Completely Smitten Part 29

Maybe this was what the Fates wanted him to feel about his entire life. Guilt, remorse, and unworthiness. Emotions he didn't even know existed in his arrogant youth. People, he believed then, had an obligation to 'him' because of his magic, his talent, his natural athletic abilities, and his clear superiority.

What he had learned in the intervening years was that he had no clear superiority, that for all his talent, his magic, and his natural athletic abilities, he was more of a screw-up than anyone else he had ever met.

Maybe he was humble enough now. He wondered if he should go to the Fates and ask.

He raised his head and picked up his sandwich. He'd seen Cupid; that was enough for one day. Maybe he should stop focusing on himself and try, instead, to focus on someone else.

On Ariel, and helping her rebuild her life.

Ariel unlocked her front door and stepped inside. She flicked on the overhead light, closed the door, and leaned against it.

The building she lived in was actually a guest cottage behind a house built in the 1920s. The cottage was small-- one main room, plus a small bedroom and a bath--but it was private, and she didn't share her walls with anyone.

The owners had recently remodeled the cottage and she was its first tenant. It had a large main room, with a kitchen area and a dining area, as well as a place for a couch and a few chairs. Above the kitchen's bar was a skylight that she really valued on gray Oregon days.

A narrow hallway led to the bathroom and the bedroom, which was barely large enough for her queen-sized bed. She had brought some of her furniture from Boise: the L-shaped couch, the overstuffed chairs, and a kitchen table that had been with her since college. A TV with cable, her best friend since she had gotten laid off, sat on a built-in shelf in the corner, beside the stereo system she had purchased at one of the outlets for less than a hundred dollars.

Small, intimate, and hers. Yet it meant so little to her that if someone told her she had to move tomorrow, she would find a truck and pack her things.

She had never really had a place that she called home, only a place where she rested when she was done training, or hid when she was feeling bad. She had never had a place she valued so much that she would do anything to stay there.

Ariel sighed and came all the way inside the cottage, dropping her purse on the end table near the door. She was tired from being on her feet all day--something that she never would have admitted to herself six months before.

She walked into the bathroom, peeling off the clothing that still smelled of the restaurant. The conversation with Vari had left her unsettled. The things he had told her about Darius were things she had worried about in the darkness of night.

It wasn't normal for a man to disappear the way he had, or to be so very hard to find. Usually people who were hard to find were that way on purpose--hiding from family or friends or child-support payments.

Or trouble with the law.

She plugged the tub and turned on the faucet, sticking her hand in the water to set the temperature. When she got it right, she grabbed the bottle of expensive bubble bath she had indulged in the day she got laid off and poured it liberally in the tub. Instantly, the small room filled with the scent of vanilla.

Darius hadn't seemed like a man who would be in trouble with the law. He hadn't seemed like someone who manipulated other people's emotions to get what he wanted. She had met men like that, and they were usually very obvious-- at least to her.

But, she supposed, the good ones, the real confidence men, had to be so subtle that most people wouldn't suspect And she hadn't been in the best condition to judge him at the time.

After all, she had just fallen off a cliff. She had broken her ankle and she had been in a lot of pain. And she just might have injured her head.

She brought a hand up to her hair. Those flashing lights bothered her, but she wasn't sure she wanted to see a doctor about them. Not yet. She'd see if there were other symptoms first.

The tub was full of steaming water. The bubbles piled high over the edge. She grabbed Peter Robinson's 'In A Dry Season' off her bedside table--she'd been reading a lot of mysteries lately; she suspected that was because of her search for Darius--and took off the last of her clothing.

Then she went back into the bathroom, put the book on the rug, and sank into the water, leaning her head against the side of the tub.

Extreme marathons. She had lied to Vari. She knew about them. She even knew people who ran in them.

He was right--the races were still on the fringes of legitimacy. And even though he had also been right about the history of Ironman, she had joined the sport after it had gained a measure of respect.

She couldn't imagine being a pioneer. She'd read about the history of all her sports, about how women weren't allowed to run marathons (it was considered bad for their health) and how they snuck into the races. She'd even seen the famous footage of the female runner who was attacked by a marathon official during the Boston Marathon in the late 1960s.

One of the reasons Ariel partic.i.p.ated in her sport was because she was an athlete. She wanted to make a good living at what she did. She wanted to be recognized, get endors.e.m.e.nts, while stretching her body to its limits.

