A Marriage To Remember

by Cathryn Clare

  “Why—did we split up in the first place?” He knew his voice wasn’t much more than a growl, but there was nothing he could do about it.

  For a moment he thought she was going to pull back from him, to demand that they keep their attention focused on the matter at hand and leave their own history in the past, where it belonged. He could almost see the phrases forming themselves behind her dazzling eyes, making her gaze more brilliant, more jewel-like than ever.

  But then something softened in her face. It was all Ryder could do to hold himself still. He wanted to raise his other hand, to pull her close against him, to cover her soft mouth with his own, as though the sheer potency of their contact might ease whatever she was about to tell him.

  But he made himself stand still, trembling slightly with the effort it took.

  “I wanted children,” she said finally. “You didn’t.”

  At first it seemed ridiculous. Surely no man in his right mind would have let a woman like Jayne slip through his grasp over something as simple as that!

  And then her words started to sink in.

  He remembered his own bolt of blind panic when they’d been on the point of making love this morning.

  If something happened—

  If Jayne got pregnant—

  If he fathered a child—

  The sense of his own inadequacy, his own limitations, hit him like a cold wave.

  Love never lasts. It was that nagging voice again, pushing at him from inside. What happened with you and Jayne only proves it.

  You’re asking for too much. Jayne had said it herself. He wanted more than he could reasonably have. And he didn’t trust himself to know how to hang on to it if he got it.

  He tried to imagine holding a child of his in his arms. The sweetness of it caught at his throat. He thought about looking at a small face with Jayne’s violet eyes, or her wide, inviting smile. A child with the high Ryder cheekbones, maybe, or his own long, rangy build.

  And right behind the sweetness, bulldozing it out of the way, was a stab of fear, of imagined loss.

  It wouldn’t last. It couldn’t. Something would happen to change it, to take it away. He didn’t know how he was so sure of it. But he’d never been more certain of anything in his life.

  “Ryder—” Jayne was half twisting in his grasp, and he realized he’d tightened his fingers on the back of her neck without noticing.

  But that wasn’t what she was protesting about. She was looking toward the main marina building, frowning again.

  “That security guard keeps looking over at us. If we don’t move pretty soon, he’s going to start wondering what we’re up to.”

  There was anxiety in her throaty voice. But there was also relief. She wasn’t entirely sorry the security guard was providing an excuse to move away, Ryder thought.

  He knew she was right. But he could feel reluctance in every bone and sinew of his body as he let her go.

  Why did it seem as though she was offering him heartbreak and salvation at the same time?

  How was it possible to feel drawn so powerfully toward her even while he knew this couldn’t possibly lead anywhere?

  And why, despite the danger dogging them at every step, despite all the unanswered questions about the mystery surrounding them, did it suddenly feel as though keeping them both alive might turn out to be the easy part?

  Chapter 9

  The world seemed endlessly green and still as it stretched around them.

  Jayne leaned back in her seat and squinted into the late-afternoon light. They’d been on the water for hours. The sun had long since passed overhead and was starting to lower toward the horizon they were heading for.

  Without the suntan lotion she’d found in one of the storage bins, she knew, she and Ryder would both have been toasted crisp by now. As it was, she could see his dark blond hair starting to glint gold on the top of his head as it had done when he was younger.

  In those distant days, she recalled, he’d spent some of his waking hours enjoying the world around him, instead of focusing all his energy on his job.

  He was focusing just as intently now on piloting the boat, and on trying to figure out how wide a margin of safety they’d managed to put between them and danger this time.

  “I wonder if anybody on the beach saw us getting into this thing,” he’d said as he steered out of the lock that connected immense Lake Okeechobee with the river flowing west toward the coast.

  He hadn’t spoken the whole time they’d been crossing the lake itself, either because the motor was too loud or because he’d been lost in his own thoughts. The sound of his voice had come as a surprise to Jayne, although his question hadn’t. She’d been wondering the same thing herself.

  “I think everybody was looking the other way,” she said. “Except Greg, of course. He saw us running toward the pier.”

  “Then assuming he’s okay, he’ll probably tell the FBI how we got away. He’ll probably tell the Miami cops, too.”

  Jayne shook her head. “He knows there’s something funny going on with the police,” she said. “I told him about Madeleine’s calls being intercepted when I was trying to get information from her. I don’t think he’ll let the police in on what’s happening.”

  “He may not have a choice.” Ryder’s voice was grim. “Guys in the city attorney’s office are supposed to uphold the law, not obstruct it. If they question him, I don’t see how he can stall them beyond a certain point.”

  It seemed likely, then, that the FBI and the Miami police—and undoubtedly whoever had been shooting at them for the past two days, as well—would be on the lookout for the boat Ryder and Jayne had stolen.

  No one had looked twice at them while they’d been in the lock leaving Lake Okeechobee. But the longer they were on the water, the more nervous Jayne was starting to feel about the possibility of someone coming in search of them. And despite Ryder’s ministrations, the boat’s motor still had occasional coughing fits, when it sounded as though it was about to give up and quit altogether. It wasn’t a reassuring sound.

