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“You still didn’t answer my question, Clark.”
Clark shifted in his chair. “What question would that be?”
“What happened when you got back to your cabin?”
AND NOW...
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Chapter Thirty-Two
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**Clark had finished moving two chairs together when the door to the bathroom opened and Mayson reemerged. Suddenly, Clark had a very bad feeling about where this was going. She’d changed for bed, and although the outfit wasn’t overtly sexual, it was obviously meant to entice. Trying to ignore any possible motivations she might have for her choice of sleeping apparel, Clark concentrated on shaking out the extra blanket he’d found in the closet.
“What are you doing?” Mayson asked, sashaying closer.
“Getting my bed set up,” he said, gesturing to the chairs.
“That doesn’t look very comfortable, Clark.”
“Sure it is.” As if to prove his point, Clark sat down in one of the chairs, resting his feet on the other. He pulled the blanket up around him. “See?”
Mayson took a seat on the side of the bed and watched for a moment as he struggled to look as if he was settling down for the night. A moment later, he’d managed to push the chairs too far apart and had fallen in between them.
“Clark, this is ridiculous,” Mayson said. “Come share the bed. I’m not going to attack you.”
She got up and pulled back the covers, climbing in. Clark watched her for a moment, before rising to his feet. She was right. He could trust her not to try anything. And it wasn’t as if he would have problems fending her off if she did anyway. He was becoming quite an expert at dodging her advances.
Besides, he didn’t want Mayson to think that he didn’t trusted her. That was important, too.
And the bed really did look comfortable.**
“I don’t think I slept at all that night,” Clark said. “I was so close to my own edge that I had to partially float not to fall off.”
“So I take it she didn’t try anything?”
“She was a paragon of virtue. What about Dan?”
**Dan had gone for a walk after their disastrous encounter with Smiley. Lois was actually glad for the reprieve. The last thing she had needed tonight was to fight over sleeping arrangements. She changed into a t-shirt and sweats - no need to tempt the fates, or rather, Dan, by wearing anything that might be considered provocative. In fact, it might be best if she were already asleep when he arrived.
She climbed into bed and attempted to fall asleep as quickly as possible - effectively keeping herself awake until Dan entered the cabin.
Although she didn’t turn towards him, she could hear the sounds of him getting changed. She held her breath as he put out the lantern. She heard his soft footfalls as he approached, ever closer, until she knew he was standing next to the bed. She could practically feel him bend over to pick up the cover on the empty side of the bed.
“Don’t even think about it,” she said the moment she felt the cover move.
He sighed, but without a word, walked over to where she’d put out a pillow and blanket and made up a bed on the floor.**
* * * * * * * * *
**Lois’ early morning jog was invigorating. She hadn’t slept well the previous night. Realizing that Kent was with Ms. D.A., doing only God knew what, had played havoc with her imagination. Did he touch Mayson the way he had touched her? Did he kiss her with the same amount of passion? Were the noises he made as intoxicating to the other woman as they had been to Lois?
The thought had crossed through her mind to invite Dan into her bed in an effort to drive away those images. Not that it had been more than a passing notion - not even rising to the level of an actual idea. After all, she knew she’d never do it. She couldn’t fake sex with Dan to get the pictures of Kent with Mayson out of her mind. In fact, she suspected that such action would only serve to remind her what her body still seemed to want. And that couldn’t be found with Dan. He didn’t have the power to make her blood boil in her veins. He couldn’t make her helpless to do anything but follow her passions - regardless of the consequences.
Hearing someone on the path ahead of her, she looked up. Her footsteps faltered when she realized who she was meeting. Another early morning jogger, or so it seemed. For some reason, he didn’t appear either sweaty or out of breath. She slowed her pace, finally coming to a walk as they drew closer together.
“Morning, Kent,” she said, not adding the obvious question about what he was doing up so early.
“Morning, Lane,” he responded.
“Out for a morning jog, I see.”
“Always good to get the cardiovascular system going first thing in the morning.”
