Nicholas Evans - The Horse Whisperer

Annie watched him and took a long quiver of breath. Then she reached out with her other hand and ran it across the side of his face, from his harsh unshaven cheek to the softness of his hair. She felt his hand brush the underside of her arm and stroke her face as she had stroked his. At his touch she closed her eyes and blindly let his fingers trace a delicate path from her temples to the corners of her mouth. When his fingers reached her lips she parted them and let him tenderly explore their rim.

She dared not open her eyes for fear she might see in his some reticence or doubt or even pity. But when she looked, she found only calm and certainty and a need as legible as her own. He put his hands to her elbows and smoothed them up inside the sleeves of her T-shirt to hold her upper arms. Annie felt her skin contract. She had both her hands in his hair now and she gently drew his head toward her and felt an equal pressure on her arms.

In the instant before their mouths touched, Annie had a sudden urge to say she was sorry, that he should please forgive her, this wasn't what she'd meant to do. He must have seen the thought take shape in her eyes, for before she could utter it he shushed her softly with but the smallest moving of his lips.

When they kissed, it seemed to Annie she was coming home. That somehow she had always known the taste and the feel of him. And though she almost quaked at the touch of his body against her, she could not tell at what precise point her own skin ended and his began.

How long they kissed, Tom could only guess from his own changed shadow on her face when they stopped and moved apart a little to look at each other. She gave him a sad smile then looked up at the moon in its new place and trapped pieces of it in her eyes. He could still taste the sweet wetness of her glistening mouth and feel the warmth of her breath on his face.

He ran his hands down her bare arms and felt her shiver.

'Are you cold?'

'No.'

'I've never known a June night so warm up here.'

She looked down then took one of his hands in both of hers and cradled it palm upward in her lap, tracing the callouses with her fingers.

'Your skin's so hard.'

'Uh-huh. It's a sorry hand for sure.'

'No it's not. Can you feel me touching it?'

'Oh yes.'

She didn't look up. Through the dark arch made by her falling hair he saw a tear run on her cheek.

'Annie?'

She shook her head and still didn't look at him. He took hold of her hands.

'Annie, it's okay. Really, it's okay.'

'I know it is. It's just that, it's so okay I don't know how to handle it.'

'We're just two people, that's all.'

She nodded. 'Who met too late.'

She looked at him at last and smiled and wiped her eyes. Tom smiled back but didn't answer. If what she said was true, he didn't want to endorse it. Instead, he told her what his brother had said on a night much the same yet under a thinner moon so many years ago. How Frank had wished that now could last forever and how their father had said forever was but a trail of nows and the best a man could do was live each one fully in its turn.

Her eyes never left him while he spoke and when he'd finished she stayed silent so that suddenly he worried she might have taken his words amiss and seen in them some self-serving incitement. Behind them in the pines, the owl began to call again and was answered now, far across the meadow, by another.

Annie leaned forward and found his mouth again and he felt in her an urgency that wasn't there before. He tasted the salt of her tears in the corner of her lips, that place he'd yearned so long to touch and never dreamed he'd kiss. And as he held her and moved his hands on her and felt the press of her breasts against him, he thought not that this was wrong but only concern that she might come to feel it so. But if this were wrong, then what in the whole of life was right?

At last she broke away and leaned back from him, breathing hard, as if daunted by her own hunger and where it would surely lead.

I'd better go back,' she said.

'You'd better.'

She kissed him gently once more, then laid her head on his shoulder so that he couldn't see her face. He brushed his lips on her neck and breathed the warm smell of her as if to store it, perhaps forever.

'Thank you,' she whispered.

'What for?'

'For what you've done for all of us.'

'I've done nothing.'

'Oh Tom, you know what you've done.'

She disengaged herself and stood in front of him with her hands resting lightly on his shoulders. She smiled down at him and stroked his hair and he took her hand and kissed it. Then she left him and walked to the island tree and crossed the stream.

Once only did she turn to look at him, though with the moon behind her, what look it was he could but guess. He watched her white shirt go back across the meadow, its shadow trailing footprints in the gray of the dew, while the cattle glided about her, black and silent as ships.

The last glow had gone from the fire by the time she got back. Diane stirred but only in sleep, Annie thought. She quietly slipped her wet feet back into her sleeping bag. The owls soon ceased their calling and the only sound was Frank's soft snoring. Later, when the moon had gone, she heard Tom come back and didn't dare look. She lay for a long time looking at the reasserted stars, thinking of him and what he must be thinking of her. It was that hour when routine doubt would settle heavily upon her and Annie waited to feel shame at what she'd just done. But it never came.

In the morning, when at last she found the courage to look at him, she saw no betraying trace of what had passed between them. No secret glance and, when he spoke, no layer laced beneath his words for her alone to understand. In fact his manner, like everyone else's, was so seamlessly and happily the same as before that Annie felt almost disappointed, so utter was the change she felt in herself.

As they ate breakfast, she looked across the meadow for the place where they had knelt, but daylight seemed to have altered its geography and she couldn't find it. Even the footprints they'd made had been scuffed by the cattle and soon were lost forever under the morning sun.

After they'd eaten, Tom and Frank went to check the adjoining pastures while the children played over by the stream and Annie and Diane washed up and packed. Diane told her about the surprise she and Frank had lined up for the kids. Next week they were all flying down to L.A.

'You know, Disneyland, Universal Studios, the works.'

'That's great. They don't have any idea?'

'Nope. Frank was trying to get Tom to come too, but he's promised to go down to Sheridan to sort some old guy's horse out.'

She said it was about the only time of year they could get away. Smoky was going to keep an eye on things for them. Otherwise the place would be empty.

The news came as a shock to Annie and not just because Tom had failed to mention it. Maybe he expected to have finished with Pilgrim by then. More shocking was the message implicit in what Diane had said. In kinder words, she was clearly telling Annie that it was time to take Grace and Pilgrim home. Annie realized how, for so long now, she had deliberately avoided confronting the issue, letting each day pass untallied in the hope that time might return the favor and ignore her too.

By midmorning they were already down below the lowest pass. The sky had clouded over. Without the cattle their progress was quicker, though in the steeper parts descent was harder than the climb and crueler by far to Annie's battered muscles. There was none of the exhilaration of the day before and in their concentration even the twins grew quiet. As she rode, Annie reflected long on what Diane had told her and longer still on what Tom had said last night. That they were just two people and that now was now and only now.