The same group as before made one more ski trip the weekend after that, but the snow was sloppy and clearly wasn’t going to be around much longer. In the evening discussions around the fireplace, Jill didn’t seem to mind much that the date with her friend had gone bad, and after a little talking it over she said she should have known better in the first place.

Kyle was getting better on skis, and after a couple of warm-up runs on the bunny hill he spent most of the weekend on the intermediate slope, getting better all the time. He was usually skiing with one or more of the group, sometimes but not always including Gwen, who was her usual non-communicative self. She seemed to enjoy being with him, but only so far, and now even Andrea recognized that – she hadn’t quite given up getting the two together as a lost cause, but she was no longer pushing it. Gwen might prove to be a firecracker in bed, he thought, but it was going to have to be up to some other guy to find out, preferably one with a strong enough torch to light her fuse. By now he was sure he didn’t have the right one, and wasn’t eager to push the issue anyway.

Down out of the mountains at a lower altitude on the flatlands spring had really come; the snow was long gone and the days were warming up. As it got into May things had greened up out on the prairies as much as they would be likely to, and Kyle was starting to get some photos he was happy with. One evening in particular he spent several hours out at a bluff near New Raymer, well to the east of Fort Collins, just waiting until the light was exactly right for a dynamite photo. He felt like Ansel Adams as he waited by the truck until it was just exactly perfect. He wished he had a view camera to work with for the shot; that would have made it even better, even if he couldn’t have used it for one of his impressionistic photos. He even thought about getting one to play around with, but realized that he didn’t have room for the appropriate darkroom in his apartment.

A couple of times on the weekends he loaded his camera gear into the Triumph and headed a ways up into the mountains to try to capture some of the rushing streams from the spring melt. This offered a whole new field for him to experiment with, and he had some success at it.

As May progressed he exchanged a number of phone calls and e-mails with Rianna, who urged him to work a little harder at incorporating people into his impressionistic shots, like he’d done with the sunset shot of Chelsea. He wasn’t sure that was the direction he wanted to go, but conceded to give it a try to keep her happy, if nothing else.

Thus it was in early June he called up Gwen one Thursday evening to see if she would like to ride along with him on another one of his photo trips. She’d ridden with him in the Triumph on one other occasion and seemed to like it; besides, if he had to have someone with him on a photo search, Gwen was just absolutely perfect – she’d sit back in her seat and not interrupt his thoughts.

In his explorations around the area, he’d found a dry ridge north of town that seemed to hold a lot of potential for the kind of photo he was looking for, assuming he actually knew what he was after in the first place. It was on a gravel road, so he drove the little sports car slowly along the road, looking for the photo he wanted.

Eventually he found something that he thought might have possibilities. While Gwen sat in the car, he got out his camera and walked up and down the road looking for the absolute right shot he was seeking. He shot a few frames, but nothing on the view screen seemed to match his vision. The photo needed something else, and a person in the background would give it some form and depth – just the kind of thing Rianna seemed to be looking for.

“Gwen,” he asked, “would you be willing to go down a few fence posts and just look up at the ridge while I get a photo?”

She seemed very unhappy at the thought, but didn’t say anything.

“It wouldn’t have to be anything special,” he expanded his thinking. “I just need a person in the photo.”

“No,” she said flatly.

“Gwen, it’s not a big deal,” he said.

“No,” she replied. “I don’t want to be in pictures. Not ever.”

Gwen was usually willing to do things as long as they were innocuous, but this reaction seemed to be a little strange, even for her. “You wouldn’t even have to be looking toward the camera,” he said. “I’d want you looking toward the ridge.”

“No,” she repeated. “Take me home.”

“All right, if that’s what you want,” he shook his head, realizing that he’d crossed some sort of line he hadn’t seen. It was disappointing, but not worth making a big deal over – as if he could make a big deal out of something with Gwen because he could never expect to get enough feedback to know what direction to take.

He packed up the camera bag, put it behind the seat of the Spitfire, got in and headed back to town, feeling really frustrated. Gwen was a nice enough person in her way, but there was just no way he could get into her head. He’d been aware for some time that he was never going to get anywhere with her and had given up trying, but somehow this reaction seemed to take the prize.