  It didn’t help that Ryder was starting to seem more and more restless the farther they went. It was nearly an hour since they’d left the lake. The river was taking them through territory that was largely uninhabited, full of swampy woods that had obviously never been drained the way much of the land nearer to the Atlantic coast had been. And the landscape seemed to be having an odd effect on Ryder.

  He kept frowning, glaring at the heavily treed shoreline as though he suspected they might be under surveillance from behind the branches and vines that hung out over the water. Or maybe it was something else that was on his mind—Jayne couldn’t tell.

  She only knew that after their brief exchange at the lock, he’d fallen silent again, as though nothing existed except the hunt they were in the middle of.

  The really strange thing was that he was starting to look more like the hunter than the quarry. If she were to photograph him right now, she thought—if her cameras, the tools of ther trade, weren’t a hundred miles away with her everyday existence—he would come out looking like a prowling lion, surveying his grassy kingdom for signs of prey.

  It wasn’t just the golden glint of his hair, although that did change his tightly slicked-back ponytail into something almost like a lion’s mane.

  It was something in his stance, and in his eyes. His whole bearing was altering as they motored steadily downstream toward the coast.

  His broad shoulders weren’t set in that tight, wary slope anymore. His long legs were no longer braced as though he was expecting an attack. Now, despite the way his gaze kept flickering from one side of the shore to the other, he stood more easily, one hip cocked, looking more like a warrior about to stride out to do battle than a hunted man on the run from the law.

  The blue jeans she’d bought were a shade too loose for him. And he hadn’t bothered with the belt. With his legs canted at that sexily careless angle, the stonewashed denim rode suggestively low over
his hips. It was making Jayne’s breath quicken just to watch him.

  And his eyes—

  His eyes looked the way she remembered them from years and years ago. There was a light in their blue depths that she hadn’t seen in a very long time.

  He’d become so suspicious about the world, so convinced that the grim slice of life he saw every day as a police detective was the only world there was. Now, though, his eyes were lit by something of the old fire she’d once loved to see. He looked intent, challenged, ready to meet what was around him instead of permanently on his guard against it.

  She couldn’t imagine what was behind the sudden change. Once, he even cut the engine without warning, whipping his gaze around to a little stream that meandered its way into the river.

  When he did it a second time, Jayne finally spoke. “What’s the matter, Ryder?” she said. “What’s out there?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing. I just thought—” He gazed into the darkness among the tree trunks, then waved one hand, dismissing his own words.

  Jayne wasn’t about to let the subject drop. “Thought what?” she prompted.

  He’d opened the throttle again, though not to its former speed. But his reply was low enough that Jayne could barely catch it over the noise of the engine.

  “I thought I recognized this place.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” she said. “You grew up somewhere around here.”

  That was enough to do it. Abruptly, he cut the engine again, and the boat sank lower in the water so suddenly that Jayne had to shift on the seat to keep her balance.

  “I did?” The light in his eyes was stronger now. “Where, exactly?”

  “I don’t know where exactly. You never said.”

  He snorted, and glanced around them again. They’d passed a couple of little towns and some vacation homes a few miles back, but the stretch of water where they were now was bordered by overhanging trees, dark green and lush.

  To Jayne, it all looked the same. Was it possible to tell one little swampy corner from the next?

  “Was I always such a secretive type?”

  His question surprised her. And so did the openness in his face as he asked it.

  She wasn’t sure she wanted to be quite that open—not after this morning’s jolt of passion and disappointment. Ever since, she’d had the sense of teetering on the edge of a chasm she’d just climbed her way out of.

  “About—some things,” she replied. “You could be very stubborn when it came to talking about yourself.”

  Or rather, not talking about himself. He’d held back the news about not wanting a family until they’d already been married for years. When they’d been newlyweds, he’d seemed to share her dreams about extending their love to their own children, creating a family stronger and more loving than the ones they’d grown up in.

  But something had happened to change his early agreement into a stone wall, as blank and unresponsive as his face had been when he’d pulled back from her this morning. When I’ve wrapped up what I’m in the middle of now, we can talk about it, he’d .said a dozen times. And then a hundred. She’d finally realized he was never going to talk about it. Having a family was something Nick Ryder just didn’t want to do.

  It was strange now to be trying to recall what little he’d told her about his own family over the years. “You must have seen something around here that reminded you of home,” she said. “You always told me you grew up with your grandfather in a big—”

  “In a big house with no other houses around it for miles.” He finished her phrase triumphantly, his eyes flashing as he said the words.

  Despite her own caution, Jayne couldn’t help feeling some of his excitement. If his memory was starting to come back—if they might be starting to find their way out of the dark shadows that still surrounded them—

  She made herself take a slow breath. The return of Ryder’s memory only solved some of their problems, she reminded herself. This glimpse of the old Ryder, like the heartbreaking tenderness he’d shown her once or twice since she’d found him in the hospital, was only temporary. When his memory came back, a lot of unhappiness could very well come with it. She was as sure of that as if she’d seen it in a crystal ball.

