Three weeks into the Oregon assignment, Iris boarded a plane carrying a small bag, a paperback and an unreasonable quantity of nerves.
She had closed the studio for Friday and Monday, warned clients in advance and left no work promised for days she would be away. Two repairs were ready for collection Thursday. The next appointments began Tuesday. The business would not collapse because its owner spent four days wanting to see a man.
This was what she told herself until the plane began moving, when she became occupied by the more immediate question of whether she had remembered her phone charger.
She had.
Daniel stood beyond arrivals, scanning faces with an expression she recognized before he saw her. Concentrated. Slightly impatient with the existence of other people between him and what he wanted.
Then his gaze found hers.
He came toward her without the careful dignity he brought to professional rooms. She put the bag down just in time. His arms went around her, and for several seconds the airport was a place entirely incidental to the fact of him.
“You’re here,” he said against her hair.
“Yes.”
He drew back, looked at her and kissed her properly. She heard someone laugh nearby and did not care enough to look.
In the car he asked how the flight had been, whether she was hungry, whether she’d slept. She answered the first two and yawned through the third.
“I had plans,” he said.
“Did they involve a pillow?”
“They can.”
“An excellent revision.”
At the hotel she slept for ninety minutes while he answered emails in the chair by the window. When she woke, the room was quieter than she expected. He had taken off his shoes. His laptop lay closed on the table. He was reading the book she had brought, holding her place with a paper receipt.
“Have you stolen my horse?” she asked sleepily.
He looked up, smiling. “She’s just lost it.”
“Don’t tell me.”
“It’s your book.”
“And you’ve gone ahead.”
He put it down, came to the bed and lay beside her over the quilt.
“I’ve missed you.”
“I’ve missed this,” she said, putting a hand against his chest. “You being the right size. Not on a screen.”
He laughed softly and kissed her forehead. For a while they stayed still, letting the journey leave her body and the work leave his.
Dinner was in a place near the hotel with wooden tables, good bread and a menu neither had studied in advance. Daniel recommended nothing. He had not been there, despite passing it twice a day, because eating at the hotel had been easier after work.
“Then we’re both discovering it,” Iris said.
He smiled. “I like that.”
She ordered fish. He ordered something with enough chili in it to make her look at him, and he pointed at the menu before she could speak.
“One pepper. A moderate commitment.”
“We’ll see.”
The food was good. They ate slowly, telling each other the details too small to have survived a phone call. The client who had brought a skirt with six safety pins because she distrusted the zip. The estate room containing twenty-eight chairs that did not belong to a single set. Saul singing downstairs when he thought the floor was empty. Daniel’s colleague insisting on using a pen that leaked onto every invoice.
After dinner they walked beside the river. The light lasted differently here, or perhaps Iris only noticed because she had no next appointment to calculate. Daniel held her hand, stopping when she stopped, looking where she looked without making the afternoon into a guided exercise.
She leaned against the railing and watched the water.
“The house should close in about three weeks,” she said. “If the final arrangements hold. I’ve got the apartment from the week before.”
He turned toward her.
“I’ll move before you’re back.”
“I’d like to help.”
“I know. I’ve booked movers for the furniture. Hugh’s doing one van load of the smaller boxes. Paid, before you ask.”
Daniel smiled, then looked at the water.
“What would help?”
She thought about it. Not what he could fix from a different coast. What she actually wanted.
“Talk to me the night before. When I start wondering why I’ve agreed to leave every room at once.”
“Yes.”
“And don’t tell me it’ll all be fine.”
“What would you prefer?”
“Something true. Preferably with one ridiculous part.”
He considered. “You’ll have fewer cupboards to search.”
She laughed and put her head against his shoulder.
On Saturday he had two work calls between nine and ten. He told her before breakfast. She went out for coffee, found a bookshop and spent forty minutes looking at things she had no intention of improving.
When she returned, he was waiting in the lobby with his jacket over one arm.
“All yours,” he said.
“For how long?”
“Until Monday morning.”
She took his hand. “I have some ideas.”
They did not see half the places he had written down. They walked, ate, bought a second copy of the adventure novel so he could stop stealing hers, and returned to the hotel before the day was finished with light.
Later, she stood at the bathroom mirror beside him while they brushed their teeth. It was a foolishly domestic sight, two people making themselves temporarily unattractive with toothpaste, and she loved it enough to look away before her eyes betrayed her.
He noticed anyway. He touched her shoulder, then waited until she’d rinsed her mouth.
“What?”
“Nothing bad.”
“Good.”
She put her arms around him. He held her, patient now, and she let herself feel the small grief of Monday without making it an argument against the weekend.
On the flight home, she began her own copy of the novel again from the last chapter she remembered. Daniel had written a note on the paper receipt she’d been using as a bookmark.
I have not told you about the horse. A considerable act of love.
She laughed aloud, startling the man beside her.
“Good book?” he asked.
“Getting better.”