one of the best by all members of this company except one. I hit my cues perfectly, as well as my marks. I am not taking the role of Helene — or as you called her today,
Ellen
— Lydia is. I am going to play Nikki. And Nora is leaving us for an excellent role in an upcoming movie.”

Donna didn’t even have a chance to utter a prayer that the backstage gossip about Nora’s future was right before the “places!” call echoed through the open doorway.

She pivoted away from open-mouthed Angela, walked to the door, where Maudie waited — as always, on hand during a crisis — and handed her the brush with a low, “Guard this with your life.”

With the best timing she’d ever shown, Nora rose, said, “Donna’s got that right,” and fell in line behind her. Then Lydia, MaryBeth, and Raeanne.

But Donna hadn’t left the doorway yet. “And, finally, Ed Currick of the Slash-C Ranch in Knighton, Wyoming, is not a country bumpkin. He is a rancher. He is
my
rancher. And the
lovemaking
is better than you could ever imagine.”

Then she marched out. Followed by the others.

Their shared air of triumph was slightly diminished when Brad hissed that they were supposed to be world-weary taxi dancers, not ready to take on the Russian army, and they all had to concentrate on finding their Fandango Ballroom slouch before the curtain rose.

Whispered “Atta girls” came at Donna in under-their-breath snatches throughout the performance, drifted from dark shadows where crew members toiled, and even rose up from the orchestra.

Maudie stopped her after the last curtain call, drawing her into her room, though neither of them sat.

“Don’t tell me I shouldn’t have said any of that to her,” Donna said.

“I won’t. But you will need to be careful now. On stage and backstage. If you want to succeed.”

“I don’t ca-.” She caught a gleam in Maudie’s eyes and bit it off.

The older woman didn’t challenge her, instead saying, “A milquetoast does not succeed in this business. Standing up for yourself is good if you want to go to the top. But you are now targeted as a potential threat to her ambitions, since yours are the same.”