“Not that you’d need it after last night, I expect.” Damn! Now why had she said that?
“No more than you would,” he responded.
She bristled. “So you and Mayson must be getting pretty serious if you’re here.”
“Much like you and Dan.”
She could feel so many underlying currents running between them that she was afraid the undertow might drag her under. “Well, Dan’s a great guy. Attentive. Loving. Loyal.”
“Sounds like my dog when I was seven,” he mumble under his breath.
“What?” she demanded, an edge creeping into her tone.
“Sounds like a match made in heaven,” he said louder.
Her eyes narrowed. Had she misunderstood him the first time?
“Mayson’s pretty great, too,” Kent went on to say.
“Well, if she’s so great, maybe it’s time you proposed.”
“Maybe it is. I think she’d say yes.”
Lois’ heart dropped. He’d obviously been thinking about this. “Well, I guess I need to...” She gestured to the path in front of her, needing to get out of there before tears could well up in her eyes. “And you could probably use some more time jogging yourself. You’ll never get your cardiovascular system going if you don’t work up a good sweat.”
“Yeah, I probably should...” He gestured to the path as well.
“Well, I’m glad we had a chance to clear the air.”
“Me, too. It will be much easier this way.”
“Right. Now that we’re both happily involved with other people.”
“Right.”
“Well...”
“Well...”
And with those final words of wisdom, they both jogged off in opposite directions.**
“I can remember being absolutely convinced that you and Mayson were completely in love,” Lois said. “That you hardly even remember what had happened between us.”
“Me? I thought you and the wild one were well on your way to walking down the aisle. Although, I’m still not sure why I told you I thought Mayson would say yes if I proposed. It was just that listening to you tell me how great Dan was...” He shrugged his shoulders.
“I don’t get it. Why were we playing these games with each other, Clark?”
Clark shook his head helplessly, having no wisdom to impart to her.
“Anyway, during the seminar that day, Kathy slipped me a note - telling me to meet her at the mediation tree at midnight. She seemed ready to talk. So I dumped Dan and headed out at about quarter to twelve to wait for her. I sat on that park bench for about half an hour before finally spotting her up in that tree - dead. By the way, how did you get there so quickly?”
“Uhh... well...” Clark said before backing slowly into his story.
**Clark finished brushing his teeth before stepping back into the room he shared with Mayson. Since she was already in bed, he carefully crawled in his side. Personally, after last night, he’d have preferred to sleep on the floor. Only problem was that he had no idea how to explain that to Mayson without hurting her feelings.
He had just settled when she rolled in his direction. For a moment, he tensed. But then, realizing that she had just rolled onto her side and propped her head up on her hand, he forced himself to relax. She obviously wanted to talk to him.
“Clark, I’ve been doing some thinking about... well, things.”
“And...?” he asked. “Have you come to any conclusions?”
“I think our problem is that we’ve sort of gotten into a rut.”
“A rut?”
She nodded. “We’ve gotten so used to things being a certain way that neither of us know how to move things forward anymore.”
As she spoke, her free hand moved to his chest. For a moment, he tensed, but when her hand did nothing more than lay passively on his chest, he began to relax. It wasn’t as if she never touched him, after all.
“Anyway, that’s the reason why I thought that maybe it would be helpful if I was just... spontaneous.”
Not sure what she was getting at, he just continued to look at her. Until her hand slipped under the bottom of his t-shirt. He moved his hands, intending to stop her, when the sheet slipped down slightly and... Whoa! He stared in disbelief at a creamy shoulder and the bare curve of her breast and... He swallowed hard. He was so distracted that he hardly noticed that her hand was running over his stomach and pecks.
“Are you...?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said, sliding the tips of her fingers beneath the waistband of his sleep shorts even as she leaned closer to kiss him.
“Whoa!” He pushed himself backwards, falling onto the floor of the cabin.
“Clark...”
“I’m sorry, Mayson,” Clark said, scrambling to his feet and collecting his clothes at something just short of superspeed. “I can’t do this.”
