by Dana Marton
Why did that tone make her heart beat faster?
“I’m sleeping in Mom’s room. He’s sleeping in mine.” She decided to do that because she felt that putting a stranger her mother never met into her mother’s bed would be weird.
On second thought, she added, “How do you know we haven’t slept together already?”
“I can tell.”
Would it be too rude to hit him with a throw pillow? “You’re annoying.”
“You used to idolize me.”
“I guess I grew smarter.”
“And even more beautiful.”
“Don’t do that.”
“No compliments?”
She shook her head. “Like I said, I don’t want to be here. And I don’t want to like you again. I don’t even want to be friends.”
“Because of the past?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry.”
He was apologizing? Now? And if he was . . . that was it?
Moisture sprang into Jess’s eyes, completely out of character, catching her off guard. She was horrified at the thought that she might cry in front of Derek. No way. Not going to happen.
She sucked the tears back through sheer willpower.
“You don’t owe me an apology. There was nothing you could have done.” She shot to her feet. “I’m going to bed.”
He captured her wrist and looked up at her. “Stay. We’ll talk about something else.”
She yanked her hand away. “I can’t.”
And there, she’d just admitted to Derek that the past still haunted her. Did that make her pitiful and weak? Dammit. Damn the whole trip that made her this way. This was not who she was.
She wasn’t Taylorville Jess.
She was Hollywood Jess, kick-ass stuntwoman at the top of her game. She didn’t cry, and she didn’t shy away from difficulties. The past had no power over her. She’d come here in strength, in full armor against the pain and fears of her past, and she was going to leave in strength. The visit—whether three days or three weeks—simply wasn’t allowed to touch her. She wouldn’t let it.
“Good night.” She headed up the stairs, maybe a little fast, but at least not at a run.
“Don’t let the sugar fairies bite,” Derek called after her.
Her heart rate didn’t return to normal until after she had the room’s door closed behind her. She didn’t stay up to wish Eliot good night. She couldn’t handle either of the men right now. She wanted to sleep, and wanted to be back to her strong self when she woke in the morning.
She went to sleep in her mother’s bed, a strange finish to a strange day.
Except sleep wouldn’t come. Jess tossed and turned. She thought about Eliot in her old room, in her old bed; then she thought about Derek downstairs on the lumpy sofa. She hoped he got a crick in his neck.
She squeezed her eyes shut. Sleep.
I missed you, Derek had said.
Sleep, dammit!
She didn’t want to oversleep in the morning. She didn’t want the two men alone. Derek had made no secret out of the fact that he didn’t want Eliot anywhere near Jess.
He wouldn’t pick a fight, would he? Men!
Jess flopped onto her back and stared at the ceiling. She’d thought about Great-Aunt Matilda, her father’s mother’s sister, who’d become a nun. Great-Aunt Matilda had been one smart cookie.
Hannah Wilson cried for her mother in the dark. She wondered if her parents were ever going to find out what happened to her. She’d tried to scrape her name into the rock below her with her chain, but in the dark she couldn’t tell if she’d succeeded.
She didn’t know if it was morning, noon, or night. She didn’t know how long she’d been kept captive. It felt like forever.
Her stomach gnawed with hunger. She was shivering almost nonstop. She knew she wasn’t going to last much longer. She didn’t mind. She wanted oblivion. Death would stop the pain.
But instead of death, the man came. She heard his footsteps first; then the light of the flashlight hit her face. She squinted her tear-swollen eyes. She couldn’t see him. And even if she did, it wouldn’t matter. He always wore the mask.
He came closer.
She scrambled back, her chains clanging.
He laughed. “See, there’s life left in you yet, girl. That’s the spirit.”
A keening sound escaped her throat, a sound an injured animal might make. He drew a deep breath, as if he wanted to breathe in that sound and swallow it.
“Guess what day it is?” he asked in a darkly soft tone and kept coming. “Today is a special day.”
Chapter Eleven
Monday
IN THE MORNING, Derek was already sitting in the kitchen with Eliot by the time Jess came downstairs bleary-eyed. Zelda was cooking up a storm at the stove. Eliot eyed the teetering pile of pancakes between him and Derek, looking a little intimidated.
“Is anyone else coming?”
