by Diana Palmer
Tippy laid a gentle hand on Clarisse’s shoulder. “You lost her,” she guessed.
Clarisse’s eyes teared. “Her and my father. They were in a native boat, touring villages, when the boat capsized. There were piranha in the water. Matilda made it to shore safely, but she went back to try and save my father. I lost both of them. I was too far away to do a thing.” She closed her eyes and shuddered.
“It must have been very hard. I’m sorry.”
Clarisse drew in a breath. “Rourke managed everything, even the funeral services. I was too torn to cope.” She smiled sadly. “He was always there, at every traumatic event in my life. But he hates me, passionately. He had for years, until the awards ceremony in Barrera. He followed me home to Manaus.” Her eyes closed. “We were so close for a couple of weeks, so very close. Then he had to leave for an assignment. He’d be back in a few days, he said, and we’d be married. We had the rings, my wedding gown, everything, including a priest to perform the ceremony. Well, he did leave. But he suffered a traumatic head injury and lost his short-term memory. All that came back to him was that he hated me. I’m not sure he even remembers why.”
“Retrograde amnesia?” Tippy asked gently. She remembered that because a friend of Cash’s, a former mobster named Marcus Carrera, had suffered a similar episode.
Clarisse nodded. “It’s been almost a year, and he’s remembered nothing.” She smiled sadly. “I would think those memories are gone forever.”
Tippy didn’t say a word, but her eyes went from Clarisse to the baby in her arms. Clarisse didn’t mutter a single word. She couldn’t share that secret, even with her kindly new friend.
* * *
K.C. WAS GETTING ready to fly back to Nairobi the next morning when he had a phone call. His face went white.
“K.C., what’s wrong?” Clarisse asked, because she knew it was something catastrophic. “Rourke…?” she exclaimed, horrified at his frozen features.
“No,” he managed in a curt, wounded tone. He was breathing like a runner. “Mary Luke Bernadette,” he said, almost in a daze. “Her neighbor found her this morning, lying beside her little goldfish pond. She’d been…dead…for several hours. Kasie, my goddaughter, thinks it was a massive stroke. She’s devastated.” He drew in a breath. “I have to fly to Montana. Right now!”
“No,” Clarisse said shortly, getting in front of him. Mary Luke had been the love of his life, the reason he never married. For her, it would be the same as losing Rourke. K.C. must be absolutely sick at heart. “You call someone to fly you there and back, and to Africa. If you even try to fly yourself out of here, I’ll call the FAA myself and have you taken out of the plane!” she said shortly.
Tippy and Cash were listening, frowning. K.C. didn’t seem the sort to take orders from anyone, much less a woman.
But he did. He swallowed and a faint smile touched his hard mouth. “You sound just like…her,” he said roughly. He turned away. “I’ll leave the Learjet here and call a service to provide me with private transport.” He pulled out his cell phone and started thumbing through names.
While he was on the phone, Clarisse drew Cash and Tippy into the kitchen, away from the kids, who were watching television. Clarisse still had Joshua in her arms.
“K.C. was in love with her,” she told them in a voice that didn’t carry. “She was a nun.”
“I see,” Cash said heavily. “God bless her.”
“What can we do?” Tippy asked. “Here, let me have him, Clarisse, you’re going to pull those stitches. You aren’t even supposed to be lifting yet.”
Clarisse smiled gently and handed her the baby. “Thanks. He’s quite heavy for such a small child,” she laughed. “I think he’s going to be tall.”
“I’m sorry for K.C.,” Cash said quietly.
“So am I,” Clarisse said. “But there’s no way I’m letting him fly himself.” She winced. “If only Rourke was himself. He’d be with his father like a shot!”
“Could you call him?” Tippy ventured.
“I don’t know how,” she said simply. She didn’t add that Rourke would probably hang up the second he heard her voice. “K.C. said the assignment he’s on is top secret. Even he can’t contact him.”
“Poor man,” Tippy groaned.
