Page 31 of Beach Cottage Kisses
Held on to it. Took it in with him for a long shower when he got home. Washing away any trace of Iris’s scent.
And when he found a strand of her long auburn hair on his pants as he started to throw everything he’d had on in the washer, he got a trash bag instead.
* * *
Iris slept great. She was exhausted, satiated and consciously chose to slide into the place inside herself where she blocked out the world. A zone that her psyche had created to allow her once-sensitive self to venture out into the world again.
On Tuesday, rested and bursting with energy—both mental and physical—she rode a wave of relief. Just wasn’t sure what fuel propelled the wave. Relief that the temptation was gone?
Relief from the godawful tense, unrequited sexual desire that had been amping up inside her?
There were some slightly uncomfortable moments in the shower, when the spray tingled against her nipples, when she washed other sensitive parts, and for a second, her mind jumped back to moments on the floor that were never to be revisited.
They’d served their purpose. And she was through with them.
So why, even when she forcefully turned her mind away,cataloging colors in the shower to distract her train of thought, did her heart and nerves hold on to the high spirits that she might have experienced in those few seconds?
Or had it been afterward?
Either way, her mind and body were playing tricks on her. Trying to convince her the part of her that had died years before, preventing any full-out emotion, was suddenly sprouting seeds of life.
She’d lived through the accident that had killed the other half of her soul, but only on the surface. Existing on a different plane. One where she experienced life from a distance.
Iris didn’t feel wants and needs personally, deep inside herself, as she once had. She felt great compassion for others. Appreciation. Most highly for Sage, Leigh and Scott Martin. Soon to be Sage and Leigh Bartholomew as soon as the legal paperwork was filed.
She was super in favor of Sage’s re-found love. Rejoiced from the sidelines for her friend.
But didn’t, for a second, want it for herself. No one was ever going to know her as completely or love her as fully, as unconditionally, as her identical twin had done.
And no way was she going to risk the devastation of losing even half that much again.
Period.
Thoughts firmly on board and in sync with her inner self again, Iris did what she was on earth to do. Camera to her eye, she sought out that which others didn’t stop to see. Didn’t know to see. Behind the lens, her spirit soared. The only place it still could do.
She had another full zoo day. Capturing the thoughts, feelings and soul of a couple of Amur leopards—a species at risk of extinction, with only eighty such leopards alive in the world.The zoo was globally committed to fighting extinction and Iris was honored to have been chosen to help them in their efforts.
Her job was to raise in others an appreciation for the nearly extinct. To show the at-risk creatures’ unique contributions to the world, and to build an emotional need within human beings to help keep them alive.
She was at her best, doing what she did, on an adrenaline high, until she realized that she’d worked so long it was dinnertime and she hadn’t even noticed the sun starting to set.
Sunset. Angel. Scott on the beach.
Reality hit with a force she didn’t recognize. Couldn’t take in stride as she always did with everything that denoted any bit of bad news, tardiness or tension.
Any other time, she’d simply call Sage, who’d let Angel out, feed her and give the girl her playtime on the beach.
It wasn’t any other time. It was the day after she’d had sex on Sage’s living room floor. With Sage’s brother.
Who she also could not call because…
The whole sex-on-the-living-room-floor thing.
Instead, she stopped work before she was done. Cutting off her own lifeline. And drove to the beach as though death could be at her door. Angel had been out at lunchtime. The girl was fine.
But Iris wasn’t. Not until, a quarter of the mile down the beach, she caught sight of Morgan about the same time Angel did.
Iris didn’t take off into a gleeful run, but she smiled as she watched Angel do so, living vicariously in those four paws, the wagging tail.
