Radclyffe - Homestead

“Well, that happens to be right over that ridge.” Tess pointed to a hill, backlit by the setting sun, behind her house. A dozen deer were silhouetted on the ridge. “And I can’t say that’s something I want to happen.”

“Look, Tess,” Clay said, “this isn’t the way we usually do business. Once I get a look at the site, I’ll be visiting the neighboring farms, explaining what we’ll be doing and why it won’t be a problem.”

Tess smiled thinly. Clay was so adamant, so direct, her gaze never wavering. She would be so easy to believe. The thought was terrifying. Tess wouldn’t be trapped again by the intensity in Clay’s eyes. Couldn’t afford to be, on so many levels. “You mean you’ll be selling the company line?”

“No, I’ll be giving the facts. Something you might want to hear before you form an opinion.”

Tess jammed her hands on her hips. “The facts? Is that anything like the truth, Clay?”

“You don’t know me, Tess—if you’d—”

“You’re right, Clay. Finally we agree. I don’t know you. I never did.” A flush colored Tess’s cheeks and she spun away, striding off down the drive.

“Damn it, Tess!” Clay stalked after her, her longer strides overtaking Tess’s quickly. She grabbed Tess’s arm and Tess whirled around, one hand raised. Clay stared, expecting the blow, feeling as if she’d been expecting it for a long time and not really minding. Maybe she’d feel better if Tess did strike her. She deserved some penance, after all.

Tess backed up a step, an expression of horror draining the color from her face. “I’m sorry.” She looked down at Clay’s hand grasping her wrist. “Please let me go.”

Clay dropped her hand. “Is there any way we can start again?”

“None at all.” Tess’s gaze was shuttered, her voice curiously flat. “If there’s something you need to discuss, please call me first. Don’t drop by.”

Clay looked out over the farm. So much she wanted to ask. To know. “I won’t. I’m sorry.”

“Yes,” Tess said softly. “So am I. About so many things.”

“I’ll call,” Clay said, knowing it had always been too late.

“Good-bye, Clay.”

Clay didn’t move, willing Tess to turn back, willing her to see beyond the shadows to the bright sunlit summer they’d shared. But Tess kept walking, rounded a bend, and disappeared behind a trio of tall pines.

“Idiot,” Clay muttered, heading back to her bike. What had she expected, showing up out of nowhere after all these years—a kiss and, and… She stopped beside the bike, seeing nothing—nothing other than Tess’s face, the heat in her eyes. Once that heat had been desire—Tess had always been so glad to see her, so open, so welcoming. Pulling her in for a kiss, a caress of fingers through her hair. She, not Tess, was supposed to have been the experienced one—she hadn’t been a virgin after all. Not really, not technically. That day in the solarium while everyone celebrated on the patio, Vicky had taken her hand, guided it under her dress, beneath the silk panties, placed it just so. Clay had been drunk on the feel of her, high on the soft gasps of pleasure, too caught up to hear footsteps on the marble tiles as Vicky bit her neck and climaxed in her hand. Nothing about Vicky compared to Tess—to the unself-conscious, unfettered joy Tess had taken in their mutual pleasure. There had been no one like her since. Maybe after the first time, there never could be again. “Idiot.”

Clay jammed on her helmet, threw a leg over the Harley, and stomped on the starter. The engine growled, roared to life, and Clay tore away, throttling too fast, her back wheel skidding on the tight curve in front of Tess’s cow barn. She nearly dropped the bike right there and, heart racing, throttled back and fought the shuddering, bucking machine back into line. Killing herself or someone else was not going to change the way Tess felt about her. She deserved every bit of Tess’s recriminations and should have expected worse. She’d done nothing to change what had happened, hadn’t known how to stand up for herself or for Tess and maybe, somewhere deep in her heart, she hadn’t wanted to. Maybe she’d known all along that those few idyllic months at the lake were pure fantasy, and she’d selfishly allowed them to go on. All because Tess had looked at her as if she could do anything, and when she was with Tess, she’d believed that she could. Tess had had such faith in her, she’d let herself dream—about freedom, happiness, love. Tess had set her free, and she had not cared who might pay the price for that freedom.

And when it all came crashing down, she wasn’t a hero anymore. She’d fallen into line the way she always had, acquiescing to her father’s demands, accepting his rationalization—that her leaving was the only way to protect Tess, that a public scandal would ruin her as well as Clay.

“We can weather anything,” her father said, “but this girl—can she? In a town like that, where the rumors, the speculation, will never end? If you care about her, Clayton…”

If you care about her , he’d said. And Clay had lied, yet again. Under her father’s calculating gaze, she’d said, “It wasn’t anything serious. Whatever you heard is an exaggeration.”

Her father nodded, as if hearing what he’d expected to hear. “Very well. The situation is being handled. Manny will take care of retrieving your belongings and the Defender. You won’t be needing the motorcycle at Stanford. Arrangements have been made for you to arrive early in California. You should see to packing.”

Three weeks early. He wanted her out of the house, out of the state. She’d wanted to drive north again. To see Tess. To explain. As always, he’d read her mind and preempted her desires.

“You understand,” her father said with cool finality, “you cannot see this girl again. For her own good.”

You cannot see this girl again.

Clay took the corner onto Route 74 at forty miles an hour, overshooting the lane and swerving over the centerline. The headlights of an oncoming vehicle momentarily blinded her, and she yanked the bike back by instinct as a cement truck blasted by, horn blaring.

For her own good. Her father had given her the perfect excuse for walking away.

Clay stared at the high painted-tin ceiling in her big room on the second floor of the B&B. She hadn’t slept much. She didn’t usually, often working late into the night, sleeping a few hours, then getting up to work again. She’d learned to sleep on the jet when she needed to, in trucks, in trailers on the job site, or most any other place. She was basically a nomad and had gotten used to being rootless.

The night before, she hadn’t even gotten her few hours of routine sleep, too keyed up from her meeting with Tess. Too stirred up in ways she hadn’t been in so long she’d forgotten she even could be. She didn’t live a boring life—business challenged her, fieldwork satisfied her, and sex took her mind off what might be missing from her life in the few hours when she wasn’t working. Most of the time she was content, but seeing Tess had reminded her that once there had been something more. After losing something, it was easier to pretend you’d never had it and didn’t need it, and Tess had just made that a lot more difficult.

Tired of the ceiling and her own dark thoughts, Clay abandoned bed at four thirty, showered, and dressed in field clothes—forest-green khaki work pants, brown cotton shirt, construction boots—and went out to look around the village. Cambridge was a quiet little town in the midst of rolling hills and farmland, too far from the big cities to be within easy commuting distance, and populated mostly by families who’d been there for centuries. For a span of four blocks in the village proper, the main street, aptly named Main Street as it was in almost every small New England town, was lined on both sides with small businesses—an IGA market for essential food shopping, a gas station/convenience store, two antique stores, a diner, a bar, a pizza shop, a Chinese-takeout storefront restaurant, the post office, and the ACE hardware store, the biggest building in town.