Janice’s eyes narrowed in an instant of intelligent scrutiny that Alana didn’t notice.
“I’m glad,” said Janice, unmistakable satisfaction in her voice.
Alana looked up quickly, seeing for the first time the compassion in the other woman.
“Rafe told you about my husband, didn’t he?” Alana asked.
Janice hesitated while her shrewd blue eyes measured the emotions apparent on Alana’s face.
“Don’t be angry with him,” Janice said finally. “Rafe just wanted to be sure that Stan and I wouldn’t accidentally hurt you.”
Frowning, Alana wiped her hands on the enormous white apron that she wore.
“It’s not fair to ask you to walk on eggs so I won’t be upset,” Alana said. “This trip is for your pleasure, not mine.”
Janice smiled. “Don’t worry. We’re having a ball.”
Alana looked at her with skeptical dark eyes.
“Uh-huh,” Alana muttered. “Sure you are—when I’m not screaming at Stan or stealing your fishing guide.”
“Stan’s a big boy,” said Janice dryly. “And as for Rafe, he showed us the water and we caught our limit. Besides, he cleans the trout for us and you whip up hot apple pies. What more could we ask?”
Laughing and shaking her head, Alana gave in.
“You two are very special dudes,” Alana said. “If other clients are half as easy to be around, Bob will think he’s died and gone to heaven. Most dudes can’t find their way downhill without directions and a hard push.”
From the next room came the sound of cupboard doors being opened and closed briskly.
“Hey, sis,” called Bob from the dining room, “where did I put the dishes last night after I washed them?”
Janice and Alana exchanged a look and burst out laughing. Bob stuck his head in the kitchen.
“What’s so funny?” he asked.
“You wouldn’t understand,” said Alana. “But that’s all right. I love you anyway.”
She stood on tiptoe and kissed Bob’s cheek quickly.
He looked surprised, then very pleased. He started to hug Alana in return, then stopped, remembering. He patted her shoulder with unexpected gentleness and put his blunt index finger on the tip of her nose.
“You look better, sis. Rafe was right. You needed to be home.”
Then Bob shook his head and smiled, giving Alana a somewhat baffled look. He still wasn’t used to seeing his sister as a contemporary rather than as a substitute mother.
“What?” Alana asked.
“How did you get to be so small, anyway?” Bob said in a rueful voice.
“You grew up.”
He smiled. “Yeah, guess so. Why don’t you go get dressed? I’ll whip up the potatoes and get everything on the table.”
Alana blinked, startled by the offer. Then she blinked again, several times, fighting back sudden tears. Bob was being as protective of her as he was of Merry.
“Thanks,” Alana said, her voice husky. “I’d like that.”
She showered quickly, then climbed into the loft wrapped in Bob’s oversize terry doth robe, which she had found hanging from a peg in the downstairs bathroom. She stood in front of the closet and tried to choose from the array of clothes that Bob had packed for her.
After an unusual amount of, time, she decided on a pair of heavy silk slacks that were a rich chocolate color. The blouse she chose was long sleeved and the color of fire, its sensuous texture and folds in stark contrast to its businesslike cut.
Automatically Alana began to button up the blouse so the chain she always wore was concealed. Then she stopped, realizing that she no longer had to hide Rafe’s engagement gift. It no longer mattered if people asked her about the unusual design of the necklace.
Jack was dead.
She no longer had to conceal the fact that half of Country’s Perfect Couple wore another man’s gift in the vulnerable hollow of her throat.
Alana smoothed the collar open. The elegant symbol of infinity shifted and gleamed with each movement of her head. She touched the symbol with her fingertip and felt another tiny bit of peace settling inside her, another step on the way to rebuilding her strength.
For the first time since she had awakened in the hospital, she began to believe that she not only would survive, but would be able to love again.
Even if her nightmares were true.
“Alana?” Rafe’s voice came from the bottom of the steep stairway. “Are you ready?”