  And besides, there was no guarantee that the family property Ryder was picturing was anywhere near the landscape they were meandering through.

  “It could just be that this spot reminds you strongly of where you grew up,” she told him. “It doesn’t necessarily mean—”

  “I know.” He opened the throttle a little more, waiting for the motor to go through one of its chugging fits before heading downstream again. “I’ve still got a bump on my head the size of a golf ball. I could be mixed up about all of this.”

  But she could tell he didn’t believe it. He was still watching the shoreline like a hawk, glancing from right to left with a sharp-eyed scrutiny that transformed his whole face.

  He was the hunter now. And he obviously felt he was hunting on some very familiar terrain.

  “Who owns my family’s property now?” he asked after a few miles.

  “You do.” Their divorce lawyers had requested a list of assets, and Ryder’s family property had been on it. She remembered seeing it and thinking, not for the first time, that Ryder’s silence on the subject of his family had put just one more layer of reserve between them.

  She watched his long, strong fingers spin the steering wheel, easing the boat around a half-submerged log jutting into the river. She wasn’t crazy about the swampiness of the place—she’d always preferred dry land to water, if she had a choice. But Ryder seemed to feel right at home. She could see it in his eyes, and in the way his expression was becoming more and more intent.

  When the river took a sudden turn ahead of them, veering to the right, he actually laughed out loud. “I knew it,” he said. “I do know this place.”

  “Ryder—”

  He didn’t let her voice her doubts this time. “There’s a little creek that comes in from the right, just after we hit this turn,” he said. “It looks like nothing more than a trickle—at least, it used to—but if you push up it a little way, it widens out again.”

  “You’re not seriously suggesting that we—”

  “And if you keep on it for a mile or so, it meets up with a path. Or what used to be a path.”

  “You keep saying ‘it used to be.’ You left home when you were sixteen, Ryder. That’s twenty years ago. It’ll all be overgrown, even if—”

  He wasn’t listening. He steered the boat around the curve and raised one arm in triumph when the little creek appeared exactly where he’d said it would be.

  It wasn’t overgrown—at least, not completely.

  But it did look narrow and weedy and far too wild for Jayne’s taste. “Let’s just stick with the river, okay?” she said. “At least we know where it goes.”

  “I know where this goes, too.” He was already turning the wheel, heading for the mouth of the stream. “I know exactly where it goes.”

  “To your family property, right?”

  He nodded. Under the shade of the trees along the bank, the gold highlights had disappeared from his hair. But she could still see the same light in his eyes. His whole face was alive with it, with the possibility of some adventure Jayne wasn’t sure she wanted to be in the middle of.

  “Ryder, this is nuts. It’s the first place they’ll look.”

  “They won’t check the part I’m heading for.”

  He was actually doing it. As he’d said, the stream seemed impossibly narrow where it met the river. Jayne had to push overhanging branches out of her face as he nosed the boat forward. She saw him put an arm out and shove against the trunk of a big tree to get them past an especially shallow part.

  Quickly, before the propeller could snarl, Ryder reached back and tilted the motor partway out of the water. She heard the engine whine and sputter as he did it, as though it shared Jayne’s misgivings about heading into this shad
owy little bayou.

  But almost immediately, the water got deeper again. No one seeing the stream from the river would ever suspect it was navigable, but just as Ryder had predicted, they were actually making headway along it.

  He’d lowered the motor again and clamped it at an angle. He seemed to know exactly how much clearance he had. And now his face was alight with something very close to pleasure.

  As though he was elated about being here.

  As though he really was coming home.

  As far as Jayne could see, all they were coming to was more swamp and trees. And she was still far from pleased about any of it.

  Especially after she saw the alligator.

  At first she thought it was just another fallen log along the side of the stream. It was hard to focus on things because of the way the late-afternoon light was filtering through the trees. The pattern on this particular log was nothing more than a trick of the light, she told herself as they approached it.

  But then it moved.

  “Ryder—”

  Jayne half stood in the bow of the boat Instinct was telling her to run like hell. But there was nowhere to go. And her sudden movement made the boat rock under her feet, unsettling her even more.

  “Sit down. You’ll spook him.” Ryder’s voice was easy and authoritative. He’d already seen the big reptile, Jayne realized. And he didn’t sound even a little worried about it.

  “I’ll spook him?” Her voice shook over the words. “Ryder, it’s an alligator. Shouldn’t we—”

  “The stream’s too narrow for the boat and a gator at the same time. If we scare him into the water, he’ll be in danger from the propeller.” He’d closed the throttle to almost nothing. They were nearly silent as they glided by the alligator. Jayne could see its eyes peering out of the muck at the edge of the water.

  “Well, why don’t we turn around and—”

  “Turn around how?”

  He had a point. But he didn’t seem to be serious as he made it. He had no intention of going back, she realized. He wasn’t scared of the damn alligator.