Silver Falls - Anne Stuart [54]
He was a selfish old man, lazy to a fault, greedy for attention and not particularly interested in other people’s needs, even those of his sons. He had no illusions about himself, not at his advanced age.
But he also didn’t want the extremely comfortable life he’d arranged for himself be shot all to hell by a nutcase for a son.
He moved into the sunroom, staring out through the dark, leafy houseplants, to the backyard and the rainy evening. He didn’t deserve that kind of lousy luck, and he preferred to think positively. A psychopath for a son would put a real damper on his golden years.
Therefore he simply wasn’t going to consider the possibility. Life was too good for him right now—he was waited on hand and foot, the attention was constant and flattering, and even if it looked like his sons had made some unfortunate choices, they couldn’t be as bad as he suspected. Plus there was no way the college could kick a cripple out of his plush faculty housing.
Positive thinking, that was the ticket.
And he raised his glass to his reflection in the window, a silent toast, before he headed back to his chair.
11
Rachel had always liked working in the darkroom. It was a safe place, an isolated haven where magic happened, and when she was in there she could pretend that outside was sunny and warm.
She picked up the contact sheet and put it in the development bath, watching as the tiny pictures came into focus. People always wondered why she didn’t just use a digital camera, why she chose to immure herself in darkness when she loved the sun. She never bothered to explain. In this tiny section of the world she was in complete control. The rest of the world was crazy, but in here it was black and white.
She took the contact sheet out and hung it on the line she’d strung. Pictures of Silver Mountain, of Sophie and Kristen, their heads together, pictures of her new family.
Stephen Henry, right before his reading and the return of the prodigal son. He looked surprisingly tense, and she realized that he had stage fright. The man who craved the spotlight paid for his addiction with sick nerves.
There was one she’d taken of David when he wasn’t paying attention. It fascinated her. He was looking at something, Rachel couldn’t tell what, and the expression on his face was something she’d never seen. Almost sly. Avid. Needy.
What the hell was he looking at? The photo was taken in the kitchen, and as far as she knew there’d been no one in the house besides the three of them. And Caleb, of course.
So what had put that odd expression on his face, captured when he was unaware, a look she’d never seen again?
She went back to her most recent roll of film. She usually loved times like these, but for some reason she couldn’t get into her Zen-like calm. Not today. Today she didn’t want to shut out the world—she had to keep one part of her attention focused on Sophie in the next room. She needed to hear if someone came into the house and started talking to her. If the phone rang with bad news, if David returned home. She needed to hear if Caleb followed them down the mountain, if he came into the house, and she’d pull him into the darkroom and tell him never to come near them again….
No, she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t get in any dark, enclosed place with him, because the crazy mixed-up feelings inside her were stupid and wrong and dangerous. It didn’t do any good to deny it, to berate herself. The only way to get past it was to accept it for what it was, and then say no.
She wanted Caleb Middleton. It was that simple, that stupid and self-destructive. She’d spent most of her life blissfully free of emotional or sexual involvements, since they usually ended up being not worth the trouble. With just her and Sophie, traveling the world, she couldn’t afford to take chances, and relationships had been few and far between, and eventually she’d stopped even thinking about it. The first year after Jared had dumped her she’d been too mad to be interested. After that, too caught up in her miraculous daughter. Love and sex were for other people.