“You feel so right to me,” she said.
And right then, Ruben’s soul broke into pieces, because he knew why. He knew what this force was that had put a halt to his life. He couldn’t explain how he knew it, so sure and so simple, but he did.
And at that moment, as he steadied his breathing, he made a promise to himself—he would never tell her he loved her. That way, when she left, as she soon would, he could save one small piece of himself from ruin.
His eyes flashed open. “Dance with me, Zia,” he said, releasing her legs.
She did dance with him, raising up slightly and coming back down on him, while the flames licked deep in her belly and she began to squirm and sigh and moan.
Ruben thrust into her, making her take all of him, feeling himself spinning and soaring and flying with her and into her, gripped tight, bodies falling through space, connected, until there was nothing left of him—because he’d given it all to her, told her everything—no words necessary.
Ruben was afraid to wake up.
It was entirely possible that the taste of her, the scent of her, and the lingering sensation of her touch were tricks of his mind.
And even if it were real, if she really was here and they really had done all the wonderful things he remembered doing, then he feared what the day would bring. What memory would she wake up with today? What knowledge would take her closer to her old life and further away from him?
It had to be at least ten o’clock by now. What time did they begin to make love? How long had they been asleep?
“Ruby?” She stirred against his chest and her soft kisses tickled and teased his nipples.
“I’m right here,” he said, blinking with relief.
“I’m so glad I wasn’t dreaming.”
“That makes two of us.”
Not only was Olivia pissed off, she was baffled. She’d really thought they’d gotten along great, but now Ruby didn’t answer her texts or calls and wasn’t even showing up at work. This was ghosting on steroids. It was as if Ruben Jaramillo, newsroom gigolo, had dropped off the face of the earth.
Now, she was not a silly woman. She was level-headed and smart and she’d had her share of relationships. So she was certain she hadn’t imagined that they liked each other? Hadn’t he given her that sweet and teasing kiss after he walked her to her car?
Damn! She’d even studied the history of the petroglyphs to prepare for their second date!
Maybe she should just drop by and make sure he was all right. Maybe he was really sick, despite the newsroom gossip about him and Kovac. Maybe he needed something like orange juice or Tylenol or a paper version of The New York Times.
No problem. He’d told her exactly where he lived. He told her his mailbox had a big multi-colored sun on it and that he called his place Vida Loca or something. She knew Corrales well enough to find his little road. She was a reporter, after all.
In fact, Olivia had time that very morning for a visit – she wasn’t due in until the afternoon because she’d been assigned to review the New Mexico Ballet’s evening performance of Don Quixote at the Keller Theatre. If Ruby was feeling up to it, maybe he’d like to come with her, though she doubted he’d like ballet. Most guys didn’t.
It was after ten. He’d definitely be up by now.
She stopped at a bakery and picked up some bagels and cream cheese and headed out with her GPS fired up and ready to go. She needed to look for San Ysidro Catholic Church, then take a right.
What an adorable little house! So quaint and tidy behind a wooden fence. His truck was parked right in front, in what was a small, tree-shaded plaza. Olivia grabbed the bakery sack, checked her hair, walked to the door, and knocked.
Nothing.
She knocked again. Maybe he was in the shower.
She walked around the back of the house – maybe there was a back door. Maybe he was working in the yard.
She came to a little back porch with two beat-up wooden chairs in front of sliding glass doors, right next to a half-completed sunroom that jutted out into the yard. She climbed up to the door and cupped a hand around her eyes against the sunshine. She gasped.
Ruben was home, all right.
It wasn’t like she was spying, but how could she pretend not to see this? Ruben was naked, his muscled butt and thighs knotting up as he moved into some woman right on his kitchen table! Olivia thought she would be sick as she watched him, his arm muscles straining, his head thrown back like that, the arch of his hips!
The woman beneath Ruben suddenly turned her face toward the door with her eyes closed and her mouth languid with pleasure, and a cascade of blond hair spilled over the edge of the table. The woman’s arm floated over her head and down toward the tabletop, as if in a trance.
Olivia was definitely going to vomit. She ran along the side of the house to her car and peeled off like a maniac, crying, slamming her fists on the steering wheel, feeling like a fool, an idiot!
She flung the bagels out of the car window one by one and sent them rolling behind her down Corrales Road like little wheels. She didn’t even care if she littered.
What a fucking jerk!
Then later that night, halfway through the performance of Don Quixote, the oddest thing occurred to Olivia. She knew that woman with Ruby. Didn’t she know her from somewhere?
Olivia looked over at Lynn Ballantine in the seat next to her. Lynn had agreed to be her last minute “date” for the night and hung on every word of Olivia’s sob story. She’d provided an understanding and sympathetic shoulder to cry on. Lynn had listened with appropriate shock while Olivia told her the whole disgusting story.
And that woman! As much as she hated to, Olivia allowed the scene to flash into her brain again, the tilt of her face, the closed eyes, the way her arm floated above her. God! She even knew what that woman’s voice sounded like, as strange as that seemed. It was an old memory, from where she didn’t know, but it wasn’t from the last two months here in New Mexico, that was for sure.