K.C. came through the door a minute later. “I have to get to the airport. They’re sending a Learjet for me.” He grimaced. “Sorry…”
Cash dug out his car keys. “Sorry, nothing. Got your bag?”
“It’s still on the porch,” K.C. said. He moved to Clarisse and took her hands in his. “Thanks, kid,” he said softly.
She hugged him, hard. He resisted for a few seconds. Then he hugged her back, giving in to the need for comfort. His face contorted as he tried to even imagine a world without Mary Luke in it.
Finally, he drew away, his eyes faintly wet. He shook his head, to keep the moisture from showing. He cleared his throat. “I’d better get going.” He looked down at Clarisse. “You going to be okay?” he asked. “I’ll call Eb Scott on the way to Montana. Just in case.”
Clarisse frowned. She looked into the living room, where Tris was sitting with Rory. “I may be putting you all in danger, just by being here,” she worried.
Cash shook his head. “I’m chief of police,” he chuckled. “Danger is my business. Eb can provide outside support, I’ll take care of things inside.” He jerked his head toward Tippy. “She’s still got that iron skillet, too,” he mused, grinning at his laughing wife.
“It’s a really remarkable weapon,” Tippy agreed. She smiled at Clarisse. “Don’t worry. It will be all right.” She went to K.C. “I’m so sorry,” she told him.
“Me, too.” He managed a smile for her. He glanced at Clarisse. “If you need anything, anything at all…”
“I’m fine, K.C. You do what you have to do.” She winced. “I’m so sorry!”
“Yes. So am I.” His eyes were haunted. He turned and followed Cash out the door.
* * *
“IT’S SO HORRIBLE,” Clarisse said when he’d gone. “To love a woman like that, so much, and have to give her up. Surely, he still hoped that one day, maybe…” She laughed self-consciously. “That’s me, too. Hoping. That one day, maybe, Rourke might remember what happened in Manaus.” She drew in a breath and touched Joshua’s blond hair as he lay in Tippy’s arms. “But even so, I can live on those few days for the rest of my life.”
“I could have done that, with a few days in New York, just before Christmas, a few years back. He didn’t want to get married. He hated me at first, for making him weak. Then I got kidnapped, and he came rushing up to the city to save me. He brought me here, took care of me, worried about me.” She laughed self-consciously. “I never thought of him as a family man. Now look!” she added, nodding toward her daughter, Tris, as she cradled Joshua in her arms.
“I would never have believed that he could really settle down, from what I heard about him,” Clarisse agreed.
“You’ve known K.C. a long time, haven’t you?” she asked.
“Yes, I have,” Clarisse replied, dropping gingerly down into a chair at the kitchen table. “Since I was about eight years old. He was heavily into mercenary work in those days. My father rather idolized him,” she laughed. “Dad was a diplomat, very practiced with people, very correct. I think he saw a wildness, a masculinity in K.C. that he envied.” She drew in a wistful breath. “My mother hated him,” she added with a grin. “She thought he was a bad influence not only on Dad, but on me, as well. I got into some scrapes when I was a child in Africa.”
“You were a landmark in Washington society for a number of years,” Tippy said. “I remember seeing photos of you in magazines and newspapers. You were escorted around by movie stars and famous athletes and even royalty.”
“Window dressing,” Clarisse replied with s
ad eyes. She looked at Tippy wistfully. “When I was seventeen, Rourke came to a party my parents gave in Manaus.” She colored a little with the memory and cleared her throat. “After that, I couldn’t feel anything for other men. Rourke accused me of being a rounder, of sleeping with any man I saw.” She winced. “It’s been a hard few years.”
“I’m sorry. I’ve had a bad time myself, with men.” Tippy lowered her eyes and told Clarisse about her mother’s boyfriend.
“He should have been shot!” Clarisse said at once, her blue eyes flashing.
“He’s in federal prison. He was badly beaten a few weeks ago. It got around, what he did to me.” Tippy sighed. “Men who abuse children have a hard time in prison. Usually, they don’t survive very long. Many of the people serving time for various violent crimes were victims of child abuse themselves, you see.”
