by Cash Cole
Rance recognized himself instantly, and for the first time since he’d received Sarah’s corneas, he was sure of something. Himself.
“I never met Sarah.” The words sounded lame, but he had to be honest. “I-I don’t understand what’s going on, but…I had to come here, to see you.”
“Of course, dear.” Haley patted his shoulder.
“No, you don’t understand.” Rance swallowed hard, gathering courage. “Things have been strange for me ever since the operations. I’ve had visions.” He glanced up to meet Jake’s steely gaze. “I don’t expect you to believe me, but this was all meant to be.”
Regret filled him. “I don’t mean that it was Sarah’s lot in life to die like that—I read about it in The Las Vegas Sun, weeks after I began healing. It was horrible. Three people killed, including your daughter. Tragic, her getting gunned down like that and the police unable to catch those responsible. But I was meant to…” Rance groaned and buried his face in his hands, searching for the words. Benefit sounded so cold, so mercenary, but what other word sufficed?
Haley pulled Rance’s hands away and looked him in the eye. Her gaze was kind, understanding, and her pain and sorrow alone would have done Rance in, but the compassion Haley offered nearly brought him to tears. “Sarah knew this would happen, I think. Look.” Haley indicated the portrait. “It’s a perfect likeness of you as you are today, and she drew it nearly fifteen years ago.”
Rance could only stare. It was perfect. In the picture, he actually looked radiant and happy. Far from how he felt at the moment. But the thought that a young girl from hundreds of miles away, one who’d never meet him, could capture him so uncannily, was a miracle in itself. Just like the gift of sight Sarah had given him.
Haley bent and hugged Rance. The act was the panacea Rance needed to heal his troubled heart, even if temporarily. The guilt he’d felt for receiving another’s eyes unnerved him.
Jake cleared his throat, interrupting Rance’s brief respite from guilt. He could tell by Jake’s tone that he wasn’t convinced Rance wasn’t up to something that would harm his family. “How is it that Summer found you? Why are you here?”
“Jake!” Haley sounded shocked. She slammed her palms onto the table before him, glaring at him. “I signed the forms agreeing to meet Sarah’s recipients. Sometimes, these people just want to say thank you—did you think of that?” She turned to Rance. “I apologize for my son’s rudeness, but he still has issues he’s working on since Sarah’s death. They didn’t part well.”
Rance moved forward. The hell with what he thinks. He wants to be an asshole, let him. I got what I came for, the chance to meet Sarah’s family and say thanks. “That last day, when you and your sister fought? She saw your point—she just disagreed. She felt that gambling wouldn’t affect your father the way that you thought it would. What’s between you and your dad has nothing to do with gambling. The alcoholism is his problem—you aren’t to blame. Neither are your brothers and your mother.” Rance drew a deep breath, watching the shocked expressions on both Haley’s and Jake’s faces. “I’m sorry, but Sarah would want you to know that she doesn’t blame you for the argument. In the words I feel are coming through me from her, It is what it is. Time to get over it.”
Jake suddenly caught his mother as her legs buckled. He helped her into the booth where he’d been sitting then slid in beside her, staring at Rance. “My sister used to say exactly that. How…? There’s no way you could have known…”
“Exactly.” Rance was beyond mortified that he’d ratted himself out like that and invited the O’Reilly family to make fun of him. Or worse, to become frightened of him. Bad enough that he scared the hell out of himself.
Haley cried softly and brought a napkin from the table to her face, wiping her eyes and nose, sniffling. When Jake tried comforting her, she shook her head. “I’m okay. Just surprised—that’s all.” She finished wiping her face and looked at Rance again, her eyes imploring. “What else has Sarah told you? Did she say why she died?”
Jake lifted his hands to his face, running white-knuckled fingers through his hair. “Mom, you aren’t buying this? It’s a scam! I must have said something to Colin, and maybe Colin told him while he was in Las Vegas, preparing to bring the bodies of his brother and his wife home. Did you think of that?”
“Colin left Las Vegas when Sarah’s body was released,” Haley said.
“Then he said something to this man while he was in the hospital. I mean, he was right there, in the same damned hospital, for the transplant to occur. No?”