A moment later, he was out of the cabin, pulling on his clothes as he fled.**
“She was naked?” Lois asked.
Clark nodded.
“Oh, wow. So where did you go?”
“For a walk - while I figured out what to do next. I should have talked to Mayson about where our relationship was going - or maybe ‘not going’ would be a better way to say it - before things got so out of hand. The worst part was that no matter where I walked in that camp, I could still hear Mayson softly crying. I felt like such a heel. That was when I found you, staring up into a tree. I looked up and...”
“Saw Kathy. According to the police she hung herself.”
“But you didn’t believe that.”
Lois shook her head. “Not for a minute. Someone doesn’t indicate that she wants to confess and then kill herself before she can.”
“Yeah, I remember watching the police leave and Larry Smiley locking up the main cabin before realizing that I hadn’t seen you for quite some time.”
**Where was Lane? Clark pushed his glasses down his nose and stared over top of them. His eyebrows rose when he saw her snooping around the main cabin using nothing more than a flashlight. What was she doing?
Spotting an open window, he looked around. Everyone had already returned to their cabins. No one around to see him, he walked over to the window and silently slipped inside. Keeping his eyes on Lane, he watched as she pulled a sheet of paper out of her pocket and began searching the bookshelves as if to see which book the paper might match.
Huh?
He stepped closer. His concentration directed on figuring out what she was trying to do, he accidentally bumped into a coffee table.
Lane instantly spun around, her flashlight’s beam landing on his startled face.
“What are you doing here?” she hissed.
“What are you doing here?” he responded.
“Just looking for something good to read.” She quickly fold up the paper and moved to stick it in her pocket.
He had it out of her hand before she could complete her task. “What’s this?” he asked, opening what was obviously a page torn out of an ancient manuscript. Even the writing appeared to be in some ancient language - one even he couldn’t read.
“Nothing.”
He looked up at her. Her tone of voice sounded too innocent to be true.
She let out a breath. “Okay, fine. Kathy had it on her.”
“So?”
She shrugged. “I was just curious to find out where she might have found it.”
“Right,” he said sarcastically. “Come on, Lane. What’s really going on here?”
“Nothing. I was just... curious, that’s all. But since there’s nothing here, I’ll just...” She snatched the paper out of his hand and began walking towards the door.
He quickly lowered his glasses and looked around the room. “Then I guess you wouldn’t be interested in this...” He pulled open a door to a hidden room.
“How did you find that?” Lane asked, hurrying back over to beat him into the room.
“Just curious, huh?”
“Just curious,” she responded, even as she began searching her new environment. “Kent, look at this,” she said after a moment. “Smiley’s got the files sorted into two piles: ‘accepted’ and ‘rejected’ candidates.”
“Accepted and rejected for what?”
“Dan and I are in the rejected pile... Oh, great. You and Mayson are in the accepted pile.”
“Is that a good thing... or a bad thing?”
“Well, I’d like to feel accepted.” She picked up Clark and Mayson’s file, flipping it open.
“Hey, what are you doing?” Clark demanded.
When he reached for the file, Lane turned her back on him, preventing him from retrieving it. He could have done so if he had really wanted to. However, he was distracted when he spotted something else much more interesting to him. He grabbed the file for Lane and Scardino and turned away, opening it quickly.
At first, Lane didn’t seem to notice. She began reading what Smiley had written in his file about him and Mayson. “Couple displays great promise,” she began sarcastically. “They have a solid foundation of mutual respect in spite of Kent’s...” her voice trailed off.
Without thinking about what she might be seeing, he began to read from her file. “Couple is not compatible. Lane doesn’t trust or respect her partner. This combined with a fear of any sort of intimacy...”
“...fear of any sort of intimacy,” Lois finally completed from his file.
For a moment, both of them stood in silence. Then it sank in what the other had said and at almost the same moment, they grabbed for their own files.
