The Auction a Romance by Anna Erishkigal Read online

  "Oh? And where is the coolest place on the station?"

  "The river," Adam grinned. "I'm taking Pippa on a picnic for lunch. Do you want to join us?"

  Oh, how I wanted to come! But every time I got between them, the way they interacted with each other changed, as if -I- suddenly became the center of attention. Adam's ex-wife must have been one hell of a prima donna. Pippa had become more relaxed around me, but to Adam I was still a stranger.

  "Maybe next time," I said. "I need to dig out some textbooks for Pippa's lessons."

  Adam's face dropped with disappointment.

  "Okay," he said as they left. "But if you change your mind, just follow the path from the kitchen door, and then veer left until you come to the sandy area."

  I opened the tack room window. Millions of tiny dust particles glistened in the sunlight and floated upward as the air carried out the stale, musty scent of disuse. I rummaged through my curriculum development materials until I found Psychology of the Gifted Child. I flipped through it, jogging my memory about the characteristics of vulnerable populations of children, until I got to the section titled Abnormal Child Psychology. At last I found it, the list of medications. I looked up Pippa's little yellow pill.

  Risperdone - (trade name Risperdal) - is an antipsychotic drug mainly used to treat schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, the mixed and manic states of bipolar disorder, and irritability in autistic people.

  Oh. What. Wait? Pippa didn't exhibit any of those symptoms! Except maybe her talk of imaginary friends. But she never talked to me about her imaginary friends, only the dog; though at no time did she appear to confuse the dog for a human being. That wasn't crazy. I'd talked to Harvey like that all the time. None of those disorders was related to depression. Had Pippa been prescribed the wrong medication?

  I flipped through the textbook, searching for other explanations, until I'd brushed up on every anxiety disorder that existed. Who was -I- to second-guess Pippa's psychiatrist? The kid was definitely over-anxious.

  I put the book back with my curriculum development materials, and then dug out the rest of the things I'd sorely missed: a few toiletries, a couple of textbooks from classes I'd been forced to drop, a pair of blue jeans, and a cardigan sweater.

  At last I dug down to the large, blue plastic trunk I had snuck out of my mother's house at age seventeen in preparation for my escape. My fingers danced the familiar combination out of the lock. I lifted the lid and took out my most cherished items. My black velvet riding helmet. The long leather crop I'd used to train Harvey dressage. And dozens of ribbons and a few gold medals. I debated bringing the box inside, but the Condamine River Ranch was no longer a working cattle station.

  I set it on the counter where I could easily access it. Who knows? Emily had a horse. Maybe I'd be able to find someplace around here to ride?

  Gathering my belongings, I carried them into the house, made myself a cut lunch, and then sat out on the patio with my curriculum development materials to craft a plan. Adam and Pippa's voices filtered up from the river, along with the sound of splashing, peals of laughter and occasionally Adam's hearty guffaw. I wished fervently I'd done the irresponsible thing and gone with them.

  Perhaps the next time they invited me? By then, hopefully, Adam would stop skittering around me like a nervous racehorse and allow me to participate without making me feel like I intruded into their time? All I had to do was coax Pippa to be a little more comfortable in her own skin, and then I would work on Adam.

  I jotted down my teaching strategy in my lesson planner:

  .

  The Plan

  Math

  Science

  Friends

  .

  Way at the bottom, I penciled in one last unrelated item for myself.

  .

  Find someplace where I can ride.

  Chapter 8

  While Pippa and Adam played in the river, I decided cook something more elaborate than hotdogs and hamburgers. Cooking while Adam was home was purely voluntary, but this assignment was the first time I'd ever had time to cook. With the refrigerator overflowing with strange vegetables I'd never heard of a-la Linda Hastings, perhaps it was time to experiment with the unknown? Whatever I did, it couldn't possibly taste worse than Adam's attempt at pikelets.

  I pulled the strange, fernlike vegetables out of the refrigerator that looked like something halfway between dill and an enormous, mutant celery plant. I knew it was called fennel, but beyond that, I didn't have a clue. I pulled out the illustrated Australian Cookery of Today.