Memory was so mysterious. Olivia read somewhere that once you see or hear or experience something it never leaves you. It was just a matter of accessing it, finding the tiny spot in the brain where you put it.
She brought her pen to the notebook in her lap and began to jot down random words. It was a trick that sometimes helped her break through writer’s block, so why not give it a try for this?
The pen seemed to move on its own and the words she wrote down were “grace, athleticism, poor, scholarship, Philadelphia, bachelor, Bradley Rowe.”
Then she looked up at the dancers on stage and her mouth fell open.
Bradley Rowe was not used to having his plans disrupted. He hated to wait.
He also refused to admit that a goal could not be attained with hard work, clarity of purpose, and perseverance.
However, as the days wore on, he had to acknowledge the possibility that she’d gotten the better of him, at least temporarily. How many days now? Seven. And a smart person with a little money could completely disappear in a week.
Brad stared out of the windows of their apartment, looking down on the late-winter streets of Philadelphia. Of course she was smart enough. She also had her father’s insurance money and her investments. The only question was where did she go?
The private detective had found nothing. He himself had found nothing. It didn’t make any sense to him. If she did happen to see that awful business with Lawrence the night of the party, and took off in a frightened panic, there would be errors, loose ends, something.
Yet, she’d apparently closed her bank accounts a month ago. Despite an exhaustive search of the apartment, he’d found no bank statements, no cash withdrawal slips, no credit card receipts. Her desk drawers were cleaned out. Her closets seemed to have been carefully culled over, and what remained were the gowns, the dresses, and the things she wore to the clubs in New York.
Her car was in the parking garage. The private investigator found no airline travel under her name. He found n
o credit card purchases. He found no one who saw a woman of her description at the train station, the bus station, any of the area’s airports or car rental agencies.
She’d missed company rehearsals, which he found especially disconcerting, and her locker was empty. Of course the director was appalled. They were right in the middle of the season, right in the middle of rehearsals for Sleeping Beauty, and she was dancing the lead role of Aurora.
Brad had talked to her friends, and each one had a different story to tell. “She made me promise not to say,” they all began, “but she went to visit her old teacher in New York.” Or to Brad’s house in the Bahamas. Or to stay with an old college roommate. Or to visit her grandmother in the Florida nursing home.
It was almost as if she’d deliberately distributed bits of misinformation to everyone in her life just to keep him from finding her. She had no grandmother in a nursing home, and he wondered if it were some kind of misunderstanding or an outright lie.
But how could it be a lie? There wasn’t a dishonest bone in her body. And she loved him. And up until very recently, he was absolutely certain she was the one.
Jane O’Connor was perfect—accomplished, comfortable in social settings, interesting, witty, drop-dead and make-your-pulse-race gorgeous, and completely disinterested in politics. She was the ideal fit for his career and society commitments, the perfect accessory to his rather complex life.
He’d caught her crying a few times in recent months, but attributed it to her monthly cycle or the ballet’s new artistic director.
Then there was that awful fight last month. He’d never seen her so upset. She was shaking. There were dark circles under her eyes. She refused to sleep with him for many nights in a row. He’d asked her if she could be pregnant and she nearly went ballistic.
It was all very odd. It was so unfortunate.
He thought back to the night they met at the Cancer Society Ball three years before. She had been dating another dancer at the time, the only straight man in the company, she’d told him with a laugh—and she was having her doubts about that!
He was struck by the combination of beauty and decency in her. He loved her determination, her humor. Like him, she’d worked her way up from a nothing childhood to a life others envied. She understood ambition. She understood responsibility, ideals, commitment. They fell together so naturally.
She was interested in his work and his gallery and she loved to travel with him on collection expeditions to the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Europe. He was deeply touched when he found she’d been studying up on collectible antique weaponry in order to be even more useful with his clients.
Oh, sweetheart.
It wasn’t money. He had more than enough to keep her happy and surprised and cherished. It couldn’t be sex. He didn’t make many demands on her and it had always seemed satisfactory between them.
It wasn’t control. He didn’t smother her. She was a gifted artist and he respected that. He planned to let her dance at least a few more years.
There was no other explanation. She had to have seen him in the workshop that night. Why else would she disappear? Of course it would have alarmed her. She had no way of understanding the context of the act, how Lawrence had betrayed him, tried to expose him, undermine Liberty Path, and endanger the God-given rights of the American people.
And now look what she’d done. He had no choice but to go after her. She must be found. She was lovely, but she wasn’t worth risking everything for.
No one was.
Where are you, sweetheart? I know you. And I’ll find you.
Chapter 10
Wednesday, March 22
Ruben felt outlandishly happy on the drive to Taos that morning.
He answered her questions, pointed things out to her, laughed with her, thought about her body, and simply refused to let his mind wander any further. He would not think about tomorrow or the next day or even this afternoon. He preferred to stay blind until the very last moment.