“It’s a hard world, isn’t it?” Clarisse asked.
“Harder for you than me, from what Cash says about you,” she added. “You were tortured in Manaus for information they thought you had about General Machado’s invasion. Cash said you didn’t tell them a word. He was impressed. You see, he was captured and tortured in Iraq, during a top secret incursion.”
“I didn’t know,” Clarisse said. “He’s a very…masculine sort of man.”
Tippy laughed. “Very.” She cocked her head. “Why does Rourke hate you so much?”
“Actually, someone told him that we were related by blood, that my mother had a one-nighter with K.C. and I was the result.”
“Oh, good heavens,” Tippy exclaimed.
“It wasn’t true,” Clarisse went on. “He found it out.” She laughed. “K.C. knocked him over a sofa when he accused his father of being intimate with my mother. They had a DNA test done that proved Rourke was K.C.’s son. Rourke had one done, God knows how, that also proved he and I weren’t related at all by blood.” She sighed. “They can rule parentage out with a blood test as well, or so Ruy told me. He was my husband,” she added quietly. “A good and kind man. The doctors saved me. But they couldn’t save him.” Her eyes teared. She brushed at them. “I’ll always be grateful to him for taking such good care of me, and for being a friend when I needed one desperately.”
“What blood type does your son have?” Tippy asked.
Clarisse hesitated. Cash came back in the door and saved her a reply. Tippy went to meet him, still holding Joshua.
Cash touched the little boy’s cheek gently and smiled wistfully.
“I wish we could have one of these,” Tippy said quietly. “Boys are nice. Not that I don’t love our girl,” she added, casting a loving gaze toward her daughter, still watching television beside Rory.
Cash’s eyes touched his wife’s. “Maybe someday,” he said with a grin.
She laughed. “Yes.”
Clarisse got up from the table and joined them. “Did K.C. get off all right?”
Cash nodded. “I talked to the pilot and the copilot. They’re both licensed to fly the little jet, so they’ll be transporting K.C. where he needs to go. After the funeral, they’ll bring him back here and make sure he has a relief pilot at the controls when he goes back to Africa.”
“Thanks, Cash,” Clarisse said solemnly. “I worry about him. He’s a good man.”
Cash chuckled. “Yes, he is, but if you say that to most people who know him, you’ll get stares and shocked expressions. You knew K.C. when he was still doing merc work, didn’t you?” he added.
“Yes. Rourke idolized him. It’s why he did some of the crazy things he did, as a boy.” She looked up at Cash sadly. “I’m so sorry for K.C. I worry about what he might do, after the funeral. I do so wish that Rourke remembered that K.C. was his dad. K.C. is going to go wild when the first shock wears off.”
Cash grimaced. “I’m afraid you may be right.” He looked at Tippy with the baby in her arms. “I know I would,” he said softly, and the look he exchanged with his wife was so expressive that Clarisse felt like an intruder.
“I need to put Joshua down for the night,” Clarisse interrupted. “Sorry, but I have him on a strict schedule.” She laughed. “I pretend we’re in the military. They say a child needs a structured life. I never really had one. My father was rather flighty, and my mother was forever nursing people or taking care of elderly neighbors. She was a saint.”
“I’ve heard about her,” Cash agreed. He didn’t impart what he’d heard from Jake about her. No need to shatter her illusions.
“You’re sure that Rourke won’t come back to Jacobsville again?” Clarisse asked worriedly.
“I’m absolutely positive,” he replied. And he smiled.
* * *
K.C. WAS BACK that weekend. His expression was bland. His eyes were tormented. Blazing. Wounded.
“I’m so sorry,” Clarisse told him, and winced as she felt his pain. “I know how I’d feel, if it was Rourke…”
“Yes, I know you do,” he agreed quietly. “You were going to be married, before he turned on you. It must feel almost as bad as giving him up to death.”
She swallowed. “Yes.”