  "What the heck am I supposed to do with this thing?"

  Adam's grandmother's cookbook was in a typeface so tiny I had to squint to read the index, but the book assumed the chef knew nothing and laid out the instructions step-by-step. I dug out a knife and held the plant up to compare it to the one depicted in black and white.

  --Cut off the stalks, leaving just the bulb.--

  I held it up and marveled how much the now-leafless bulb resembled a human heart. Each of the former stalks resembling an artery, only instead of blood, the fennel seeped a white liquid which filled the kitchen with the scent of licorice. I picked up the bundle of fern-like lacy fronds and fanned myself with them like a courtesan's fan.

  "Oh, be still my heart!" I giggled.

  I cut the fronds off the second one and popped a couple of dill-like leaves into my mouth. It had a peculiar, grassy-licorice flavor, and I wasn't certain whether or not I liked it. I picked up both bulbs, contemplating whether I should eat these, or toss them to Thunderlane as balls?

  "Fair speech may hide a foul heart," I made the skinny bulb say to the fat bulb.

  "A good heart is better than all the heads in the world," the fat bulb replied.

  "False face must hide what the false heart doth know," the skinny bulb shook emphatically.

  "But the beating grew louder, louder!" the fat bulb shuddered. "I thought the heart must burst. And now a new anxiety seized me--the sound would be heard by a neighbor!"

  A noise by the screen door caught my attention. Pippa. Adam. And the dog. All standing there. Grinning. Watching me re-enact The Telltale Heart using two castrated fennel bulbs. A burning sensation that had nothing to do with the heat seeped into my face until I thought I might erupt into fire like a vampire that'd been caught red-handed by a ray of sunlight.

  "Uhm … hi?" I plunked the two fennel bulbs down on the counter, wishing fervently they would disappear.

  Adam burst out laughing.

  Pippa bounded over; the wet, muddy dog at her heel.

  "Rosie! Make them do it again!"

  "I, uhm, I'm out of quotes," I mumbled, absolutely mortified.

  Adam strode over and picked up the larger of the two bulbs. The fact he remained shirtless from his recent swim with little more than a towel draped carelessly around his neck did nothing to help me regain my dignity. He smelled of male, and musk, and the rich, earthy scent of the river, all blended with the scent of licorice that leached out of the fennel like an aphrodisiac.

  "Fennel?" Adam asked.

  "I guess so." I forced my voice to remain nonchalant. "Linda Hastings sent them over. Frankly, I have no idea how to cook them."

  "Don't ask me," Adam said. "I could burn water. But every time I've eaten them, they've usually been braised."

  "You've eaten them before?"

  "My mom used to grow them. It's one of my favorite vegetables."

  I glanced at the cookbook, which advised to drizzle the fennel bulbs with oil and sauté them. Close enough. It would have to do.

  "Make them talk again, Daddy," Pippa begged. "Please?"

  Adam held up the larger fennel bulb as though contemplating its splendor, and then, with a deepened voice, launched into a monologue.

  "Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath borne me on his back a thousand times, and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that
I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? Your songs? Your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now to mock your own grinning?"

  "Hamlet's supposed to be holding a skull, Daddy! Not a heart!"

  "Close enough," Adam said.

  "That's cheating!"

  I looked from one to another. A ten-year-old who was familiar with Hamlet? And Adam had memorized the entire script?

  Adam regarded me with a wicked grin, made all the more evil by an endearing cowlick of golden hair which curled upwards at his temple like a devil's horn.

  "It's your turn to make a fool of yourself for my daughter's amusement." He shoved the smaller bulb back into my hand.

  Breathe, Rosie…

  "I, uhm…"

  "Okay … how about this?" Adam held up the fat bulb. "In our own hearts, we mold the whole world's hereafters; and in our own hearts we fashion our own gods."

  "Melville," I said.

  He leaned closer, his expression mocking.

  "You lose. You're supposed to shoot back a quote. Not analyze it. That takes away from the fun."