“Fear of intimacy?” Lane asked in disbelief. “Just because I don’t want to sleep with Dan doesn’t mean...” Her voice trailed off and color rose in her cheeks as she seemed to realize that she’d spoken aloud. Suddenly, she looked over at him. “Don’t look so smug,” she said defensively. “According to that file, you have a fear of intimacy, too.”
“I don’t have a fear of intimacy,” Clark objected. “I just don’t want...”
“...to sleep with Mayson,” Lane completed for him.
They stood there staring at each other in silence for a long moment, the tension in the air almost palpable. Who moved first, Clark didn’t know. But suddenly, she was in his arms, and they were kissing. Wildly. Passionately. Bodies pressed intimately together. Hands roaming, seeking to be everywhere at once.
How had he lived without her all these months? Clark wasn’t entirely certain. He also wasn’t entirely sure how they remained standing as they sought out each other’s mouths with a hunger that seemed to take both of them by surprise.
The sudden sound of the door crashing all the way opened caused them to jump apart, and in an instant they were standing on opposite sides of the room. Their breathing remained heavy as their eyes swung towards the man standing like a thunder cloud in the entranceway.
“Dan,” Lane breathed.
“Well, this certainly explains a lot,” Dan said, his voice practically dripping with sarcasm. Without another word, he turned and walked out of the room.
“Dan,” Lane called after him, before dashing for the door.
“Lane, wait!” Clark said. “We need to talk.”
“I can’t. I just... can’t,” she responded, not even looking back at him as she fled the room.
He was about to go after her when he hesitated. Mayson Drake was still in their cabin. He had to do something about Mayson before pursuing Lane. If only he weren’t such a coward he would have made sure Mayson knew where they stood long before now.**
“I remember what happened then,” Lois said softly.
**“Dan!” Lois yelled, running to catch up with him.
He stopped, staring up into the sky. She slowed her pace to a jog until she finally came to a stop behind him.
“It wasn’t what it looked like,” Lois said, realizing immediately how lame that sounded.
But the comment at least caused Dan to turn towards her. “It wasn’t what it looked like?” Dan asked, disbelief clearly evident in his tone. “What it looked like was that my girlfriend was getting hot and heavy with another man in a way she’s never gotten with me.”
Lois cringed. Okay, so maybe it was sort of what it looked like. “I just meant...” What did she mean? How could she possibly explain that although Kent could get her blood boiling, what she wanted was someone she could trust - did trust - someone like Dan. She was silent for a moment, marshaling her words, before saying, slowly and firmly, “No, Dan. It wasn’t what it looked like. Kent was out of... No, actually, we were both out of line. But there is nothing between us - not now, not ever. He knows that and I know that.”
“How long has this been going on?” he asked, the anger now gone from his voice to be replaced by a sad resigned tone.
“It hasn’t,” she said, meeting his eyes. “I mean, this is the first time... well, since I started dating you. And... it doesn’t mean anything. It just sort of... happened.”
Dan took a step forward, closing the distance between them. “You want to be with Kent, don’t you?”
“No!” she responded immediately. “I want to be with you.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“Okay, you’re right. I have this strange... attraction to Kent. But there is no possibility of a future there.” She reached up, laying a hand on Dan’s chest. “But there might be the possibility of a future with you.”
He searched her eyes for a long moment before shaking his head.
“Dan...” Lois said, tears forming in her eyes as he slowly began backing away.
Now what did she do? Maybe he was right. She certainly couldn’t blame him for leaving. In fact, she wasn’t entirely sure she’d be able to respect him if he didn’t. Still... Damn Kent! This was all his fault. No. No it wasn’t. He hadn’t been the only one kissing.
She watched as Dan turned his back on her and, head down and shoulders slumped, began shuffling off in the direction of their cabin. The last thing she’d ever wanted to do was to hurt Dan. Yet that was exactly what she had done. In one stupid, impulsive moment, she had deeply hurt someone she truly cared about. They’d never made promises to each other. They’d never even said they’d be exclusive - although they certainly had been for the last several months. Still, she had to find a way to make this right. She had just started to follow Dan when the sound of her name being called stopped her in her tracks.