He drew in a breath and pulled her to him, hugged her warmly. “I’ll get over it. I’ll have to. Kasie is taking it hard. Mary Luke was her last living relative. Her parents died in Africa. Her brother Kantor and his whole family died in an airplane when some idiot revolutionary sent a rocket into it. She’s had a hard life.”
“She’s married to Gil Callister, isn’t she?” Clarisse asked. “I know his parents. They socialize in Washington quite a bit.”
“They’ve become much closer to Gil and his brother, John, since Kasie came into their lives,” he said quietly. “She’s changed both of them, although John’s living in Hollister, Montana, with his new wife, Sassy.” He hesitated. “Rourke was there a few months ago, providing security for Sassy and her friend when the friend was being stalked by a former employee of her uncle.”
“Poor woman,” she said.
K.C. pulled back and looked down at Clarisse, sharing the pain of Rourke’s lost memory. “I’m going home, but I may be away for a while, maybe down to my villa in Cancún for a rest,” he lied, and Clarisse was relieved. She thought that a vacation might be just the thing to ease his agony. “But if you need me, you can call the compound outside Nairobi. I’ll give you the number of my houseman,” he added, and moved to write it down for her on a pad with a pen that Tippy kept by the telephone. He gave it to her.
“But I have your cell phone number,” Clarisse said, confused.
“I may be away from a phone.”
She looked up at him with horror. “No! No, don’t you dare commit suicide!” she burst out, lowering her voice so that nobody would hear them. She took K.C. by both arms and shook him. “Joshua only has one grandfather…!”
K.C. touched her hair gently. “It’s okay,” he said softly. “I would never do something like that. I loved him the moment I saw him, in the nursery in the hospital in Manaus. He’s…the absolute image of Rourke as a baby.”
“You can’t tell him,” she said miserably. “He hates me, even if he doesn’t quite remember why. He’d want the baby. He’d tie me up in court for years…!”
“That won’t happen. I’m still keeping secrets from years ago.” He withdrew his hand. “I don’t do down and dirty with freelance work anymore,” he added. “I plan and take care of logistics for my men. I’m too old, and too slow, for forward units. Okay?”
She smiled. “Okay.”
“Nice, to have someone care if I live or die,” he said after a minute, and he smiled.
“You have two people who do,” she replied. “Me and Joshua.”
He kissed her forehead. “You’re a nice woman. Pity I’m a fossil. I’d hang my son out to dry and marry you myself.” He grinned.
She laughed. “Thanks. You take
care of yourself. Please keep in touch,” she added.
“I will.” He stuck his hands in his pockets. He looked every year of his age. “Perhaps, one day, he’ll remember. In the meantime, I have to keep busy, so that I don’t go completely mad.”
“That’s not a bad idea. Just please don’t take it to extremes.”
He gave her a lopsided smile. “I won’t.” He went to say goodbye to the other occupants of the house and got in the car with Cash, en route to the airport.
“I wish there was something I could do,” Clarisse said solemnly.
Tippy put an arm around her as they stood, looking through the window as Cash and K.C. drove away. “Me, too.”
* * *
K.C. ARRIVED BACK in Nairobi cold-eyed and remote. He was no longer the affable man of recent years. He got out his old kit and started cleaning automatic weapons.
When Rourke knocked absently at the door and walked in, he stopped short at the array of weapons, newly cleaned, laid out in a pack on the dining room table.
K.C. came back into the room carrying a suitcase. He was dressed in khakis, and his eyes were like ice.
“What the hell is wrong?” Rourke asked at once, because he didn’t recognize the man he was seeing.
“We’ve got a job,” he replied without looking closely at his son. He started dismantling the weapons in preparation for a commercial flight to an African nation under siege by insurgents. “I’m going along. I’ve put all the important papers in the safe. This is the combination, just in case.” He handed Rourke a folded piece of paper. “There are instructions, as well. My attorney has everything else you might need, legally.”
Rourke felt his heart stop. He remembered K.C. dressed like this when he was a child. He remembered that cold, dangerous expression on his face. Something was terribly wrong.