“Almost,” she whispered, too softly for Rafe to hear. “Almost.”
She hurried downstairs, truly hungry for food for the first time since the six missing days. High-country air had a magical effect on her appetite.
It was the same for everyone else. Even after a dinner of trout, potatoes, green beans, and biscuits, everyone found room for a piece of pie.
Rafe sliced and served the warm apple pie to the accompaniment of good-natured complaints as to which person was or wasn’t getting the biggest piece. Bob and Stan swapped pieces with each other several times before Rafe gave in and put the last piece of pie between them.
Smiling, Rafe watched Alana as she ate the last bite of the generous slice of pie he had cut for her. When she threw back her head and sighed that she was too full to move, he saw the gleam of gold in the hollow of her throat.
With a callused fingertip, he traced the length of the chain and its elegant symbol.
“You still wear this,” he said softly.
“I’ve never taken it off since you gave it to me.”
Rafe’s eyes were tawny in the late-afternoon light that was streaming through the window, tawny and very intent.
“Not even after I sent back your letter?” he asked, searching her eyes.
“Never. It was all I had left of you.”
The back of Rafe’s finger caressed Alana’s throat.
“I wish we were alone,” he whispered. “I would like very much to kiss you. Many times. Many places. Would you like that, wildflower?”
A suggestion of color bloomed beneath Alana’s skin. She smiled and smoothed her cheek against Rafe’s finger.
“Yes,” she murmured. “I’d like that.”
Then Alana looked across the table and saw Stan watching her closely, his eyes so blue they were almost black, his fair hair shimmering in a shaft of, sunlight that came through the cabin window and fell across his thick shoulders. Quickly she looked away, still unable to accept Stan’s unnerving physical resemblance to Jack Reeves.
When Stan asked Rafe about a particular kind of dry fly, Alana turned to Janice and asked the first question that came to mind.
“Somehow you aren’t what I’d expect a travel agent to be. How did you choose that career?”
There was a sudden silence, then a determined resumption of the casual conversation taking place around the women.
Alana looked at Rafe suddenly, wondering if she had done something wrong.
Rafe ignored her, apparently caught up in his talk with Stan.
“I’m sorry,” Alana said to Janice. “Did I ask the wrong question?”
Janice’s smile had a wry twist as she glanced sideways at Rafe.
“I’d say you asked just the right one,” Janice said.
Rafe looked up sharply but said nothing.
“I used to be a psychiatrist,” Janice explained. “After ten years, I burned out. So many problems. So few solutions.”
Her voice was light but her eyes were narrowed against memories that still had the power to hurt her.
Alana thought of what had happened to Rafe, to her, to Jack. So many problems. So few solutions.
“So I became a special kind of travel agent,” Janice said. “I match people with the kind of vacation that will do the most for them.”
“Solutions,” said Alana.
“Yes.”
Alana wanted to ask more. Suddenly she was very curious about Janice’s past, about the pressures that had driven her to change careers.
And about Rafe, who had known Janice before.
“Would you like to hear about what happened?” asked Janice.
“If you don’t mind,” Alana said.
Janice and Rafe exchanged a quick look. He raised his dark eyebrows slightly, then shrugged.
Janice turned back to Alana.
“I used to work for the government, like Rafe,” said Janice.
Though she spoke quietly, at her first words Stan and Rafe’s conversation died.
Stan gave Janice a hard look, then looked questioningly at Rafe. Rafe ignored him. Stan seemed about to speak when a gesture from Rafe cut him off.
“Men and women who work under impossible conditions,” Janice said, calmly, “often have trouble living with themselves. If something goes wrong and people die, or if nothing goes wrong and people die anyway, the person in charge has to live with it.”
Alana looked at Rafe. His eyes were hooded, unreadable.
“The key words are in charge,” Janice said. “These are intelligent people who care about the world. They are the actors, not the audience. They are in control of themselves and of life.”