“Wrong,” Rance corrected him. “I was miles away in Henderson when your sister was killed and taken to the hospital. I’ve never met Sarah’s husband.”
“Ah, but you know who I’m talking about, right? How is that?” Jake’s voice left no doubt that he thought Rance was full of crap.
“The same way I know that you turned down a scholarship to at least half a dozen universities nearly ten years ago. You could have played professional baseball by now, but you chose to stay home and help take care of your mother and younger brothers.”
Jake scoffed. “Oh, hell, it’s no secret that my dad drinks and that I used to play a bit of ball. You could have gotten that information anywhere.”
“Want me to tell your mother what you and Sarah really fought about the night before she left for Las Vegas?” Rance asked.
The man before Rance looked as if Rance had cold-cocked him. His handsome face paled, and his eyes darkened.
“Enough!” Jake’s voice was quiet, but it might as well have been a clap of thunder.
His mother told him to be silent. “I told Summer to get hold of Rance and bring him to me. I wanted to talk to him. Surely, you don’t suspect Summer of gossiping about our family, do you?”
Haley patted Rance’s hands. “You stay for supper. We’ll put this one out on his boat if we have to, but I want to hear more. Promise me you’ll stay.”
Jake held out his hand to help his mother from the booth. Rance could see the rise and swell of Jake’s chest as he fought to keep his emotions under control. But hell, Rance had come this far in revealing information, he might as well go the rest of the journey.
“I’d like to talk to your son alone, if that’s okay, Mrs. O’Reilly. But, yes, I’d be happy to stay. Thanks.” Rance took a deep, shuddering breath, bracing for Jake’s rebuttal.
He seemed to be mulling things over. If he objected to Rance accepting his mother’s invitation, it’d be rude, and his mother obviously didn’t tolerate disrespect.
Haley nodded, but her dark eyes looked troubled. “Jake, maybe our visitor would like to see a bit of the lake while you talk.” Then, in what seemed like an afterthought, she muttered softly, “It’ll give you something to do besides glare at him.”
Rance waited until the other woman had left before squaring off with Sarah’s brother. “Do you have some place where we could speak in private? Because you really don’t want anyone else listening in on this conversation.”
Jake seemed to study him, and the look in his eyes made Rance nervous. Jake was no fool, so it was best to level with him. What he didn’t know, however, was that Rance needed his input as badly as Jake needed the truth.
Jake waved a hand towards the door. “We can talk on the boat. It’s tied up outside, to the right of the gas pumps.” He reached to grab Rance’s knapsack. Rance could tell he wasn’t snooping—he was simply being gallant.
Rance held back. “You lead—I’ll follow.”
A powerful sexual urge, more primitive than anything he’d felt in his life hit Rance’s solar plexus as he let Jake take the bag. Not an interest, not even a mere attraction, but a carnal urge to mate with him again. Jake’s male scent infiltrated his brain, and for the first time in his life, Rance was terrified of his own longings.
He’d been repressed. He’d been reluctant to jump into life’s stream when he’d lost his sight, but now he thirsted for completion, and Jake O’Reilly seemed to hold the
key to his fulfillment.
He shook his head as he boarded the boat, quaking at the overpowering emotions assaulting him. Alone on his boat. Probably with me turning into a crazed nymphomaniac again. Great. Just great.
Chapter Two
Foreboding coiled in Jake’s stomach like a snake waiting to strike. He cursed himself for not recognizing Rance. How could he forget those eyes his sister had drawn so many years ago? She’d said the portrait was of her missing sibling, but Jake had felt anything but brotherly when admiring his sister’s handiwork. Even as a teenage boy, he’d been drawn to the blond in Sarah’s drawing, knowing they weren’t brothers, imagining what it would be like to kiss him, wanting to touch those sculpted cheeks.
Now, the man was there. Why? And was he bluffing? He had to be. There was no way Rance could know about his last conversation with Sarah. The subject was one he’d never discussed with another soul, and he was certain Sarah would never have betrayed him.
He helped Rance onto the twin engine Sea Ray he’d dubbed Tsu-Le.
