Chapter 9
By Saturday morning, Amber lounged lazily in her apartment, attempting to read a borrowed novel from work, but she was so bored, she’d been reading the same page over and over again and didn't have a clue what happened in the last three pages. Her mind kept wandering away to what Lucy had said about Linc and Macie. And about how she looked a lot like the mysterious Macie. In fact, it bothered Amber so much that she spent all of Friday afternoon, searching the newspaper archives at the library for a photo of Linc’s dead fiancee. And she didn’t feel the least bit guilty about using work hours for personal business. She hadn’t seen hide, nor hair, of her boss for three days, and she could only assume he was off collecting memorabilia and relics from the golden age of song lyrics from old movies -- something she should be a part of. But no...not the woman actually responsible for coming up with the idea. She didn’t even get an opportunity to sit in on the meetings. All she knew were rumors. And using movie songs were the latest she’d heard about the exhibit. There would be a whole section based solely on compositions by Arthur Freed, Randy Newman, and Andrew Lloyd Webber. So, since she had nothing else to do, she spent her work hours looking for Macie.
Ah, Macie...born Marcella Louise Serrano...a truly beautiful woman with dark silky hair, smoldering eyes -- which she could only assume were the same blue as hers, though Amber was sure her eyes never smoldered, and splatter of freckles across a pert nose. Amber got jealousy tinges, just from looking at the black and white photo in the obituary section of the newspaper. No wonder that stupid, heartbroken cowboy couldn’t let her go. If she’d been a man, she wouldn’t be able to force Macie from her mind either.
And it wasn’t just Macie’s looks, because frankly, Amber couldn’t see the resemblance -- Macie was so much more beautiful than she was. The woman was almost every man’s dream girl...at least Amber thought so. She had degrees in business, agriculture and culinary arts; she held three regional records in women’s rodeo events; and she filled out a pair blue jeans like nobody’s business. So, Macie could balance a checkbook, get down and dirty on a farm, cook up a six course meal to please her man, and she looked great doing it.
Wonderful.
Amber couldn’t blame Linc one bit for being so far in love with her, he couldn’t see straight. She sighed and tossed her book far across the room to her bed. She’d try finishing it later that night. Maybe she should have brought home a romance or a tragedy. She couldn’t seemed to focus on anything else. Curling up in her reading chair, she rested her chin on her palm and stared out the window. The city street below her buzzed with activity. Some kind of rally or parade moved by at a snail’s pace, and she considered throwing up her window sash to feel the breeze on her face and be even a tiny bit connected with the outside world.
In the few weeks she’d been here, she’d spent most of her free time decorating her loft exactly how she wanted it, but not much else as exciting. The management allowed her to paint the walls if she paid the re-painting fee, so she opted for a sky blue on the ceiling, sunshine yellow in the bathroom, a smokey green for the bedroom area and the longest wall which fed into the kitchenette, she painted a color her sister called, “Hussy Red.” Nothing matched, nothing went together, not even her furniture, and Amber loved it. She hung sheer curtains over the windows so she could watch them billow when the window was up, she scattered faux fur rugs on the floors so she could bury her toes in the softness, and she hung up pictures and photos that meant something to her.
There was the page from a calender in a gilded frame that documented the month she was born...her mother’s stick-straight handwriting noting the day the phone bill was due and when to expect Amber, her second child. Over her small, two-seater sofa, she hung up some paintings Chloe did in high school as part of her portrait grade, and Amber always considered the depictions of herself and her sister as a bit over-the-top, in a Picasso kind of way, but they were colorful and vibrant and were perfect for livening up a room. The wall in front of her metal computer desk held a large cork board with snapshots, birthday cards, magazine clippings and a bunch of other dear-hearts pinned to it. She had knickknacks and vases and random nature items scattered around her apartment, and the clutter invigorated her.
All in all, her apartment suited her perfectly, but it reminded her too much of her bedroom back home, and she wished she had more mementos of her life away from home in which to decorate this new chapter of her life. She had nothing to commemorate her recent adventure as a single, independent woman -- her first taste of independence -- and the lack of such only made her feel more trapped with the past dependence of her family to help her communicate with the world.