Janice smiled wryly and took a sip of her coffee.
“At least,” she added softly, “they think they’re in control. Then it all goes from sugar to shit and they’re left wondering what hit them. My job was to explain that it was reality that ran over them and left them flat.”
Stan made a sound halfway between protest and laughter. When Janice looked at him, he winked. The smile she gave him was both gentle and sensual.
Alana sensed the nearly intangible currents of affection and respect that flowed between the two people.
“People come in all kinds,” Janice said, turning back to Alana, “but the ones I dealt with usually fell into three categories. The first was people who couldn’t cope with an unpredictable, unforgiving reality and simply fell apart.”
Alana looked down at the bit of pie left on her plate and wondered if she was one of the ones who couldn’t cope.
“In the second category were the people who survived by stuffing down their feelings of inadequacy, bewilderment, and fear. These people did exactly what they had been trained to do and they did it magnificently.”
Alana looked at Rafe. He was watching her. For an instant he put his fingertip on the golden symbol she wore around her neck.
“The third category,” Janice said, “was made up of people who had so little imagination or such great faith in going by the book that they had the same untouchable serenity that religion gives to some people.”
“It must be nice,” Alana said.
“I wouldn’t know,” Rafe answered.
Janice picked up her coffee cup, sighed, and put it down again without tasting the dark brew.
“People in the first category, the ones who couldn’t cope, didn’t last long as operatives,” Janice said bluntly. “The third type, the ones who went by the book, did very poorly in the fluid world of fieldwork. We tended to put them in office positions as soon as they were discovered.”
“And the second category?” Alana asked Janice, but it was Rafe whom she watched.
“Those in the second category did most of the work,” Janice said. “They were the survivors, the people who got the job done no matter what it cost them.”
The brackets around Rafe’s mouth deepened.
“Unfortunately,” Janice said, glancing quickly at Rafe, “sooner or later the survivors paid a high psychic price when they were confronted by the randomness of reality and the fact that Superman exists only in cartoons.”
Alana touched the corner of Rafe’s mouth as lightly as he had touched her necklace. He turned and brushed a kiss over her fingertip.
“Real men bleed and make mistakes,” Janice said softly. “If, once the crisis is past, the survivors can’t deal with their feelings of weakness, can’t accept that all any person can do is his or her best . . . well, then they begin to hate themselves. If they can’t accept the fact that they can be afraid, be hurt, even be broken and still be damned fine, brave, effective human beings, then they tear themselves apart.”
Alana’s hand trembled. Rafe caught it between his own, kissed her palm, and released her.
“My job was to help the survivors accept their own limitations, their humanity. I was supposed to help them accept themselves.” Janice stared out over the table, seeing something from the past. “Because if they couldn’t accept their humanity, I lost them. I—lost—them.”
Janice’s hand clenched into a fist, softly pounding the table with each word.
Impulsively Alana put her hand over the other woman’s.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Alana said quickly. “You couldn’t open up their hearts and make them believe in their own worth. All you could do was care, and you did.”
Janice looked at Alana for a long moment. Then Janice’s lips shaped a sad smile.
“But when you love them, and you lose them,” Janice said, “it hurts like hell. After awhile there was one too many, and I quit.”
Alana looked quickly at Rafe, wondering if he had been the “one too many” for Janice.
“You did all anyone could,” Rafe said quietly, “and that was a lot more than most.”
“So did you.” Janice’s blue eyes measured Rafe. “Did you think that was enough?”
“No,” he said, meeting her eyes without flinching, “but I’m learning to live with it. Finally.”
Janice looked at Rafe for a long moment, then smiled gently.
“Good for you, Rafe Winter,” she said. “Very good. It was a near thing, wasn’t it?”
Janice turned and looked at Alana.
“The strongest ones,” Janice said quietly, “have the hardest time. They go the longest before they come up against human limitations. And then they blame themselves. They reach a state where they are, in effect, at war with themselves. Some survive even that. A lot don’t.”
