Desert Winter Read Online Free Page B

have all the validation you want. What’s milady waiting for?”
    I froze. I’d unintentionally steered our conversation in a direction I was unwilling to travel. Struggling for words, I was saved by the sound of the front door opening.
    â€œHey, who’s here? Oh, hi, Claire,” said Kane Richter as he walked into the kitchen. “Hope I’m not interrupting anything.”
    â€œNothing at all,” I assured the pleasant young man as he paused to greet his partner with a kiss, a long one, not a peck. No doubt about it—they were in love. Kane didn’t look like a kid anymore, though he wore shorts and a T-shirt. And Grant looked far younger than his years, though he was impeccably dressed from his morning of casual business meetings. In spite of the two men’s seeming incongruity, they were a perfect match.
    â€œYou’re just in time for lunch,” said Grant.
    â€œGlad I didn’t stop for a burger on the way home. I had a hunch you might be up to something.” Kane turned to me, grinning. “The guy even cooks. How lucky is that?”
    Grant dismissed the flattery. “Not much cooking today, I’m afraid. It’s just a salad.” His words were too humble. The various ingredients—the greens, the fluted mushrooms, the grilled chicken—had taken a considerable amount of advance preparation.
    â€œPerfect,” said Kane. “I’ll help with the table. Outdoors?”
    Silly question. It was a pristine early-winter day in the desert. By now, the temperature had nudged seventy. From the terrace by the pool, the peaks of the surrounding mountain ranges—the Santa Rosas, San Jacintos, and San Bernardinos—looked close enough to touch, like artful but artificial backdrops constructed for the stage.
    Within minutes, we had settled around the glass-topped table under an arbor near the pool. A distant mockingbird’s melodic drill drifted on a dry breeze spiced with citrus and oleander. The setting, far more intoxicating than the chardonnay I sipped, still seemed unreal to me. I was tempted to pinch myself, as it did not seem possible to think of paradise as home.
    We gabbed as we ate, speaking of Stewart Chaffee’s quirky behavior, regaling Kane with our tale of Stewart’s friendly feud with his full-figured nurse, capping our story with the ill-mannered incident of the fleshy trumpet.
    Predictably, Kane found this uproarious. He leaned back in his chair, cupping his hands and applauding slowly as he laughed—when did the younger generation begin doing that? Where on earth did they pick up this odd, pervasive habit? I blinked away the image of Kane as a trained seal with a ruffle around its neck, clapping its flippers and barking. At the same time, I studied Kane’s technique, knowing I could put it to use in some future production that might feature a contemporary twenty-something male.
    Kane wiped an eye, sat forward again, and asked, “Why were you with this guy in the first place?”
    Grant explained that I needed a particular sort of clock for the Laura set. “It’s like a grandfather clock, but smaller. Stewart has a wonderful example in his collection—Austrian, eighteenth-century. Claire and I will be returning tomorrow morning to pick it up. Maybe you could ride along to help with the lifting.”
    â€œSure, happy to.” Then Kane turned to me. “The play opens next week, doesn’t it?”
    â€œFriday night.” A knot gripped my stomach as I set down my wineglass. Though I’d directed hundreds of plays in a career spanning three decades, the prospect of an opening night still brought butterflies. This healthy apprehension served to remind me that my work was soon to be judged, that I could never let down my guard. “The show’s in great shape,” I told Kane blithely (I was acting). “My work is all but done. The last week of production always feels like