And after that...
A big racing sailboat slanted past them, sails humming taut in the high wind. Passengers lined its deck, waving as they crossed Jayne and Ryder’s wake. He could see their tanned, smiling faces, and somehow the scene reawakened the anxiety that had been gnawing at him since he’d first realized how much danger he was in.
If the sailboat could get this close, so could anyone else. Ryder was certain they weren’t being followed at the moment, but that didn’t mean he could let down his guard. Squinting into the glare of the sun, he opened the throttle, coaxing a little more speed out of the reluctant motor as he angled the boat across the breakers rolling in from the sea.
It was obvious that Jayne’s thoughts weren’t completely easy, either. Once they’d spotted the entrance to the Intracoastal Waterway—a break in the beach, surrounded by low-rise buildings—and navigated their way off the rolling ocean, her first words were, “What are the chances of the waterway being watched?”
“It’s not impossible.” He slowed the boat down and felt it settle lower in the water as they rounded the turn.
“That’s what you told Greg when he insisted nobody had followed him.” Jayne’s face was serious, her hair tangled by the breeze. “You said nothing was impossible.”
Ryder didn’t answer. He needed to keep his mind on what they were going to do next, rather than reminding himself how much information and firepower anyone crooked inside a law enforcement agency had access to. He didn’t know who was after him, but it was very clear that whoever it was had very useful connections.
“But Greg is smart,” Jayne said, moving closer, sliding along the seat so that only the low windshield was between them. “I believed him when he said he’d been careful to check he wasn’t being tailed.”
“There are other ways of tailing somebody.” Like bugs, Ryder thought. And radio signals. Anyone who could tap a cop’s phone would know how to install an electronic monitoring device on the undercarriage of a car. “And if he’s so smart,” he added, “how come he was dragging his heels when that maroon car was after us?”
“Not everybody’s as reckless as you are, Ryder. And Greg has reason to drag his heels where you’re concerned. You—hurt a lot of people when you refused to talk about why you were going to jail.”
“Including you.”
His own words surprised him. He was doing his best to stay sharp and focused on the problem of their immediate safety. But something kept pushing at him, something that wouldn’t let him forget how Jayne’s wide eyes had looked when he’d drawn back from her this morning.
He couldn’t escape the realization that he’d hurt her badly, not only in the past but again a few hours ago. Despite everything that was going on around them, he couldn’t help feeling that he wanted to make amends, or at least to understand what had happened—what was still happening.
Jayne’s quick shake of the head told him she wasn’t interested. “Including Greg,” she said firmly. “He thought your arrest was a real slap in the face to everyone you’d worked with.”
Ryder snorted. “Are you sure he wasn’t just worried that being friends with a convicted felon might damage his political career?”
Her eyes sparkled with sudden fire. “You don’t have a lot of friends at the moment, Ryder,” she said. “Maybe you shouldn’t knock the few you have left.”
“I’m just being cautious. Iverson looks like a pretty slick operator to me.”
She looked impatient, frustrated. “Of course he’s slick,” she said. “Slick enough to be able to line up a top-flight lawyer to set up a deal for you, which is what he’d been about to do when we had to leave that diner.”
“Wait a minute.” Ryder frowned at her over the windshield. “I didn’t say anything about wanting a lawyer.”
“No. I did.”
Something shivered through Ryder that he didn’t quite understand. He’d felt the same sensation when he’d been staring through the narrow window in the diner’s kitchen door. There’d been something about the sight of Greg Iverson taking Jayne’s hands in his own—something trusting and natural about their two heads leaning toward each other over the table...
He shook his head. What he was feeling didn’t make any sense. But it wouldn’t go away.
It wasn’t just jealousy, though he’d felt the unmistakable stab of that, as well.
It was a feeling of being on the outside.
Of being alone.
He hadn’t stopped to think it through at the diner. He’d been busy trying to keep an eye on the maroon car circling the block, and trying to figure out what the hell to do if it turned out to be a threat.
But now, cruising along in calmer waters, he had to face the fact that what he’d felt then—what he was feeling now—was loneliness, pure and simple.
You don’t know how to love.
I can’t reach you.
He didn’t know where the words were coming from. They echoed in his head the way that damn dream had early this morning, almost familiar, but not quite enough to grab hold of.
He didn’t know if the words represented memories or fears, if they were directed at himself or someone else. But they resonated through his body, leaving him unexpectedly shaken.
“We agreed we would ask Greg to help,” Jayne was saying with that same pragmatic air. “He wasn’t willing to dig around behind the FBI’s back, but he did offer to make some kind of a deal—”
“I don’t want deals,” he said, cutting her off. “I want information.”
“You’re asking for too much, Ryder.” She sounded impatient.
Ryder frowned as he turned the wheel slightly to angle into the wake of a passing cruiser.
You’re asking for more than you can possibly have.
Was it Jayne’s voice he was hearing in his head, or his own? He couldn’t tell. But the desolate feeling that went with the words was all too clear.