The more he thought about it, the more he thought that the photo he’d planned might work for what Rianna had wanted, but it was clear that Gwen wasn’t going to be his model or prop or whatever it was. He knew that Corey was out of town this weekend, so possibly he could pick up Echo to do the job before the light faded too much – but having Echo in a picture ran the risk of her chest being the point of the photo, rather than her. Maybe, he thought, he could call Barbara, the girl he’d had dinner with a couple of times, but hadn’t really clicked with. Or, maybe Andrea or Denise, as far as that went. It was just a photo, after all.

He could just say the hell with it, too. It wasn’t that big a deal. The light was going fast, and they would soon be past the golden hour with the sun behind the ridges, so it was clear he wasn’t going to get the shot tonight anyway. Well, maybe tomorrow, or this weekend, or whenever.

Once he was off the gravel road he was able to speed up, and soon they were back in Fort Collins. He pulled to a stop in front of Gwen’s place, and as far as he could tell she seemed relieved to be there. “Thank you,” she said as she got out of the car. “Sorry.”

“Thanks anyway, Gwen,” he replied politely. “Another time.”

“Maybe.” She turned and headed toward her front door.

Kyle sat there for a moment watching her. It wasn’t as if he’d wasted a lot of time and effort on her, because he hadn’t, but somehow this little experience convinced him that it wasn’t worth even thinking about bothering with her any longer. Gwen was just never going to be the answer to his girlfriend problems, and that was that. Maybe he’d better even quit thinking of her as his default girlfriend to take to shows or things, and besides, the theater season was pretty much over with for the summer, anyway. There were still movies, and if he was desperate maybe he could call up Serafina’s cousin Josie or something.

Oh well, no great loss, he thought as he started the Spitfire and drove it to the storage shed where he normally kept it; he still used the pickup as his daily driver. It took a few minutes to get the camera gear moved from the Triumph to the pickup, and then drove back to his apartment.

His phone was ringing as he walked in the door – not his cell phone, but his rarely used landline. He picked it up to discover it was Chelsea, and she was crying. “Chelsea, what’s the matter?” he asked.

“Don’t you have your cell phone on? I needed to talk to you.”

“No, I had it off, I was out doing some landscape photos and I didn’t want to be bothered. What’s the matter?”

“Everything has just gone to hell here.”

“Chelsea, what happened?”

“That fucking Frank. That asshole …”

“Frank who?”

“Frank Pettis, he’s on the library board. Damn it, I won’t do it. He’s disgusting to begin with, and this is even more disgusting.”

This was clearly bad, although Kyle couldn’t tell how bad. Bad enough to have her swearing and crying, so it was bad enough. “Chelsea, you’re not making any sense. Stop, take some deep breaths, then take it from the top.”

It was a moment before she replied, although she sounded a little calmer, but only a little. “Do you remember me telling you about my so-called assistant, Mary Beth?”

“The one who had the baby?”

“Yes. She’s back now, and she thinks she ought to have my job instead of me, and the little bitch has been doing everything she could to stab me in the back. She doesn’t know a damn thing about library science, but she has some votes on the board, they’re all relatives or something, and they don’t like the idea of some damn Yankee coming in and taking over a job she ought to have.”

“You told me about that,” he replied. At the time she’d told him a couple of months before it sounded like trouble, and now it was here. “So what happened?”

“That asshole Pettis is one of the votes on her side, some shirttail relative. He came to me about an hour ago and said that if I’d go to bed with him, he wouldn’t tell the rest of the board about Chastity White.”

“Oh, shit,” Kyle sighed. “I was afraid that was going to catch up with you sooner or later.”

“I’ve been afraid of it, too,” she replied, a little more calmly now that she’d stated the problem, although he could still hear the tears in her voice. “That’s why I kept a low profile with you in Wychbold, and why I’ve tried to keep a really low profile with it here. Damn it, Kyle, your phone calls the last few months have been just about the only way I’ve been able to keep in touch with who I really am. My God, Kyle, I won’t do it. That goddamn Pettis is fat, he’s old, he’s disgusting, and he has breath that would drop hogs at thirty paces.”

“Then don’t do it, damn it.”

“I don’t intend to do it, I don’t want to do it, but damn it, Kyle, I don’t want to lose my job, either. This is something I’ve worked toward for years, and now the greedy little bitch and that miserable asshole are ruining it. But damn it, I do have some principles, and this really pisses me off.”