That’s it, she thought. I’ve got to get out of here. She’d been in this city for three weeks, and she had yet to see much of it. She was an intelligent, mature, relatively pretty woman. She shouldn’t be sitting at home on a beautiful Saturday afternoon, moping.
She read in the paper that there was a craft show at the fair grounds today, and she wanted to go to it. But Lucy was holed up down in Springfield at a family reunion, and Amber didn’t know anyone else, and the thought of going alone, without anyone to joke and laugh with, made her wish her sister was nearby. She missed Chloe. They’d been best friends all their lives. Chloe tended to go into Mother-Hen mode too often for Amber’s comfort, but Amber still missed the friendship with her older sister.
Making friends was not Amber’s strong suit. She’d always been too self-conscious of the fact that she couldn’t communicate well enough to get past the initial meeting parts. Though she could talk, she knew she wasn’t very good at it, because it wasn’t her primary language. And speaking and signing were done differently. Lots of deaf people learned to speak fluently and at times, a hearing person couldn’t tell the difference. But Amber could never seem to get the hang of it the way others did. She got her words mixed up when she tried to speak. Sign language didn’t follow the same structural rules as normal speech, and when she got frustrated -- which was often -- she tended to stutter around, giving the subjects and comments of her thoughts without adding much in the way of verbs unless they were actually actions performed. And a Deaf person would understand that. Hearing people looked at her funny. And she discovered that a lot of them feel insulted if she wrote notes to them. So, she avoided communicating with as many strangers as she could get away with.
Leaning her head back on the chair, she closed her eyes and tried to remember the very last thing she’d ever heard before she went deaf. It was a favorite activity of hers. She’d only been three when she lost her hearing, but she still remembered the voices of her family. Her mother’s soft angelic voice, telling Amber she loved her, and her father’s deep rumble, calling her his Little Ambrosia. And Chloe...her sister had been five when Amber last heard her voice, and back then, Chloe’s tiny mouth tended to squeal when she talked...a shrill sound that Amber still recalled after all these years.
“Amber! Get out of my room! I’m telling Momma!”
She saw the way some people talk about hating the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard or the screech of fork tines across a plate, and she thought that must be what Chloe’s voice had been like long ago...and she loved it. She’d love to be able to hear it again, but she can’t, and ever since, sign language had been her first language. Speaking, to Amber, was like a normal, English-speaking person trying to communicate in Japanese after hearing that foreign language only once.
Well...no more of that. She couldn’t live by herself in a big city without venturing out once in a while. And she really, really wanted to go to that craft show, get some items for her new apartment, maybe a handmade quilt for her bed or some dishes for her kitchen. Amber preferred homemade items to the reproduced things she could buy in those big department stores. She liked having something that other people slaved over and produced with sweat and love for their craft.
I’m going, she affirmed to herself. I’m twenty-eight years old. I don’t need someone to hold my hand. I can take the bus, and if I get lost then I can contact--
Wait. No, she can’t contact anyone, because there wasn’t anyone around to call. With Lucy out of town, the only people she knew well enough were her boss, Jimmie -- and she’d be damned if she had to see him outside of work, not that she saw him at work either -- and Linc Martin. Amber snorted at that thought. Satan would be rolling up balls for a snowman in Hell before she asked for his help. He could keep his crappy attitude and smug look if she ever needed him to get her out of a jam.
I don’t need anyone anyway...I can handle it on my own. With that in mind, she changed into some old jeans and a paint-splatter sweatshirt with the neckline cut out of it. She printed off the local bus transit routes, slung her bag around her hip and headed out of her apartment.
*****
Linc folded his arms over the gate to the paddock. Raven Rose drank from the trough, her elegant neck stretching down from her body and her glossy black mane trailing almost to the ground as she bent over. She was a beautiful animal. Even with the burn scars -- which were healing nicely -- Raven Rose captured his eye.
And captured Egaeus’ heart, apparently. Linc grunted as he focused on his butterscotch gelding, standing proudly and protectively next to Raven Rose. He had been reluctant to introduce the two equines. Egaeus could be weird about other horses in his territory, but after the first night of Raven Rose’s presence in the stable, his own crazy horse pitched an ever-loving fit to meet the midnight beauty. Since then, Linc couldn’t keep them apart. Only when he locked them up in their stalls for the night, were they separated, but Egaeus refused to go to his usual stall in the back and would only enter the one next to his new love.