His guest noticed the boat’s name printed in his native language on the bow, just beneath the drawing of the thunderbird. “Why did you only print part of the word?”
“Ran out of paint.” It was a quick, lame excuse, but he figured it’d shut up Rance. Besides, how the hell did Rance know he’d abbreviated the Cherokee word for phoenix? Jake looked at him skeptically.
Rance seemed to be baiting him. “Tsu-le-hi-sa-nv-hi. Phonetically, you’d say chew lay he saw nuh he. Right?”
Jake nodded. Okay, so the white boy knew a few words in Cherokee. Big deal. Didn’t mean shit. It was just unnerving that he knew that particular one. “My sister and I used to sail a lot as kids. I got sentimental and named the boat for her and her passion for the phoenix.”
“But this isn’t a sailboat.” Rance indicated the small yacht. “And it’s not named for her.”
“No, it’s not.” Jake evaded elaborating and went through the motions of steering as he’d done thousands of times before. Soon, he had them headed toward the middle of the lake. “Where do you want to go?”
Rance looked troubled, and his voice was so quiet Jake had to strain to hear what he said. “Back to where you found me, please. I need to locate my car.”
Fair enough. Jake tried to seem disinterested, but he failed. “Have any idea where you left it?”
Rance faced him. “I know you think this is some sort of scam, but I really did just come here to meet Sarah’s family and to thank them and maybe to find some way of repaying Sarah.” His handsome face clouded. “I remember renting the car, somewhere in town…in Tahlequah. I drove to a wooded area near the lake. Then it started raining.”
Rance’s voice trailed off, and for a moment, Jake thought, Oh, hell, here he goes again, somewhere inside his own mind where I’ll never find him. Rance didn’t seem like a nut case, but Jake hadn’t been around many. Nobody in his family was schizophrenic. None of them talked to ghosts or thought they were connected to dead people. He wasn’t sure what to make of Rance.
“Tell me about the car,” he suggested, thinking at least he’d get an idea of where to look. If it was a sedan, it wouldn’t be parked near the lake. Might be stuck in the mud if it was too close to the shoreline, but chances were it wasn’t.
Rance shook his head, ignoring Jake’s request about the car. “Okay, what do I have to do to convince you?”
“Of what?” Jake waited patiently. The trip back to the southern ridge of the lake could take several minutes if he cut the power. He’d let Rance speak and get tangled in his own web of lies, whatever they were. He absent-mindedly trailed one hand over the deck’s console where he kept hair bands and an extra ball cap.
Rance faced him squarely. “You and your sister argued over the casino issue, but the real tension came when she admitted, only because you pushed her, that you aren’t her blood brother.”
Jake’s heart all but stopped. “What did you say?”
“You asked, since she was the oldest, if she knew anything about your birth. Your father had gone on one of his drinking binges, and when you’d tried to calm him, to get him back into his wheelchair, he blurted out that you weren’t his son and that for all he knew you weren’t even his wife’s child.”
“You son of a bitch!” Jake’s hands left the steering wheel, and he swung, but Rance dodged his cocked fist. Rage blinded Jake, and he swung again, this time connecting with the blond’s shoulder.
Rance didn’t hit back. Instead, he held Jake’s fists, pulling Jake toward him.
Jake rebelled and tried to back away, but for a moment, he was trapped.
Rance’s voice was soft and dreamy, the antithesis of his harsh words. He drew closer to Jake, holding onto Jake’s fists to keep him from punching him. “Your dad has always treated you differently, and you wanted to know why.”
“Let go!” Jake wrestled free and went back to steering. “You want to get us killed?”
The knot in Jake’s stomach twisted, churned, coiling and recoiling, upsetting his equilibrium. There was no way Rance could know this.
“Sarah hated telling you,” Rance continued, “but you pushed and pushed, and the secret she’d kept for so long just tumbled out. Sarah felt you had a right to know, but she was sick afterwards, and she wished she’d not said anything.”