“Lois?”
Lois spun around, eyebrows going up when she saw Jimmy approaching. Where had he come from?**
“If I recall correctly,” Lois said. “Jimmy was there to tell me that Perry and Alice had gone missing.”
“I remember. I was watching you go. I heard everything. Oh, and then I saw you sneaking into the back of one of the trucks that was leaving the campground.”
“So you followed?”
Clark shrugged. “It was obvious that a lot more was going on here than just a suicide - that you were in pursuit of a story. And given your track record when it came to getting yourself into sticky situations.... Let’s just say that I wasn’t exactly surprised when I found you and Jimmy tied to that lightning rod during a thunder storm. Of course, in this reality, I couldn’t exactly fly up to untie you. I had to pretend to climb the tower like an ordinary guy.”
“Of course, that would explain why I thought you’d been hit by lightning when you redirected that lightning strike.”
“Huh?”
**“How did you find us?” Lois hissed as he worked on the ropes binding her to the tower. He’d managed to get Jimmy unbound and now was working on her. She glanced around to see that Jimmy was now standing at the bottom of the tower, looking up at them - far enough away as to not hear anything they might say if they kept their voices down.
“I...”
A sudden flash of light blinded Lois’ vision. Lightning! They were tied to a lightning rod, after all. So surely... No. No, she was still alive. Although, she most definitely had felt something. On the other hand, Kent had quit speaking. She spun her head towards him. He was holding onto the tower with his hands. His feet were dangling in the air.
“Kent!” she exclaimed.
“What?”
“The lightning! It hit you.”
“No, no.” His feet landed back on the base of the tower.
“But then why...?”
“I just lost my footing for a moment, that’s all. Besides, if I had been hit by lightning, do you really think either of us would be alive?”
He had a point there.
“Are you planning to keep her tied up until she is hit by lightning?” Jimmy asked from his position on the ground. He immediately returned to climb the ladder once again.
“Oh... uh... right,” Kent said, returning to work on her bindings.**
“I remember what happened next,” Clark said.
**As soon as the police arrived to arrest Smiley and his cronies, Clark discreetly flew back to the campground to find Mayson. They needed to talk.
However, that talk was not what was currently on Clark’s mind. Lane had hardly been able to look at him after he’d rescued her from the her latest misadventure. She’d issued a hasty ‘thank you’ and afterwards ignored him.
Okay, so he had to admit that she’d probably been focused on stopping Smiley and rescuing her boss and his wife. He’d kept to the background, not wanting to deal with Perry White unless Lane couldn’t handle it - discretely disabling Smiley’s rain-maker. He thought, in the circumstances, his presence would have been too distracting - giving Smiley the upper hand. Still, after what had transpired in Smiley’s cabin earlier, Clark knew that he and Lane needed to talk. And he was going to make sure that this time they did.
Not that he was overly optimistic. He’d overheard her conversation with Scardino. He knew she didn’t think there was a future for them. But he’d find a way to convince her otherwise. He had to.
But first, there was the little matter of dealing with Mayson - a task he had put off for far too long. She wanted something from him that he just couldn’t give. It was long past time that he told her that - and they decided where they went from there. It simply wasn’t fair for him to keep her hanging on just so that he could have a football buddy to hang out with and watch the games. Not that he was intending to phrase his comments to Mayson in quite that manner.
He took a deep breath before opening the cabin door and stepping inside.
He froze when he saw the state of the cabin. It looked as if the place had been torn apart.
“Mayson!” he called, dashing towards the bathroom when he didn’t see her in the bed. Surely she hadn’t been so upset that she had done this herself. Or had she? “Mayson!”
She wasn’t in the bathroom. He spun around, only then seeing a foot sticking out on the floor on the far side of the bed.
“Mayson!” he yelled, racing over to where she was sprawled, naked, across the floor.**
TO BE CONTINUED...