Many times in the mornings when Linc came to let them out for exercise and feed them breakfast, he found the two nuzzling noses over the fence slats that separated them. It made Linc smile, and it made him frown. What would Egaeus do when it was time for Raven Rose to leave? Linc knew what a broken heart felt like. Could he do that to his best friend?
As it was, Linc was having a hell of a time getting near Raven Rose when it was time to apply the ointment to her rump. Egaeus snorted and ploughed at the ground when Linc approached her, and he had to spend almost ten minutes allowing the gelding to sniff the medicine before administering it to the mare. Even then, Egaeus stood right there, watching his every move, and if Linc so much as patted the swelling belly of Raven Rose, then Egaeus’ eyes rolled back and his massive teeth snarled at Linc.
Talk about an overprotective daddy. Anyone would think those were Egaeus’ colts inside of Raven Rose. And that gave Linc more pause and consideration for this arrangement. The babes were to be auctioned off as soon as they were old enough. Egaeus was going to go bonkers when that happened.
And Linc couldn’t blame him one bit. Linc went a little nuts himself when he lost his soul mate and unborn child. Unfortunately, Egaeus won’t be able to drown his sorrows in a bottle whiskey or a collection of dark poetry.
“Sorry, buddy,” Linc said to Egaeus. “It looks like you’re in for a rough time of it.”
Egaeus, hearing Linc’s voice, shook his head, making his golden mane fly around his head. He moved closer to Raven Rose.
“Don’t get yourself in a snit,” Linc said to him with a smile. “She ain’t going anywhere just yet.” Linc took his hat off to scratch at his head, and Raven Rose’s head jerked up suddenly, her dark eyes rolling back to show almost white. Linc eyed her curiously. “What’s up, girl? Something got you skittish all of a sudden?”
He glanced around, looking for the source of her nervousness. He circled the fence of the paddock, searching the ground near the horses. Maybe a snake came up on them -- it was getting warm enough for them to venture out of their holes, but Linc doubted it. He planted marigolds -- a natural deterrent for lots of pesky creatures -- all around his land. The real trick was to keep the horses from eating the flowers.
There was nothing to explain her sudden wariness, and Linc decided it might have just been the babies kicking around. He leaned on the top railing again, thinking about nothing in particular and scratching absently a knuckle on the corner of his mouth. Raven Rose swung her head around to see him clearly. He should have shaved this morning, he thought as he rubbed the whiskers under his nose with the back of his hand. They were getting just long enough to start itching. He didn’t notice Raven Rose approaching until she pushed his hands aside and sniffed around his shirt pocket.
“What the hell?”
Egaeus snorted indignantly at Linc.
“Hey, don’t look at me like that,” Linc said to Egaeus with his arms wide as Raven Rose continued to search for something in his shirt pockets. “I didn’t do nuthin’.”
Raven Rose lifted her nose and nudged his hands. “Whatcha want, girl? You want a treat?” He didn’t have anything with him, but it wouldn’t take more than a half a minute to grab some apples from the stable. She nudged him again. Linc laughed. “Alright, alright, give me a sec.” He trotted into the stable and to the feed room for a few apples and trotted back, hoping he might buy off Egaeus with a few extra treats as well.
The mare turned her nose up at them. Linc offered her another. She took it in her mouth and slung her head to toss the fruit over her shoulder.
“Well, that’s just ungrateful,” Linc laughed at her, even though he knew she couldn’t hear him. “A neat trick, but a rude one, at that.”
Raven Rose nudged him again. Linc pursed his lips. “Well, what do you want then, if it ain’t apples? Want a sugar cube? A carrot? You, two, ate all the oatmeal balls yesterday.” Raven Rose lost interest as he talked on and decided to settle for an apple. She bent to take the discarded fruit in her teeth and chewed. Linc scratched at his whiskers again.
She spit the apple out and hurried over to him, going through the snuffling actions again, only to snort at him and knock his hat off his head when she came up empty-handed again. Linc furrowed his brow. “What is it, girl?” he asked again, starting to believe he was somehow causing this behavior in the mare. What exactly did he do?
Well, nothing other than rub at his face. Dang-blasted whiskers. That’s it; I’ve got to shave, Linc told himself and he scratched again with the back of his hand. Raven Rose knocked her nose against his temple. “Ow...what was that for?”