He looked at Jayne’s determined, heart-shaped face, at her intelligent violet eyes and the body that had made him want to shout with pure joy when he’d held her close this morning.
He was asking for too much, he thought. The dream of possessing Jayne Robards was beckoning to him and warning him away at the same time, glorious but unreachable.
You’re on the outside.
Where you’ve always been.
It was as though his memory was coming back the wrong way around, offering him only feelings, not facts. He had no concrete memories to back this up, no specific recollections. He only knew he’d felt this way before.
He was longing for this beautiful woman who turned his blood into fire, who seemed to bring a promise of a kind of passion and comfort that made his head spin.
And at the same time he knew it could never last.
He was asking for too much.
Again.
The thought of it made his voice rough. “Maybe it’s a good thing we had to hit the high seas,” he said. “Another couple of minutes and I might have found myself walking back into custody.”
“At least it was a plan.” The breeze was whipping her short dark hair around her face. It made her look suddenly young, and adorably disheveled. “Do you have something to replace it with?”
“Not yet.”
“Where exactly are we headed, then?”
“West.”
He’d had a good look at the map when Jayne had first found it. It seemed that a boat could navigate straight across Florida using the canal that ran into Lake Okeechobee, and then into a river that went all the way to the west coast of the state.
“Sticking around here is too dangerous,” he said. “We’ve had too many close calls already.”
“I agree. But just heading west doesn’t seem like much of a plan to me.”
“Hey, it’s a work in progress. A boat is a lot harder to trace than a car. I figure we’ve got some time. We just need to find a place to hole up for a while.”
She seemed determined to play devil’s advocate. How co
uld he find any woman so maddeningly seductive when she was arguing with him? Ryder wondered.
“Greg said the FBI has faxed your description to gas stations and motels right across the region,” she was, saying.
He’d been afraid of that. He started to bang his open palm against the steering wheel, and then caught Jayne’s eye.
Slamming things around never helped anything. She’d said it just this morning, when his frustration had boiled over on him. It was close to the same point now, but he managed to rein himself in, staying focused instead on coming up with some kind of usable plan.
“So we’ll figure out something else,” he said. “If nothing else comes along, we can sleep in the boat.”
She looked less than enthusiastic, and Ryder didn’t really blame her. “Look,” he said, “I know you were only coming to visit me in the hospital, not signing on for a damn roller-coaster ride.”
That faint suggestion of a smile creased her face again. “More like a shooting gallery,” she said.
Had they ever laughed together, lighthearted, carefree? They must have, Ryder thought. He could feel the tug of what was almost a memory whenever he glimpsed that fleeting half smile in Jayne’s gaze.
But it was gone almost as soon as it appeared. And her voice was very serious as she added, “You’re right—I wasn’t exactly planning to hit the road with bullets flying over my head. And it’s starting to lose its charm, Ryder. I really think the best thing to do is to take Greg up on his offer—assuming he’s still in one piece.”
There was genuine worry in her face now. Ryder felt that little clutch of jealousy again, that sense of being pushed to the outside.
“He’s in love with you, isn’t he?” He made the words deliberately blunt.
“Greg?” The way she pursed her lower lip was damn near irresistible. He could almost taste her full mouth under his own, welcoming, exhilarating. “I thought he was at one time,” she said.
“What happened?”
She looked straight at him, then away again. “I married you instead,” she said.
And soon she would be unmarried again. Ryder’s hands tightened around the wheel at the thought of it. He had a pretty good idea that her old friend, the Deputy City Attorney was eagerly awaiting that day—assuming, as Jayne had said, that Iverson was still in one piece.
“He was far enough from the car when it blew that he should be okay,” he said. Personally, he hadn’t liked one single thing about Greg Iverson, but he hated to see that anxious frown settling itself on Jayne’s features again.
“We, on the other hand, are still in deep trouble,” he added. There was a marina up ahead. Ryder knew they should fill the gas tank before long, and he wanted to check the motor, see if he could get it working more smoothly.
He steered toward the marina, trying to put thoughts of Greg Iverson’s smooth manner and glossy good looks out of his head. “We need to find someplace to lay low. And we need to find out whatever we can about Judge John Brady,” he said.
Jayne was frowning in earnest now. “Brady?” she echoed. “Why?”
He wished he had a better answer for her. “Because I’m hoping—assuming—there was a reason I was dreaming about him,” he said. “Since we have absolutely nothing else to go on at the moment, I’m going to follow my hunch and assume his name wouldn’t have shown up in my subconscious unless there was a reason.”
“Ryder, dreams aren’t logical. You might just as easily have been dreaming about Walt Disney, or the mayor of Miami, or—”
“But I wasn’t.” Cutting the engine, he steered the boat into the slip next to the fuel pumps at the marina. “And I wasn’t even dreaming about him, exactly. It’s more like his voice was echoing in my head. Like it was some kind of message.”
He waved his hand, as though he could deflect all the perfectly reasonable objections she might throw at him. He hated being in the dark, hated having so little to go on. But he clung stubbornly to his instincts because he had nothing else he could cling to at the moment.