And that was a problem.
There was enough to go on now and he knew it. If he chose to, Ruben could figure out who this woman was in about an hour. Any halfway decent reporter could do it.
Here was what she’d already remembered: she was raised in a red brick row house in a cold urban climate; she was twenty-eight years old; she’d studied dance since childhood; she’d lived with her father as a child; she’d recently had a relationship with a man who liked swords.
Here’s what he’d worked out on his own: she was obviously college educated; she was probably a professional dancer; she probably studied dance at a major school; she disappeared into thin air and there were surely people who wondered what happened to her.
Okay, two hours, tops.
He looked at her next to him. Zia’s eyes were wide as she looked around her, an expression of awe frozen on her face since she’d seen the whitewater beauty of the Rio Grande adjacent to Route 68. The air was different up here. Sharp and thin. The jagged white edges of the southern Rockies towered just ahead.
But Ruby’s mind was a jumbled mess, because, really, what kind of a jerk was he? If he really cared for her, wouldn’t he be in the newsroom right now, pulling out all the stops? Shouldn’t he be doing image searches on the Internet? Shouldn’t he be making phone calls to other newspapers, ballet companies, ballet schools, colleges with strong dance programs? How difficult could it be to find a picture of her somewhere in a program book or a school yearbook? Who would not remember seeing Zia dance?
Ruben had tracked down people with a lot less to go on.
She smiled at him. “It’s wonderful here, Ruby.”
God, she was beautiful.
He could rationalize his behavior. She’d know soon anyway. It was all coming back. What harm would it do to wait a couple more days? Besides, there was always the possibility that his poking around could tip off the guy with the sword, whoever he was. If Zia said he was real, he was real.
Ruben returned her smile and she reached out to stroke his hair. Her touch felt so good.
He was certain her memory of the sword was real, too. He understood all too well what it was like to carry around a memory like that, of having touched death, having seen the death of someone you knew.
Or in his case, someone you loved.
Ruben regained his focus. The smart thing to do was sit tight until Zia had enough knowledge of herself to decide how to proceed. It should be her call, not his.
“I feel safe with you, Ruben,” she said suddenly. He glanced at her again. She wore her new pale green sweater, the old jeans, and the black boots and leather jacket she’d worn the day of the accident. She fiddled with the key around her neck and stared at the craggy purple and white peaks of the Sangre de Cristos up ahead.
“So what’s the key for, Zia?” He’d been playing this game every day. What’s your name? Where are you from? At some point the surprise element was bound to work.
She turned abruptly and blinked. “A house.”
“A house?”
“Yes. A house here in New Mexico.”
He stared at her and before he could ask, she answered.
“Just now. I just remembered.” She squeezed the key so tightly her knuckles went white. “That’s where I was going, Ruby.”
He took in a deep breath. “Where’s the house? You were headed north. Jemez? Bernalillo? Santa Fe? Los Alamos?”
“I have no idea.”
“Why don’t you pull out the map under the seat and have a look?”
He watched her wrestle with the large fold-out map of New Mexico. When a mobile signal wasn’t available, Ruby had to rely on the old-fashioned way of finding his way around the state’s back roads. She frowned in concentration as she traced her finger from town to town through the land north of Albuquerque. She moved steadily, not stopping anywhere, zig-zagging along the major roads and highways.
After a few moments, she slammed the map to her lap and looked out the window. “God, I hate this! I
hate that I get one tiny piece and then nothing more!” She turned to him and her frosted blue eyes flashed. “Do you have any idea how completely insane this makes me? I don’t think I can stand it anymore!”
Now he really felt guilty. He reached for her and she squeezed his hand. “It won’t be much longer, Zia.”
She said nothing for a very long time, then folded up the map and put it back under the seat.
“How many days have I known you, Ruby?” she asked.
“At two-thirty this afternoon it will be nine days.”
She laughed a little. “Is that enough to know somebody, do you think?”
“It depends on the person and the situation,” he said.
“I’m talking about you—our situation. Do I know you, Ruby?”
“Yes.”
“What do I know about you? What exactly do I know?”
He watched Taos Valley appear before him. It always made Ruben a bit nervous to come here, he realized. He was always somewhat intimidated by Old Gallegos and Pueblo life.
“I’m not a complicated guy, Zia, Truth in advertising. I like where I live and I love what I do. I have friends. I’m happy.” He grinned at her. “Especially in the last nine days. And that’s all there is to know about me.”
She chuckled and looked out the window. “I swear it seems like you just stroll through life, never letting anything get to you, never facing any hurdles, never having to suffer through anything. Where does a person go to sign up for that kind of life?”
That stung. “That assumption is neither fair, nor accurate.” Ruben’s heard he tightness in his own voice. “Nobody gets through life without suffering and loss.”
She spun around to face him. “Then tell me something about you, something I don’t know yet, something that help me be sure I know you.”
Collision Course: A Romantic Thriller Page 11