Rance’s eyes clouded. “I’m sorry. That’s what she wanted me to tell you. I’m so sorry.” Jake couldn’t take his hands from the boat’s steering again, but his first inclination was to go to Rance, to accept Sarah’s forgiveness. Only it wasn’t Sarah. It was the man he’d fucked the night before.
Wait just a damned minute. He shook his head. Surely, he wasn’t buying into this bullshit web of deceit Rance spun. Her forgiveness? This wasn’t his sister before him in any shape or form, not in body, not in spirit. This was the stranger, the very sexy, convincing young man who had his sister’s corneas. He looked at Rance closely. Different eyes. Same expression? “I don’t understand.”
Rance lowered his arms. “Have you heard of cellular memory?”
“No.” And Jake wasn’t sure he wanted to hear about it.
“It’s nothing derived from scientific fact. I mean, not really. The idea is based on the belief that each cell in our physical bodies records everything that occurs in our lives. Every thought, feeling, emotion and event.”
Jake cleared his throat, still unsteady. “Is this one of those tenants that supports the idea of reincarnation or something?”
Rance shrugged. “I don’t know anything about it other than what I’ve read. I told my doctor about my visions—because that’s what they were. I wasn’t just picking them up while sleeping, so they weren’t dreams. He sent me to a friend of his who dealt with…well, the woman was a psychologist, but an open-minded one.”
“Ah.” So Rance was deranged.
As if reading his mind, Rance smiled sadly. “I’m not hallucinating, and I’m not crazy. Ever since receiving Sarah’s corneas, it’s as if I know, as if I see, events from her life. I sense her thoughts. It’s not as if I’m walking around with two spirits inside my body, nothing like that. It’s not that I think she’s with me, necessarily. I just know things, but I don’t understand why or how. I just feel I’m supposed to do something for her.”
“And you think that reminding me I may be an unwanted bastard is the answer?” Jake couldn’t help but scoff, and he still tasted the bitterness from his last conversation with Sarah. He let his hands leave the steering column briefly and ran tense fingers though his hair. He twisted it into a ponytail and secured it with one of the leather hair bands from the console. Jesus. If I keep listening to this, I’ll be as nutty as Rance is.
Rance put a hand to his face, shielding his eyes from the rising sun. “Just take me to my car, please. You don’t have to stay with me once we get there. I don’t even know why I’m going back, other than to get my rental, but…I know I’m supposed to be there, and I know you’re supposed to take me. A
fter that, you can forget about me.”
Jake sniffed the air and looked at the sky. Another storm. Great. And as for Rance? He doubted he’d ever forget the son of a bitch. His Native cousins, Hawk and Daniel, who had been at the marina earlier and had kept him from slugging Colin, would get a kick out of this when he told them later. Daniel would want to meet Rance, and Hawk would round up the rest of their tribe to help track him. It would irritate them to think that an outsider, a white man, would know so much about their family.
“You say we’re going back for your car?” he asked.
Rance nodded.
“Then where did you go when you bailed on me yesterday?”
“I wandered into a cavern not far from the lake.”
Jake pondered his answer for a moment. “And how did you get cleaned up?” He indicated what Rance wore. “You were half-drowned when we first met. Where did you change, bathe? How did you get to the marina today?”
Rance placed his hands on her hips. “I may have lost my car, but I haven’t misplaced my mind.” He fished into his jacket pocket and produced a cell phone. “I paid for the car rental in advance, just as I paid for this. I plugged in the numbers I’d need and dialed the one for a taxi service. That’s how I got from wherever the hell I was yesterday back to my hotel and how I got from the hotel to the marina. Satisfied?”
“No.” Jake snorted and shook his head. “You have a quick, handy answer for everything. No, I’m not satisfied. How did the taxi find you? You didn’t know where you were!”
Rance’s voice wavered, and for a moment Jake thought he would cave in, come clean with whatever scam he had going. “I’ll admit that this all sounds rather strange.”
“Buddy, you have redefined the word for me.”
Rance held up his hands, stressing the favor. “Let me finish. I’m used to getting around as a blind man, so there are certain precautions I have had to take without sight. I may be able to see now, but I still rely on old habits. One of those is to make sure I have a back-up plan. Phone numbers. Maps.”
