CHAPTER FOURTEEN
1941…
Olive had never been happier to be outside. After a week straight of rain, she’d all but begged her mother to let her go to the train station to pick up the special-ordered napkins for the museum gala. Anything to get out of the house…a house that suddenly felt stifling.
Waiting on the side of the tracks for the freight train to arrive, she closed her eyes and turned her face up into the bright fall sun. She was finally relaxing, soaking up the precious rays of warmth, when goose bumps suddenly popped out all across the surface of her skin.
She whirled around, only to look straight into the face of the man she’d gone out of her way to avoid for weeks.
Carlos.
But just because she had succeeded in avoiding him, didn’t mean she’d been able to stop thinking about what he’d said to her. He had point-blank called her a scared little girl.
The worst part of all was the fact that she’d continued to work on his sweater. No amount of reasoning with herself had made her put it down. Not when he had made her feel more alive and yet, at the same time, more confused than she’d ever been. Scared too, darn it.
“Hello, pretty girl.”
She blushed, even as she tried to respond in a stern voice, “My name is Olive.”
“Hello, pretty Olive.”
She didn’t want to smile, but it was really hard to keep her lips from turning up. Still, she wasn’t going to get into another conversation like the one at the building site, wasn’t going to walk away from Carlos with her stomach all twisted in knots again.
She turned her gaze away from him to stare down the length of the railroad tracks at the approaching freight train. She simply needed to ignore the continuing prickles of awareness all across her body—and inside her chest, where her heart was beating way too fast, way too hard.
“You ever just hopped on one of these things and seen where it takes you?” he asked.
“No.” What a ridiculous thought. “Of course not.” But oh, how quickly did that ridiculous thought become tempting as she collected her package and turned away.
“Come on, pretty Olive. Let’s have an adventure.” He hopped into an open freight car and held out his hand to her.
She had a moment of panic at who could be watching them, at who might report this back to her parents. But amazingly, they were the only two people on the platform today, the only two people waiting for a delivery from the train.
Still, she shook her head. “They’ll chase us off. We can’t just hop on and take a ride without buying a ticket and knowing where we’re going.”
He didn’t argue with her, and she was unaccountably disappointed. Foolish girl—she should be glad that he was letting her off the hook this easily.
The train started to move, but instead of walking away, instead of heading back home where her mother and sisters were waiting for her, Olive couldn’t take her eyes off him as he stood in the open doorway of the freight car and pointed to the moving wheels.
“Oh no, it’s happening. Do you see that?”
She had no idea what he was talking about. All she could see was the rolling of the metal wheels against the iron track. “What?” she finally asked as the train picked up speed. “What am I supposed to be seeing?”
He gestured to the world around them. “Life is passing you by.”
She felt it then, a sudden surge of anger mixed with something even wilder. An urge for freedom, for adventure, for passion, for everything she’d dreamed of for so long but had been too scared to reach out for because none of that was part of the grand master plan for her life.
Before she realized it, she was running after the train.
“Jump and I’ll catch you. I promise.”
And then she was jumping, and he pulled her into the freight car with him, both of them crashing together onto the wooden floor. As the two of them laughed, she felt so free, free enough that none of the rules she’d lived her life by until now seemed to matter anymore.
But then, as their laughter died down for a second and she got her bearings, she realized she’d never been this close to a man before, never found herself in a tangle of limbs and heat before. For propriety’s sake at least, she moved away from him, straightened her skirts, and sat up in as dignified a manner as she could, given the circumstances.
“I’ve been waiting to see that smile, pretty Olive. To hear you laugh.”
His words, the way he was looking at her, made it hard for her to breathe and to say, “This is crazy.”
“And life is short.”
There was a darkness in his eyes as he said this, and she couldn’t stop wondering again about where he’d come from and why he was working for her father.
Oh God. Her father. He was going to kill her. She felt her skin grow hot and then cold as she thought about what he’d do, the way he would yell, if he ever found out about her impromptu—and completely unladylike—train trip.
“We need to get off at the next town.” Her voice sounded way too shaky for her liking, and she forcefully steadied it before adding, “I shouldn’t have done this. I know better.”
The train slowed down at the next stop, and she was more than a little surprised when he helped her climb off, even more surprised to find him getting off right behind her with both of their packages in his hands.
He looked at the timetable posted on the wall. “The next train back won’t be here for an hour.”
She tried to tamp down on it this time, that itch on the back of her neck, that wild yearning coming over her again. But one taste of adventure had given her a craving for more.
She wanted more so badly that she could taste it on her tongue, almost as if someone had given her one short lick of the sweetest lollipop before wrapping it back up and putting it away—out of her reach but where she could still see it and long for it—for good.
“Well,” she found herself saying, despite the fact that she knew better, “if we’re going to be stuck here anyway, I might as well show you the waterfall.”
His beautiful mouth quirked up slightly at the corner, and when he raised his eyebrows, she raised hers right back. This adventure might have been his idea, but now it was her turn to show him things he hadn’t seen.
The waterfall was only a few minutes’ walk from the train station over the pretty red covered bridge. Soon they were standing in front of a cascading wall of water that arched off the rocks toward them. Warm from their short walk, feeling more confined than usual by the long, tight sleeves of her dress, she moved closer to the cool spray of water.
His warm voice caressed her. “Have you ever seen the back side of water?”
“Water doesn’t have sides.”
“Sure it does. The back side looks completely different. Come here, and I’ll show you.”
But this time, she definitely knew better. Heck, it was her stupid wild yearnings that had gotten her here, wasn’t it? Carlos was dangerous. She’d known that from the start, right from that first conversation when he had unraveled her control as though she were simply a strand of tightly wound yarn.
“I can see it just fine from here, thank you.”
“It’s okay to be scared, pretty Olive. But life is unpredictable. Don’t wait too long to take a risk.”
“Stop calling me scared!” She turned on him in sudden fury, not just for constantly goading her, but at herself for all the things she wanted but was so scared to want, so scared to let herself feel. “I’m here, aren’t I? I got on that freight train, didn’t I?”
“Yes, you did.”
But she could hear what he wasn’t saying. That just because she’d taken one step didn’t mean there weren’t more in front of her, just waiting for her to decide if she was brave enough to take them.
“Fine. Show me the back side of water.”
And this time when he reached for her hand, she wasn’t distracted by the movement of a train, wasn’t breathless from running…and she felt his touch all the way down past her skin, past her bones, past the blood that moved in her veins. All the way down into her heart as he carefully led her over slippery rocks to the small bank of dirt between the waterfall and the rock wall.
“Do you see it now?”
The water was a thick wall of movement, mesmerizing as it poured down from the rocks above their heads. It was nature’s misty curtain falling with such grace and ease.
“You’re right,” she breathed in wonder. “Everything does look different from the other side.”
She could feel his eyes on her, knew he wasn’t looking at the strange shapes of the trees, the sky, the mountains through the water. Her mouth tingled in anticipation of the kiss she knew was coming.
But then he said, “Come on, pretty Olive, let’s get you out of here before you get too wet.”
And that was when she realized, just as he hadn’t forced her to get on the train with him, he wouldn’t force her to kiss him either. If she wanted a kiss from Carlos, she’d have to be the one to take that step.
To choose not only his kiss…but him as well.