“What do you want to find out about Brady?” she asked.
“Anything. Everything. I won’t know until I find it.”
“And where precisely are you planning to look?”
Ryder handed the red metal gas tank up to the teenage attendant and waited until the kid had stepped out of hearing range.
“I was hoping you might help with that,” he said. “If we can get to someplace that has a fax machine—if you know anybody who might be willing to send us information about Brady’s career—anybody the cops aren’t likely to be watching, that is—” He broke off. He hated asking for help like this, hated having to admit to his own helplessness.
But in most of the ways that counted, he was helpless. And in spite of the way it made his heart sink, in spite of his fear that Jayne might turn him down, leaving him more alone than ever, he had to push the point, had to know what she would say.
“I just can’t think of another way to do this,” he said when she didn’t immediately answer. “I need your help, Jayne.”
It took her a long time to reply. Ryder listened to the rhythmic chugging of the gas pump, careful to keep his face turned to the waterway behind them, in case his features—and his bandaged forehead—happened to stick in the memory of any observant passersby.
“I was doing my best to help you when I was talking with Greg Iverson,” she said at last.
By cutting Ryder out of the loop. He could still feel the knot of solitary hurt in his gut when he remembered it.
“I know,” he said shortly. “But it didn’t work.”
This time her silence lasted even longer, until the gas attendant had lowered the tank back into the boat and taken the money Jayne handed up to him. The noises around them—other boat engines, the gentle slap of waves against the shore, the traffic from the road next to the waterway—seemed to recede into the distance as Ryder waited to hear what Jayne would say.
Half of him already knew. Half of him had been waiting for her to say these words for what felt like forever.
She spoke reluctantly, as though the whole subject was one she’d been trying to avoid. “I still don’t know whether you’re guilty or innocent,” she said slowly.
“Me, too.” It was an effort to keep his own voice calm. “I know even less about this than you do.”
Her eyes turned wary, and Ryder felt that same clench of loss and hurt down low in his belly.
You’re on the outside, something inside him was saying again. And you always will be. Even with Jayne.
He pushed away the nagging voice and crossed his arms over his chest. He knew he should be tilting the motor up, checking it over, getting back on their way, not sitting here where they might be spotted or remembered. But somehow, it was more important to face all the things he and Jayne didn’t know about each other.
“Even if you are innocent—” She didn’t seem to like where the statement was headed, and shook her tousled head to cut it off. “It doesn’t change anything about us,” she said instead. “About our marriage, I mean. That’s already over—it was over even before you were arrested.”
“You’ve said that already.”
Then why did it hurt so much to hear her say it again? Ryder pulled his crossed arms more tightly against his chest, as though he could build a wall that would deflect everything that was coming at him.
The problem was that most of it was coming from inside. And it wasn’t only his bruised ribs that ached—it was all of him. It was places he couldn’t even put a name to, and feelings that kept ambushing him despite his best efforts to avoid them. When he thought about everything that had torn through him when he’d taken Jayne in his arms this morning—when he remembered the hungry noises she’d made when he’d touched her, those little moans that told him she’d been as eager for their loving as he was—
Get to work on the damn motor, his common sense was telling him. Don’t waste time on this.
But he didn’t move—co
uldn’t move. Something in Jayne’s troubled gaze held him, something that seemed to touch the deep well of uncertainty and longing buried somewhere within him.
“If I help you, it’s only because I want to see this over with once and for all,” she said. “I want to know what happened, so I can put it behind me.”
Well, that was blunt enough. Ryder steeled himself against it, against the knowledge that no matter how this adventure ended, Jayne Robards would never be his. The promise of passion he’d heard in her sultry voice was simply never going to be fulfilled.
Jaynie...
“Fair enough.” Could she hear the effort grating in his voice? He couldn’t tell. “Both of us want to know the truth, then.”
“Right.”
The obvious next move was to discuss how they were going to do that. And to get to work on the motor while they talked.
But Ryder still didn’t turn from her. And he couldn’t bring himself to steer the conversation into those safe and obvious channels, either.
The gentle motion of the waves under them was almost hypnotic. And Jayne’s eyes on his were somehow soothing and disturbing at the same time. He felt as though he could look into those brilliant purple depths forever. And at the same time...
The emotions that had been pushing at him all day were even closer to the surface now. Part of him wanted to let this silent moment of connection stretch on, calming him in the midst of the turmoil all around him. But another part wanted to push past it—wanted desperately to know where all these tangled feelings of loss and desire were coming from. He cleared his throat and moved away from the steering wheel toward Jayne’s seat in the bow.
He hadn’t intended to touch her. But it just felt so natural to reach out a hand and cup the back of her neck, stroking her warm skin with his thumb.
She leaned her head back slightly, as though she was caught between running from her own responses and giving in to them. The connection between them sizzled into vibrant life again, adding new urgency to the question Ryder finally had to ask her.
A Marriage To Remember Page 11