The bubbles popped around her. Lance Armstrong had gone from being a tri-geek to being a cyclist. But he didn't do day-long races. He excelled at the Tour de France, considered the most grueling race in all of sport.

He had gone to something harder, not something easier.

But she didn't want to sit on a bike for the rest of her career. Even though the 120-mile bike length of the Ironman was difficult, it still felt like cheating to her. After all, she had a machine beneath her. Wheels that carried her food, her water, and her sports drink. She was sitting down. Even though it wasn't rest--and didn't feel like rest--it wasn't grueling either.

Cycling didn't excite her.

Swimming in oceans excited her. Running excited her-- that feeling that she could do anything while she was on her feet. That was why she had gone hiking in the first place. It was just her and her body against the elements. Swimming felt like that too, even when she was wearing a wetsuit. 'She' was struggling against the water, dealing with the dangers that lurked in the darkness and the waves and the salt and the rain.

When she rode, the bike touched the pavement, protected her from the b.u.mps, allowed her to catch a snack.

She couldn't do that if she ran. It would be her against the road.

But the hundred miles felt like a publicity stunt, not a real race. Yeah, she would have to push herself to do it, but she really didn't want to.

Maybe the key wasn't the distance.

Maybe it was the speed.

She was a good marathoner, but not as good as the women who won the Boston or the New York or the other big international marathons. She wasn't that fleet. Of course, she had run all her marathons in compet.i.tion 'after' the swim and bike leg.

She'd never competed in a marathon as a race. Only as practice. She'd never tried to win.

Excitement flared inside her. She sat up, sloshing water against the rim of the tub. The bubbles surrounded her, covering her skin.

She hadn't felt like this in months, maybe in a year. Maybe not since she felt her shoulder rip on that horrible morning in Canada.

Who would have thought that Andrew Vari would revive her interest in sport? When she had gone to the deli with him, she had expected a lecture about her behavior in the restaurant. She hadn't expected an offer of sponsorship.

He was a lot more complicated than she ever could have imagined.

She smiled, dried her hand on a nearby towel, and picked up her book. For the first time in months, she felt as if she had the ability to relax.

The next morning, Darius sat at his favorite table in Quixotic. The restaurant wouldn't open for another two hours. He was sipping much-needed coffee and eating a piece of freshly baked apple pie as his breakfast. Over the table's surface, he had spread the quarterly reports. He was going over the accountant's work, detail by detail.

As Quixotic got bigger and its holdings diversified, Darius had discovered more and more people who wanted to siphon funds from it. Not the least were its first group of accountants, who had believed that a successful restaurateur like Blackstone wouldn't have time to monitor his own books.

The accountants were wrong--and they had some very nasty hours spent as slugs in Dar's garden. He usually didn't punish that way, and he wouldn't have done it that time if they hadn't p.i.s.sed him off by insulting his height as well as his intelligence.

The accountants remembered their slug existence as very nasty dreams. But the dreams had been effective enough to make them all choose new professions.

The accounting firm that did Quixotic's books now was highly competent. Still, Darius went over everything. He felt that he shared some responsibility for the slug incident by feeling a little too much trust. He hadn't checked the books as often as he should have.

Usually he didn't mind the task, but this morning the numbers blurred in front of his face. He hadn't gotten much sleep the night before. His meeting with Ariel had left him too keyed up, and so he had tried to calm down by watching 'Gladiator' on video.

That had been an even larger error. He liked spectacle movies, but he should have remembered that Roman epics always made him angry. Hollywood got everything wrong.

Darius should know--he had been there.

Commodus was a loathsome man, but he didn't murder his father. He did, however, execute his sister. And he didn't die at the hands of a gladiator. He died at the hands of his own ministers, who had him strangled in his bath.

Darius had tried to watch 'Gladiator' as the fictional adventure that it was, but the screwed-up, Hollywoodized details made him angry. And not just on the history stuff. Usually he didn't mind that they wore togas from one period and sandals from another. Heaven knew, he didn't get upset over all the Arthurian sagas, none of which were right. But for some reason, the liberties taken with Rome irritated him.

Maybe he had put in the movie on purpose. Maybe he wanted to be irritated after his meeting with Ariel. Maybe he felt that he had no right to enjoy the evening.

Maybe he felt that he should stay awake all night.

He rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger, but the sandy feeling remained. He could spell himself awake, but his magic still wasn't on solid ground. He still hadn't solved his familiar problem. No animal appealed to him.

Maybe he should get a tame bear and be done with it.