  "Where'd you learn Shakespeare, anyway?"

  "My mother," Adam said. "She used to perform community theatre. She was prone to bursting into spontaneous bouts of Monty Python."

  "Do Monty Python!" Pippa clapped.

  Adam grinned. "I think not, Miss Muffet. The heart song is not appropriate for tender ears. How 'bout Miss Rosamond gives us another quote before we devour these poor, tender bulbs for supper?"

  I searched my memories for popular quotes and held up my smaller bulb of fennel. My voice warbled as I quoted Lady Diana.

  "Is it a weakness that I lead from my heart, and not my head?"

  Adam's express grew pensive. He looked not at his fennel bulb, but me as he gave his reply.

  "Follow your heart," he said softly, "but be quiet for a while first. Ask questions, and then feel the answer. Learn to trust your heart."

  The words hung between us, heavy, expectant, ripe with meaning as the air filled with a sense of electricity that had nothing to do with the summer heat. The rest of the world faded very far away. A question? An answer? No. It was stupid to speak of hearts with my way-too-handsome, emotionally unavailable employer.

  "I should, uhm, finish making these," I mumbled.

  I avoided eye contact as I grabbed the big kitchen knife and sliced both bulbs into slivers. Adam herded first Pippa, and then himself, into the bathroom to shower and change before both filed out, eager to see what I'd cooked for supper. I watched in silence their playful banter as we ate the fennel with braised pork chops, sliced apples, and a dash of wine. I served it all on a bed of garlic mashed potatoes, and to my surprise, the light taste of fennel added to the mélange.

  After supper, we played a game of gin rummy, and then Adam herded Pippa into bed for his nightly ritual of storytelling. I closed my eyes and listened to the muffled voices which filtered down the hallway; Adam's rich baritone, and Pippa's flute-like soprano. I had my own reading to do, but was completely burned out with reading curriculum development books, so I picked up the textbook from an elective class I had dropped. I settled into a nest of textured orange cushions and found the last reading assignment where my Native Aboriginal People's & Cultures anthropology class had left off.

  --The First Australians believe dreams are a form of wealth. There are many layers of awake and asleep dreams which a person can navigate to overcome their problems in the real world.--

  Was that what was happening to me each night as Harvey carried me across Adam's cattle station? Was it my subconscious, helping me work out my problems while I dreamed?

  From down the hallway, Pippa give her father one last, giggling goodnight. Adam strolled into the kitchen. Beer bottles clinked as he fetched two White Rabbits out of the fridge, and then he strode into the living room to place one on the coffee table in front of me. I glanced up and gave him a grateful smile. Adam subtly 'adjusted himself' and sank down into his favorite 'king' chair, and stretched his long legs so far they bumped my own feet under the coffee table. This was, I recognized, 'Adam settling in for the night.'

  Adam took a sip of beer.

  "Ay?"

  "Hi." I stuck a bookmark in my book, but did not shut it.

  "Whatcha reading?"

  "Just some old textbook I never got around to finishing in college."

  "What's it about?"

  He was, I realized, trying to draw me out in conversation.

  "Native aboriginal beliefs," I said. "I always wanted to move out onto one of the aboriginal communities or a remote outback station to teach."

  "You never finished the class?"

  I gave him that sad, rueful grimace.

  "I got sidetracked."

  Adam watched me, that hawk-like gaze that always made me feel like a mouse about to be eaten. How was it that a man who could be intimidating when he wanted to be could be so thoroughly henpecked by his little girl?

  "What sidetracked you?"

  I had Adam's undivided attention. Oh, crap… I shut the book and clutched it to my lap.

  "I got engaged."

  "You?"

  "Yeah."

  Adam tilted the neck of his beer bottle towards the untouched White Rabbit he'd left for me on the coffee table.

  "You didn't tell me you were taken."

  I gave him one of those sad grimaces to communicate: 'Yeah, right.'

  "I'm not engaged anymore."

  "What was his name?"

  "Does it matter?"

  "Yes."