“Like I said, Chelsea, don’t do it. I can tell you this much: if you start down that road there’s no end in sight. He’s not going to let once be enough. He’ll have you where he wants you and there’s no reason he won’t want more.”

“I figured that much out, and you’re right. That’s why I won’t do it. I put him off, I told him I’d think about it, but there is no way in hell I’m going to do it. But Kyle, what do I do?”

Kyle thought rapidly. Chelsea was not in an enviable position; in fact, she was between the proverbial rock and a hard spot. He took a deep breath himself, and one thing came into focus. “I hate to say this, Chelsea, but you might as well get used to the fact that if you don’t do it, you’ve lost your job. You might as well accept that. If you’re not going to do it, the only way you’re going to get out of it is with a bad reputation or a worse one. What I’m saying is that they’ll either throw you out or you can tell them to jam their job right up their fat asses. Which one is going to be worse?”

“Either way, it’s going to be tough to get a library job again with the kind of recommendation I’d get, especially since it would probably be that fucking Pettis who writes it. I don’t want to keep the job if it depends on fucking that asshole,” she replied. “But Kyle, what can I do? The website brings in a fair amount of money, but I can’t live on that and pay my student loans, too. I don’t want to have to go live with my parents. I barely managed to make it through three days at Christmas with them as it was, and my God, the heat and the humidity down where they live is like a steam bath in the summer. I could be months finding another library job, and I really don’t have enough money to wait it out.”

“Chelsea, you have other options,” he replied. The last few months he’d never have believed he would have the chance to say this, but here it was, and it seemed like God’s gift on a golden platter. “The best one is for you to come here and live with me.”

“Kyle, I can’t do that.”

“Why not? I’ve got a bedroom in this apartment that’s mostly going unused except for my computer desk and as a place to dump stuff. I’m already paying for the apartment, so it’s not like it would cost much more to have you here with me. This is not a bad town for finding work. It might not be a library job, although you might want to check at the college. They might have something coming up in the fall. This is a neat town, there are a lot of cool things to do. You’ve heard me talk about them and you’ve told me before that you’d like to do some of them. Come out here and be with me, Chelsea.”

“Kyle, I’ve already asked so much of you, especially in keeping me sane the last few months, I don’t know how I can ask that of you, too.”

“It’s not you asking me, it’s me asking you, Chelsea. I have missed the living hell out of you ever since you left Wychbold. All the shit I’ve gone through with trying to find a girlfriend the last few months has been because I’ve been trying to find a substitute for you. I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that there isn’t any such thing, especially when I can have the real you with me.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“I’m just as serious as I can be. I wouldn’t jerk you around on this, Chelsea. I love you, and it was one of the saddest days of my life when I had to leave you down there in that armpit of a town. Now, maybe we can make it right.”

“God, I’ve missed you, Kyle. I knew it was a hell of a big mistake at the time but I thought it was my big chance, so I figured I’d better take advantage of it. That was about the stupidest thing I ever could have done.”

“Don’t take all the blame on yourself. I should have tried harder to talk you out of it.”

“All right, Kyle. You talked me into it, not that it took much convincing. I’ve wanted to be with you so badly for months it hasn’t been funny. I’ll accept on one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“You can forget about any of that separate bedrooms nonsense. I know we’ve only spent three nights together, but I want a lot more of them.”

“I was going to suggest the same thing,” he laughed, “but I’m glad you said it. That way you won’t think I’m putting pressure on you.”

“You don’t have to pressure me on that, since I think I want it worse than you do. Kyle, I’m sorry I kept pushing you to find another girlfriend, since I thought we’d never see each other again. Now, I’m real glad that you couldn’t find anything but losers and dingbats. I couldn’t help but worry that sooner or later you’d find someone nice and I’d be stuck out in the cold.”

“It’s not going to happen now, Chelsea. Now, I think the best thing we can do is to get you out of that suckhole of a town. Tell them they can shove their job right up their ass, and tell them why.”

“That asshole Pettis will probably say it’s a lie.”

“He probably will, but at least you’ll have a countercharge on the record, and that might count for something. Maybe not much, but something. You say you have some people on your side on the library board, don’t you?”

