Page 62 of Charmed
“I want to show you something.” He took her down the shadowy hall into his office. Delighted, Ana turned in a circle.
“This is where you work.”
There were wide, uncurtained windows framed with curving cherrywood. A couple of worn, faded scatter rugs had been tossed on the hardwood floor. Starshine sprinkled through the twin skylights. An industrious-looking computer, reams of paper and shelves of books announced that this was a workplace. But he’d added charm with framed illustrations, a collection of dragons and knights that intrigued her. The winged fairy he’d bought from Morgana had a prominent place on a high, carved stool.
“You need some plants,” she said, having decided instantly, thinking of the narcissus and daffodils she wasforcing in her greenhouse. “I imagine you spend hours in this room every day.” She glanced down at the empty ashtray beside his machine.
Following her gaze, he frowned. Odd, he thought, he hadn’t had a cigarette in days—had forgotten about them completely. He’d have to congratulate himself later.
“Sometimes I watch out the window when you’re in your garden. It makes it difficult to concentrate.”
She laughed and sat on the corner of his desk. “We’ll get you some shades.”
“Not a chance.” He smiled, but his hands went nervously to his pockets. “Ana, I need to tell you about Alice.”
“Boone.” Compassion had her rising again to reach out. “I understand. I know it’s painful. There’s no need to explain anything to me.”
“There is for me.” With her hand in his, he turned to gesture at a sketch on the wall. A lovely young girl was kneeling by a stream, dipping a golden pail into the silver water. “She drew that, before Jessie was born. Gave it to me for our first anniversary.”
“It’s beautiful. She was very talented.”
“Yeah. Very talented, very special.” He sipped his wine in an unconscious toast to a lost love. “I knew her most of my life. Pretty Alice Reeder.”
He needed to talk, Ana thought. She would listen. “You were high school sweethearts?”
“No.” He laughed at that. “Not even close. Alice was a cheerleader, student body president, all-around nice girl who always made the honor roll. We ran in different crowds, and she was a couple of years behind me. I was going through my obligatory rebellious period and kind of hulked around school, looking tough.”
She smiled, touched his cheek where the stubble was rough. “I’d like to have seen that.”
“I snuck cigarettes in the bathroom, and Alice painted scenery for school plays. We knew each other, but that was about it. I went off to college, ended up in New York. It seemed necessary, since I was going to write, that I get myself a loft and starve a little.”
She slipped an arm around him, instinctively offering comfort, waiting while he gathered his thoughts.
“One morning I was in the bakery around the corner from where I was living, and I looked up from the crullers and there she was, buying coffee and a croissant. We started talking. You know … what are you doing here, the old neighborhood, what had happened to whom. That kind of thing. It was comforting, and exciting. Here we were, two small-town kids taking on big bad New York.”
And fate had tossed them together, Ana thought, in a city of millions.
“She was in art school,” Boone continued, “sharing an apartment only a couple of blocks away with some other girls. I walked her to the subway. We just sort of drifted together, sitting in the park, comparing sketches, talking for hours. Alice was so full of life, energy, ideas. We didn’t fall in love so much as we slid into it.” His eyes softened as he studied the sketch. “Very slowly, very sweetly. We got married just before I sold my first book. She was still in college.”
He had to stop again as the memories swam back in force. Instinctively his hand closed over Ana’s. She opened herself, giving what strength and support she could.
“Anyway, everything seemed so perfect. We were young, happy, in love. She’d already been commissioned to do a painting. We found out she was pregnant. So we decided to move back home, raise the child in a nice suburban atmosphere close to family. Then Jessie came, and it seemed as though nothing could ever go wrong. Except that Alice never seemed to really get her energy back after the birth. Everyone said it was natural, she was bound to be tired with a new baby and her work. She lost weight. I used to joke that she was going to fade away.” He closed his eyes for a minute. “That’s just what she did. She faded away. When it had gone on long enough for us to worry, she had tests, but there was a mess-up in the lab and they didn’t detect it soon enough. By the time we found out she had cancer, it was too late to stop it.”
“Oh, Boone. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“She suffered. That was the worst. She suffered and there was nothing I could do. I watched her die, degree by degree. And I thought I would die, too. But there was Jessie. Alice was only twenty-five when I buried her. Jessie had just turned two.” He took a long breath before he turned to Ana. “I loved Alice. I always will.”
“I know. When someone touches your life that way, you never lose it.”
“When I lost her, I stopped believing in happy-ever-after, except in books. I didn’t want to fall in love again, risk that kind of pain—for myself or for Jessie. But I have fallen in love again. What I feel for you is so strong, it makes me believe again. It’s not the same as I felt before. It’s not less. It’s just … us.”
She touched his cheek. She thought she understood. “Boone, did you think I would ask you to forget her? That I could resent or be jealous of what you had with her? It only makes me love you more. She made you happy. She gave you Jessie. I only wish I had known her.”
Impossibly moved, he lowered his brow to hers. “Marry me, Ana.”
Chapter 11
She froze. The hands that had reached up to bring him close stopped in midair. Her breath seemed to stall in her lungs. Even as her heart leapt with hope, her mind warned her to wait.