  I almost said 'none of your business,' but hadn't I been ruing the fact that Adam Bristow wouldn't tell me a darned thing about the high-stakes drama unfolding between him and his soon-to-be ex-wife?

  "His name was Gregory. Gregory Schluter."

  Adam nodded.

  "And would this mister Schluter have anything to do with the fact you showed up at my doorstep, carrying all of your worldly belongings in your car?"

  Color flooded my cheeks. "Yes."

  Adam regarded me with his intense blue-green eyes. They swirled with a deeper shade of aquamarine tonight just like the Great Barrier Reef.

  "What happened?"

  "I don't want to talk about it."

  "Okay."

  He took another sip of beer. The silence stretched between us as Adam scrutinized me with his intense gaze. The silence weighed in on me until it became outright cloying.

  "He dumped me," I said. "About six weeks before we graduated. The day I came here, I had just moved out of the apartment we'd shared for three and a half years."

  Adam snorted. "He's an idiot."

  "Thanks." I gave him a small, sheepish smile. "Honestly, though, I'm glad he did it. I realize now he was nothing but a jerk."

  "Do you miss him?"

  I stared at the bare spot around my left finger which, despite the fact I'd given Gregory back his ring, still remained thinner just below the knuckle.

  "I thought I would, but honestly? Since I got here, I realized how much, towards the end, all he ever did was annoy me."

  Adam tapped his fingers upon the arm of his orange king chair. It was one of those old-fashioned easy chairs with wooden arms that rocked slightly when you sat down into it, not a rocking chair, just a chair with a bit of spring so you could plunk down into it after a long, hard day and not move until you'd finally rocked away your worries.

  I met his sharp, perceptive gaze.

  "What about you? Do you miss her? Do you miss Pippa's mother?"

  A cloud passed through Adam's expression. He grimaced. His face grew wistful as he broke eye contact and pretended to examine the White Rabbit label.

  "We were married for ten years," Adam said softly. "Of course I miss her. That doesn't mean I'm stupid enough to let her put me through the wringer anymore."

  So. That was it. He was still in love with her. It was time I stopped prying and let the man lick his wounds.
r />   I changed the subject.

  Chapter 9

  Adam's station was a horse lover's dream, seven hundred acres of pasture, some of it farmland, but most of it lay fallow so herds of cattle could graze. Two small seasonal streams intersected the property and carried rain to the river. They provided a superb obstacle to put Harvey through his paces. I laughed as my ghost horse bunched into a ball of explosive muscles and carried me over a hedge. Before my father bought him, Harvey had been a show jumper. I coaxed him to give me a high-stepping passage.

  "Oh, Harvey!" I bent over my saddle and gave my horse's neck a hug. "How I've missed you!"

  With a joyful whicker which was more felt than heard, Harvey stepped sideways into a dance-like half-pass. I coaxed him to perform a high-leaping capriole, the most difficult dressage move a horse could perform. Six long years it had taken me to train Harvey to do the famous Spanish School of Vienna leap, but my father taught me to break down the move into steps so Harvey could carry me on to win dozens of medals.

  "Now if only I could get Pippa over her math phobia."

  A flicker of white caught my eye. I reined Harvey to canter over to where the girl on the white pony had just appeared.

  "Hello again," I said. "Are you really Adam's mother?"

  The girl beckoned for me to follow. I patted Harvey on the haunches and signaled him to run after her. My heart flew with pure ecstasy as five hundred kilos of horse flesh broke into a gallop. The wind stole my words as I gave a joyful whoop. I never could catch up with the girl on the white pony, but it was fun to chase her and she always led me through some interesting terrain.

  We headed downhill towards the river and then she stopped. She pointed down at a row of bushes planted in neat double rows. Peeking out from amongst the verdant leaves were tiny dark-crowned orbs dusted with blue powder.

  "You've got blueberries?"

  The girl on the white pony smiled, and then she and her little white mare disappeared.

  The sunlight streaming through the window told me it was time to roll out of bed. As tempting as it was to wallow under the covers, Pippa had a tendency to wander down towards the river if she woke up before me and I wasn't awake to corral her.