“A couple. They’re the ones who wanted to drag this place kicking and screaming into the twentieth century. There was never any hope of dragging it into the twenty-first.”

“Well, make sure they have your version of why you’re leaving, and give it to them one on one, not with Pettis around, and make sure you get your version out first. They may be able to make something of it, or at least give the rumor mill a chance to make something of it. People need to know why a bright, educated librarian left town so quickly. Rumors count for a lot in a small town, and I shouldn’t have to tell you that.”

“Then get out of town, right?”

“Right. I want you out of town as soon as possible, just so there’s no chance of any backfire.”

“I’d love to start packing tonight, but I can’t get everything in the car and can’t handle everything by myself anyway. Can you come and help me?”

“For you? Of course. Start packing, Chelsea. I’ll bet you can’t be packed up and ready to leave by the time I get there.”

“Don’t be so sure about that. I’ve still got a lot of stuff in boxes from when you brought me down here. But Kyle, it’s at least sixteen hundred miles. That’s a hell of a drive. I’d guess it’d take you two days at a minimum.”

“Who said anything about driving? I need to make a couple of arrangements at work, but I’ll be on a plane as soon as I can make it. With any kind of luck, I ought to be there tomorrow afternoon, or Saturday morning at the latest. I’ll rent a small truck to get you back.”

“Kyle, won’t that be expensive?”

“It’ll be worth it to have you with me. Besides, it can’t cost me a hell of a lot less to drive there with the pickup, and I’d be tired as hell when I get there.” There was a fault in that logic, but she was worth it.

“Kyle, you don’t know how happy you’ve made me. I can’t wait to get out of this damn town and be with you. I don’t know what I can do to thank you.”

“Oh, I can think of a few ways,” he laughed. “Some of them involve a bed, and some of them involve swimsuits.”

“Do any of them involve both at the same time? I saw a photo of a swimsuit not long ago that would work just great for that.”

“I’m waiting for you to explain that,” he laughed.

“I’m not going to explain it. I’m going to make it when I get the time, and then we’ll see how you like it. Chastity wouldn’t wear it, but I’ll gladly wear it for you.”

“Get packing,” he laughed again. This could be interesting, he thought. “The sooner you get here, the sooner we can try it out. The longer we talk, the longer it’ll take, but if you need something, call me. I’ll have my cell phone on.”

“Bye, Kyle. I love you, and I can’t wait to see you.”

Kyle hung up the phone in something of a daze. For all that he’d missed Chelsea the last few months, he’d never have believed that this would happen. Never! Now, here it was, right out of the clear blue sky! It was the last thing he would have expected. If he’d had an impossible dream the last few months, this was it. All of the hassles with the lunchroom girls, all of the lousy dates, well, they just didn’t matter now. He was going to have Chelsea with him after all!

He just sat there at the phone, catching his breath and hoping he wouldn’t wake up. No way was he going to pinch himself! This seemed too good to be true. Oh, obviously there were going to be problems; going to get her would be a hassle and he’d have to take off work to do it. And then, he knew that Chelsea was a worker, and wouldn’t want to sit around the apartment all the time, but finding a job was something she ought to be able to do even if it wasn’t in library science.

He was still so excited at the prospect of having her with him after all that he knew he needed to settle down. He finally got up from the chair by the phone, went to the kitchen, and poured a glass of white wine from a bottle that had been sitting there partially drained for weeks. It tasted a little off, but still it tasted perfect, and it helped him to organize his thoughts a little.

The first thing, he decided, was to get her here, and waste as little time as possible in doing it, if for no more reason than to keep her from changing her mind or repairing something with the library board. If she did, she might be tempted to stick it out in Arlington a little while longer. He couldn’t let that happen, so speed was of the essence. Once she was here, they could deal with problems as they came up, and take their time if they needed to.

With that thought in mind, he went into the computer room and booted up his desktop computer. Within seconds, he was looking into airline fares and schedules. There were no direct flights between Denver and Columbia, but there were several with only one stop and short layovers. One of them ought to work just fine.

As he sat there examining flights, he had an interesting thought cross his mind: that picture he had wanted to take of Gwen out by that ridge north of town would look a whole lot better with Chelsea in one of her swimsuits. They could do it, now.

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