Then, at that moment, he felt her, as clearly as if she had spoken his name. She was standing behind him. The hair on the back of his neck rose and his breath quickened.

He closed his eyes and forced himself to take a deep breath--to calm down.

Only as he did so, he caught a whiff of her clean, fresh scent. The calming techniques of centuries no longer worked.

"Mr. Vari?"

He opened his eyes, starting at the use of his name. Part of him had expected her to call him Dar.

He turned toward her.

She looked radiant. Her porcelain cheeks were flushed with color and her green eyes sparkled. Her auburn hair fell in soft waves across her face.

He said, "Call me Andrew, Ariel," and somehow it sounded like a command.

She nodded in the way that people had when they had no intention of doing as they were instructed. "Do you-- mind if I sit down?"

He flushed--or would have, if he hadn't caught the reaction so quickly. "No, by all means, please sit."

She smiled, then sat down across from him. He gathered the papers and set them aside. Employees weren't supposed to see the books.

"I wanted to thank you for your generous offer," she said, and he could tell just from her tone that she was going to refuse. "I thought about it all evening."

He folded his hands over the papers, resisting the urge to talk over her, to defend the offer, to refuse to let her finish.

"But I'm going to turn you down."

He nodded, then sighed, picking up the papers and thumping their edges on the table to straighten them. He would regret that later, when he was trying to sort out the various piles.

"It's not because I don't want your help, it's just that..." Her voice faded and he could finish the thought for her. 'It's just that I don't want anything to do with you.'

"It's all right," he said. "You don't owe me an explanation."

"But I do." She leaned forward, her hands folded on the table as well. "You've been very kind to me despite my behavior. Yesterday, you offered me an incredible opportunity."

And she was turning him down. She looked radiant while she was doing it. Better than she had since she'd come to the restaurant. What did that say?

"I know something of the ultra marathons," she said, using their real name.

He felt that flush return. He had lectured her about something she was already familiar with.

"I know they'd be a challenge. I've never run that far. But I'm not a fringe athlete. I really don't want to work on the edge, even if it is a challenge."

"I understand," he said, and he did. He was a fringe athlete--or had been, thousands of years ago. Back when people thought the games he partic.i.p.ated in were silly and a waste of time, even though they attracted huge crowds.

Even though they had made him both famous and arrogant.

"But you got me thinking." She had leaned even closer, as if she could sense his withdrawal.

He rolled up the papers and clutched them in one hand. His hand was too small to hold them, and they fanned out, spilling across the table like leaves in a wind.

This time, the flush heated him all the way through. What a thing to do in front of her, to remind her about how different he was, how inadequate- "Let me get that," she said, rising.

"No," he said, standing on his chair just so that he could reach across the table. "I got it."

He scooped up the papers, which were now more out of order than they had been before, and set them on the chair beside him.

She stared down at him, then seemed to realize that she was towering over him, and sank into her seat.

"As I said," she went on, "you got me thinking. I miss competing. And while I've run marathons, I've never tried to win one."

He was still standing, like a little boy waiting for his mother to reprimand him for putting his feet on the furniture. But he didn't want to sit down. He didn't want to call any more attention to his own awkwardness.

He hadn't behaved like this in years, maybe even centuries. Usually he flaunted his short stature, dared people to attack it. With her, he didn't want to. He sat down slowly, kicking his feet out in front of him like he always did in chairs built to real-people height.

"So, I was thinking I'll enter the Portland marathon this fall and see if I can win. I've never really given my all in a real marathon--in the Ironman I was always trying to survive them, so in practice, I was going for pace, not for winning."

Why was she telling him this?

"You'd have to pace in a regular marathon." His voice sounded even gruffer than usual. He wasn't hiding his discomfort well.

"Yes, but it would be a different tactic, one I have to learn. And every runner dreams of qualifying for the great marathons, like the Boston." She smiled at him. The smile was gentle, and it softened her face. "I had forgotten that dream until I talked to you."

He let out a small puff of air. Maybe the conversation had worked. Maybe he had managed to refocus her obsession on something else.

She was looking down at her hands. "So I actually went out and ran this morning."

"You did?" He couldn't keep the surprise from his voice. "What about your ankle?"

"It's weak," she said, "but not because of the injury. Because I haven't worked to strengthen it. And I didn't go far. Just three miles."

Just three miles. He couldn't do three miles to save his life--at least not in this form. His Darius form could go much farther, but only because he always reverted to the body he wore when he had gotten in trouble all those millennia ago.

"Besides the ankle, how did it go?" he asked.