She head-butted him again, pushing him backward, toward the stable. “Oh, I get it...you’re still wanting whatever you’re hankering for,” he said. He went back to the feed room and loaded up a bucket of all the different treats he had on hand. On the way back, like he’d been struck with a bolt of lightening, his boots came to a full stop and he finally figured it out.
He scratched his face, and she came searching for treats.
Talk about being dim-witted, if it took him ten minutes to figure that out. Had someone taught Raven Rose a sort of sign language...enough for her to understand basic concepts, like treats or simple commands? If so, then Linc was way out of his comfort zone with this one. He knew the sign for asshole and stupid -- courtesy of Amber -- but he doubted Raven Rose would react to those. He had no idea what meant what when it came to communicating with his hands and not able to use verbal cues. He’d care for her the best he knew how, but what happened the next time Linc scratched a body part? For a second, he pictured himself stretching long and hard after pitching hay, and a black, pregnant horse rearing up at him for no other reason.
He was going to have to call Doc back and find out the exact details on Raven Rose. She seemed gentle enough -- and Egaeus surely was a good enough judge of character not to fall in love with a temperamental female -- but Linc had enough experience with unpredictable horses to suit him for a lifetime. Glancing down at the bucket of carrots, some peppermint sticks and sugar cubes, and chunks of the raisin/date granola bars his dad came up with years ago, Linc figured he’d better find out what Raven Rose was attempting to communicate with him now and take the rest of it from there.
“Alright, girl,” he called, setting the bucket on the ground out of her reach. “Let’s see what you know.” He rubbed his face again, and she ignored him. He scratched at his upper lip. Nothing. “Well, hell,” he said and propped his hands on his hips as he studied her.
After a minute, he rubbed at his mouth with the back of his hand, and Raven Rose trotted over. Linc stopped moving. That’s it? A knuckle to the side of his mouth? Alright, let’s see what that means to her.
Linc held up the granola chunk. She sniffed it, shook her mane and butted his hand aside. Egaeus snatched the granola from Linc. Those were the gelding’s favorite treat. Linc grinned at him. “No?” he asked Raven Rose, and offered her a peppermint stick. When she didn’t take that one and turned a shoulder to him, Linc gave it to Egaeus, who was now eagerly begging for more snacks.
This isn’t working, Linc thought. Maybe he should try a different approach. Grabbing one of each treats from the bucket, he tucked a sugar cube in one shirt pocket, a carrot in the other, and propped the granola and peppermints on either side of his hat brim. Linc walked cautiously around to Raven Rose’s nose and rubbed his mouth one more time. If he didn’t have what she was wanting, then he may never know if this was all a fluke or not.
Raven Rose snorted with impatience. Linc made the sign again. He dipped his head so she could sniff the treats on the hat, and then he gently nudged her nose down to his shirt pockets. She snorted against his left side and rubbed against the carrot tucked away in that pocket.
“A carrot?”
Linc handed her the carrot stick. She munched on it happily. Linc signed again and tried to get her to accept any of the other foods. She only focused on his empty shirt pocket. That must be it. A carrot. She wanted a carrot. Linc gave her a handful more and Egaeus some more of the granola. Then, he stepped out of the paddock and reached for his cell phone. Using the browser application, he searched for sign language site and looked up the sign for carrot.
A woman on the screen curled a loose fist to her mouth like she gripped a carrot stick and twisted. Linc practiced that a few times, and then he looked up apple, just out of curiosity. They were almost the exact sign. In fact, he’d been doing the apple sign the whole time, and Raven Rose choose the carrot instead. Why? Maybe because someone associated the two words falsely when Raven Rose learned them? That was plausible. After all, that’s what language truly was...associating a symbol or sign with a word.
On a whim, he looked up come on -- the closest phrase he could find for come here -- and tried that. Raven Rose pranced over to him. Linc grinned and scratched the back of her ears for a reward, and she went back to her carrots.
“I’ll be damned,” he said to no one in particular. “Looks like I’m gonna have to learn sign language.”
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Read My Lips: Restricted Version
RomanceThe Restricted version of Read My Lips....IT IS NOT EROTICA in any way. It is just a slightly steamier version of the original, and the version I wanted for this story.