Alana looked at Rafe with dark, haunted eyes. The thought of how close she had come to losing, him forever was like a knife turning in her soul.
“For the strong ones,” Janice said, “it’s a case of the sooner they accept their own limitations, the better. There are very few ways to win a war with yourself, and a whole lot of ugly ways to lose.”
There was silence. Then Janice set down her coffee cup and said briskly, “Enough of my past. Who’s going to catch the biggest fish tonight?”
“I am,” Bob and Stan said at the same moment.
The two big men looked at each other, grinned, and began placing bets on the outcome.
Rafe and Janice exchanged knowing glances and shook their heads.
After Bob and the guests left, Alana stood and began to clear the table. Rafe immediately took the plates out of her hands.
“You look too elegant to handle dirty dishes,” he said. “Come sit in the kitchen and talk to me.”
Alana looked at Rafe in disbelief. He was wearing black wool slacks and a tailored black shirt made of a wool so fine it felt like silk. The supple fabric fit him like a shadow, outlining the power of his arms and shoulders.
“You look too elegant, too,” Alana said.
She touched the black fabric where it pulled lightly across Rafe’s chest. The warmth of him radiated through the shirt to her hand, making her want to rub her palm against him, to curl up next to him like a cat by a fire. And then she wanted simply to hold him, to comfort him, to take away whatever hurt she could from his past.
Alana had no doubt that Rafe was one of the very strong ones whom Janice had talked about, the ones who had the hardest time accepting their own limitations.
“What are you thinking?” Rafe asked, his voice deep, velvety.
“That you’re one of the strong ones.”
“So are you.”
The thought startled Alana. She didn’t feel strong. She felt weak, useless, foolish, hiding from herself and reality behind a wall of amnesia and irrational fears.
Before she could protest, Rafe spoke, his voice quick and sure.
“You are strong, Alana. You were only a child, yet you held your family together after your mother died. When you thought I was dead, you saw your best chance of emotional survival in a singing career, and you took it.
“And when another crisis came, you fought for life. You fought as bravely and fiercely as anyone ever has.”
“Then why am I afraid?” whispered Alana.
“Because it wasn’t enough,” Rafe said grimly. “You came flat up against the fact that Wonder Woman, like Superman, doesn’t exist in the real world.”
“I didn’t think that I was Wonder Woman.”
“Didn’t you? Who was the strongest Burdette, the one everyone came to when dreams and favorite puppies died? Your dad? No way. It was years before he was worth a damn after your mother’s death. As for Jack—”
Alana’s mouth turned down in a sad, bitter smile.
“Jack was a user,” Rafe said, his voice clipped. “If it hadn’t been for your discipline, your intelligence, your sheer ability to take apart a song and put it back together in a new, vivid way, Jack would have been just another beer hall tenor.”
“He had a fine voice.”
“Only with you, Alana. He knew it better than you did. He used you to make the world more comfortable for himself. And he acted as though using you was his God-given right.”
Alana closed her eyes, hearing her own unwanted thoughts coming from Rafe’s lips.
“I used him, too,” she whispered. “I used him to survive after they told me you were dead.”
“Were you the one who demanded marriage?”
Alana shook her head. “I just wanted to sing.”
“That’s what Bob said. He remembered Jack hounding you and then finally telling you that if you wouldn’t marry him, he wouldn’t sing with you.”
“Yes,” Alana whispered, her voice shaking. “Jack knew exactly what he wanted, and he knew how to get it. When it came to his own comforts, he was as selfish as any man I’ve ever known.”
“But he didn’t want me, not as a wife, not as a woman.”
Rafe laughed harshly.
“Wrong, Alana. You didn’t want him. He could have your singing talent, but he couldn’t have you. Easy street was more important to Jack than sex, so he accepted your conditions.”
Forget Me Not Page 17
