"I'm taking you back to my apartment first," Ximena murmured, as she and Adam embraced at the USAir gate in San Francisco after his late-morning arrival. "I want some time for us before I share you with my family."
She did not mention her father as they walked arm-in-arm to the baggage-claim area, chattering a little too single-mindedly about heavy traffic on the way in and the expected ordeal of trying to retrieve Adam's luggage amid the pre-Christmas crowds. It was only as they made their way out to the airport car park that she even skirted the unspoken question that lay between them.
"Oh, Adam, if I've learned nothing else during these past months, it's how much I miss your company," she blurted, as they wheeled his luggage trolley out of one of the car-park elevators. "I'm so glad you're here."
The glance she directed his way spoke volumes, as did the taut caress of her hand against his, just before she gestured down the next aisle in the car park. Feeling the tension, and all too aware of his own long-banked yearnings, Adam only smiled and said, "So am I."
Her manner turned brisk again as she directed him toward a black Honda Prelude neatly inserted in a space between two larger vehicles.
"Well, this is my current bus," she said, as she opened the trunk to accommodate his bags. "It isn't a Morgan, but it's never let me down."
One of the things Ximena had left behind her in Scotland was a yellow Morgan sports car, presently collecting spider webs under a dust-sheet in one of Adam's stableyard garages.
Watching her buckle up, he was obscurely glad she hadn't had the heart to get rid of it. As they pulled out of the car park and headed northward on the freeway from the airport, it was clear that she had lost nothing of her flair for driving.
"Thanks for not asking questions that I'm not ready to answer," she said over her shoulder, as she overtook a pickup truck pulling a sailboat on a trailer. "I'll make sure you don't regret this. Just promise me something."
"What's that?"
"Promise me that for the next few hours you won't speak of anything that doesn't apply directly to us. There's time enough for - the other."
He could not see her eyes behind the sunglasses she had donned before taking to the road, but her grip on the steering wheel was stronger than it needed to be.
"I promise," he agreed, and simply reached across to touch a hand to her knee before subsiding into companionable silence for the duration of the drive to her apartment.
By common consent, neither of them allowed any shadow of the future to intrude upon their lovemaking. Initially wary of giving full rein to his passions, Adam had been moved beyond words to find himself courted with a fervor equal to his own. Sheer physical delight, long denied by their separation, washed over him in a dazzling torrent. Temporarily bereft of all intellectual reservation, he surrendered blindly to their shared ardor, finding in that union a rare moment of release.
The intensity of that pleasure left behind a lingering glow of profound well-being, but precious as that sensation was, Adam would willingly have exchanged it for the burden of care he knew Ximena must shortly resume. Time was moving on, and there was nothing he could do about it. But if he could not keep her from the grief that lay ahead, perhaps he could still offer her a prospect of happiness beyond.
Possibly to hold her own thoughts at bay, Ximena had set some music playing in the next room before she went off to shower. Adam let the music wash over him without particular awareness, fresh from his own shower and a change of clothes as he settled on the couch in her little sitting room and put his feet up, curling his palms contentedly around a steaming mug of Earl Grey tea.
Her apartment occupied the top floor of a newly renovated town house near San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. The view of the neighborhood, seen from the living room windows, embraced a vivacious fin-de-siecle collection of gables, cupolas, and widow's walks decorated in gingerbread woodwork. On a clear day it was possible - so Adam had been told - to catch a fugitive glimpse of the Golden Gate Bridge beyond the dark green feathering of trees that marked the intervening presence of the Presidio. Today, however, both the park and the bridge were shrouded under a silvery haze of the dense fog for which the city was famous.
Relaxed and beginning to feel gently jet-lagged, Adam withdrew his gaze from the neighboring skyline to contemplate the more intimate features of the apartment's interior, sipping distractedly at his tea.
Ximena's rented flat in Edinburgh had been comfortably suited to her needs, especially for a busy ER physician who frankly spent little time there, but it had come already furnished, leaving her little or nothing to say regarding the decor. This place, by contrast, had started off empty, giving her ample scope for indulging a more personalized expression of taste. Adam expected that much of the furniture had been handed down from her parents or bought second-hand during her student days, but most of the appointments seemed to bear what he was beginning to recognize as Ximena's distinctive style. Left to his own devices while she showered, Adam found it instructive as well as pleasant to contemplate the effects of her self-expression.
The room was sparely appointed, in keeping with the clean, sunlit expanse of wide windows and stripped woodwork. The variegated tones of wood, tile, and stonework contrasted elegantly with the thick, cream-colored plushness of the fitted carpet. The sofa upon which Adam was sitting was a luxuriously comfortable design piece executed in brick-red Cordovan leather.
That terra-cotta hue was reflected several times over in the selection of prints by Diego Rivera and Joaquin Torres-Garcia that were scattered across the walls. Among the original objets d'art in the room were a stained-glass depiction of a smiling Madonna done in rich blues and golds, an art naif oil painting of three jaguars, and a lively bronze casting of two dogs dancing that recalled examples of Calima statuary Adam had once seen in an exhibition of pre-Columbian art. He was touched to see a blue glass votive candle he had given her, set beneath the portrait of the Madonna.
The overall effect was one of discriminating eclecticism. That effect was all the more commendable since Alan Lock-hart's progressively worsening condition had left his daughter with little opportunity for shopping - or indeed anything else - in the months since her return.
Despite Ximena's earlier protestations that she would not allow her concerns to intrude on their time together, she had finally updated Adam on her father's condition before sending him off for his shower, huddled miserably in the circle of his arm while she recited the essentials in detached clinical phrasing that left little doubt of her growing sense of helplessness.
Though Lockhart's attending physicians initially had been able to arrange his medication to permit relative comfort and alertness during the daylight hours, steadily mounting levels of pain had eaten into that schedule until now he was left with only two narrow windows of lucidity each day: a few hours early in the morning and a similar period late in the afternoon. By structuring their own activities to take advantage of his periods of alertness, Lockhart's wife and family had managed to achieve a fragile semblance of routine. But there was no hiding the fact that Ximena's father was rapidly approaching the point where conventional medicine could offer him nothing more than a choice between agony and oblivion.
Adam had in mind a third alternative - though whether Ximena's father would be receptive to the idea could only be determined at first hand. Formal introductions were to take place later that afternoon, when Lockhart would be awake and all the other members of Ximena's family would be present.
In the meantime, there had been this precious interlude. Adam finished his tea and set aside his mug with a sigh, cocking an ear toward the bedroom as awareness of a different piece of music drew his attention back to more pleasurable contemplations.