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She looked at him so intensely that he was rocked down to his toes. Something was
happening here. Something he wanted to happen.
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What She Needs
He leaned forward. Kissed her gently. Her lips trembled then melded to his. It felt
as if they were sealing a pact. When they drew apart it was moments before he could
speak.
“Come. Let me show you around while it’s still light outside.”
They dressed in jeans, boots and flannel shirts and he took her through the
meandering path he’d hacked through underbrush in the woods that edged his
property, searching for wild mushrooms and any wildflowers still blooming in mid-
October. She delighted in watching a hawk catch thermals and circle lazily in the sky.
She laughed when she slipped off a wet rock crossing the stream and damn near fell on
her keister. She led him on a chase through dried cornstalks that rustled in their wake
like skeletons dancing. On a whim she gleaned a handful soybean pods that the
farmer’s combine had missed. “For soybean sprouts,” she explained with a gleam in her
eye. He’d never felt so bewitched by simple, commonplace actions.
Holding hands, they returned from their inspection of his acreage. She commented
appreciatively on the mortise-and-tenon sturdiness of something as mundane as the
woodshed attached to the house, with its stash of firewood that he’d culled from dead
trees on his property.
“Oh look, you have charcoal and an old hibachi. You have any hot dogs in your
freezer? Let’s eat outside. Looks like Mother Nature will favor us with another
spectacular sunset.”
He couldn’t resist her enthusiasm. He lugged the appropriate items out from the
woodshed and set them up on the picnic table gracing his south-facing terrace.
“I’ll cook,” she said impishly.
“You’re on. But first…” He drew her to him, enfolded her in his arms. “You look so
lovely with red cheeks and a sparkle in your eyes. I want to savor this moment.”
They stared into each other’s eyes, the stillness of the afternoon wrapping around
them. A pair of raucous crows broke their reverie.
“Even your red nose looks cute.”
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Cris Anson
“Oh, you…” she gave him a mock punch on his shoulder. “Go see if you have any
hot dogs. I’ll start the fire.”
He opened his mouth to protest. Closed it. She wasn’t Gina. She was a mature
woman with common sense. She wouldn’t do anything stupid.
Still arguing with himself, he rummaged in his freezer. No hot dogs, but he found a
batch of ground sirloin patties that his housekeeper had packaged for him. He pulled
them out, unwrapped them and set them on the microwave tray. Pushed some buttons
to thaw them. Got out condiments, bottles of locally brewed beer, glasses, flatware,
cotton napkins.
Well, duh, that was dumb. What’s a hamburger without buns? He moved packages
around, opened cabinets, drawers, the fridge. No buns. Ah, but he had a fresh loaf of
Russian rye bread. He pulled out a sharp knife. As he sliced, he glanced out the
window at Delia’s progress.
The knife clattered to the floor. “Jesus Christ!”
Everything forgotten except his need to get to Delia, he raced through the sun room
and burst out the patio door. The ghosts from his past ran alongside him, taunting him,
frightening him out of his usually unflappable cool. “What are you doing? Are you
crazy?”
Startled, Delia dropped the can of starter fluid that had been stored in the
woodshed next to the charcoal.
“Dammit, I knew I should have thrown that stuff away!” He’d been meaning to
inquire about the local hazardous waste disposal site but had never followed through.
And now he’d barely averted a repeat of his worst nightmare.
“What’s the matter? I couldn’t get the fire started, so I thought—”
“That’s the trouble with you. You don’t think. You just do.” He grabbed her arm. “I
thought at your age you’d know better.”
She flinched, but he ignored her reaction.
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What She Needs
“I’m going to have to teach you a lesson you won’t forget.” His voice hard and firm,
he yanked her to the low end of the house. “You stay right there. And don’t move, you
hear me? Do. Not. Move.”
Racing to the barn on the other side of the driveway, he hauled out his shortest
ladder, dragged it to the woodshed, propped it up close to where the shed roof met the
stone wall of the house.
“Up. Up the damn ladder. You’ll stay there until I decide you’ve learned your
lesson.”
Panic flared in her eyes. “No, Kurt, I don’t do ladders, I’m afraid of—”
He overrode her. “You’re my slave. You will do as I say. This may not be what you
want, but believe me, right now it’s what you need.” He half carried, half pushed her up,
one rung at a time, until she stumbled onto the cedar shakes on her hands and knees.
Then he dragged her to the ridgeline. “You just sit there and think about what you did.
Look! Look at my hands, how they’re shaking. I just averted a goddamn catastrophe. I
need a good, stiff drink.”
He balanced easily as he walked the slope of the roof. “I’ll be back whenever I
damn well feel like it. And you will stay there until then.”
His foot found the ladder’s top rung and he started down.
Delia could not contain her panic. All she could do was replay the long-ago feeling
of dangling upside down, her foot wedged in the notch of the old oak tree in the side
yard, and no one hearing her cries. Bizzy the cat had long since negotiated his way back
down after luring her up there with his loud meowing as though he was trapped. Delia
had crept out onto a branch, way higher than she’d ever climbed, to try to gather Bizzy
in her arms. But the branch had been rotten and it broke under her ten-year-old weight,
and Delia would have tumbled to the ground twenty feet below if her sneaker hadn’t
caught in the crotch of two branches. She’d cried and yelled and no one had come to
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Cris Anson
rescue her for what seemed like hours until her mom came home from the supermarket
and called the fire department.
Mindless of the garish sunset turning her surroundings to fire, she straddled the
roofline, legs clinging rigidly on either side, and dug her fingernails into the ridges of
mortar between the stones, searching for a handhold to create an illusion of safety. Her
breath came in deep, hyperventilating gasps. Her heart labored like a freight train
climbing a mountain.
Her vision blurred and she began reciting a litany.
“Red. Red. Red…”
Halfway down, Kurt had to stop his descent. His knees felt as weak as frayed ropes.
Resting his head on the top rung, he gripped the ladder’s sides with white-knuckled
fingers. Jesus. He’d lost one good woman to a stupid fire and he’d be damned if he’d
lose Delia, who’d already grabbed hold of his heart and soul.
His vision blurred as he relived it. His feet feeling mired in molasses as he ran that
very same path from kitchen to sun room to patio, helpless to stop Gina’s unthinking
squirting of lighter fluid on a seemingly dormant fire. Flames had leaped up from the
charcoal bed through the trickle of liquid evil to the container, causing her to jerk her
hand, splashing her clothes with rampant tongues of fire. He’d ripped off his denim
jacket and begun beating at the flames, succeeding only in stoking the fire that
enveloped her. He threw her onto the grass and covered her with the jacket, hoping to
smother it.
By the time he’d snuffed out the last bit of danger and called 9-1-1, Gina was barely
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