Jess blinked the sleep from her eyes and grinned as she reached the table. “Zelda doesn’t do anything by half measures.”
She looked great in a simple white shirt and blue jeans. Derek felt tired and grumpy. The couch hadn’t been good to him.
She sat, glancing at the day’s issue of the Taylorville Times in front of Derek. He immediately moved to swipe the newspaper away, but she had excellent stuntwoman reflexes. She grabbed on to the corner of the paper before he could have taken it.
“I’d like to catch up on the news.”
He considered her request for a couple of seconds before relinquishing the paper. She would find a way to read it anyway. She shot him a questioning look, but he said nothing. Then Jess’s gaze fell on the lead article. She recoiled as if the headline was a full body slam.
Derek had had a similar reaction earlier.
DNA Results of Body in the River. Not Hannah Wilson. Taylorville Student Still Missing.
Her gaze flew to Derek’s. He could see a hundred questions in her eyes. At the end, all she asked was, “Does Kaylee know her from school?”
“Only by sight. They don’t run in the same circles.”
As Jess went back to the article, Derek made a mental note to catch up with Mark Maxwell at one point today and put the fear of God into the asshole. He needed to make it clear to the jerk that Jess wasn’t to be harassed. All contact between Maxwell and her was going to end, beginning immediately, even if Derek had to buy the Taylorville Times to accomplish it. His last thriller had sold ten million copies worldwide. He had some money set aside.
He watched Jess read, the blood running out of her face. The paler she grew, the more his protective instincts rose. He wanted nothing more than to keep her safe from harm and hurt. She leaned a little back from the paper, as if she wanted to remain at arm’s length from the disturbing news.
“Doesn’t mean anything,” he said under his breath so only she would hear him.
Eliot was raving to Zelda about the pancakes, half turned in his seat.
Jess didn’t respond. Maybe she didn’t hear Derek either, too absorbed in the brief article.
Should have stashed the damn thing before she came downstairs.
He’d been too busy resenting Eliot, who made that resentment difficult by turning out to be a nice guy. Polite to Zelda, appreciative of Derek’s books, and not a weakling as a man either. Yet Derek wanted to choke the shit out of him. Because every time Eliot looked at Jess, the man’s eyes lit up.
Eliot had come to Vermont after Jess.
That said something.
And the man had spent the night in Jess’s bed. A troubling thought, even if Jess hadn’t been there. She hadn’t sneaked over. Derek would have heard her. He hadn’t slept worth a lick.
Good thing he had no plans for writing today. The mood he was in, he might kill off a couple of characters who hadn’t been plotted to die.
From the moment Jess had come home, getting her out of town again was Derek’s main goal. But now . . . When she left, she’d leave with El
iot. That thought bothered Derek way more than it should have.
In fact, he found the thought completely unacceptable.
So where did that leave him?
Damn if he knew.
Damn if he knew anything since Jess had come back.
He watched as she finished reading the article—the way her shoulders tightened and her fingers gripped and crushed the edges—and he wanted to pull her over onto his lap.
“What is it?” Eliot asked about half a second after he turned back to the table, because he was the kind of guy who paid attention to her.
Dammit.
Jess put the paper down, flexing her fingers as if she had to make herself release the news. “A local girl is missing.”
“Hannah Wilson,” Zelda said from the stove. “Sweet girl. Used to come around selling magazines and Christmas wrapping paper for school fund-raisers. Very polite.”
Eliot glanced at Jess. “I thought you said she drowned.”
Her expression darkened. “Wrong body. The DNA came back.”
She took a long gulp of coffee, looking at nothing but her cup. She was shaken but tried not to show it.
“So what are you doing today?” Derek asked Eliot.
The frown on the man’s face cleared. “I’m going to climb some cliffs. You?”
“Plotting.”
Eliot brightened. “What will this one be about?”
“I never talk about the plot until the book is finished.”
Writers had an innate need for storytelling, an urge to tell tales. If Derek talked the plot out, the story was out. The tale was told. The excitement leaked from the process, making writing difficult if not impossible, at least for him. Different authors had different techniques, but Derek didn’t brainstorm with others and didn’t talk about his book-in-progress with anyone. His agent and editor got brief outlines. They knew to leave him to his method.
“I completely understand.” Eliot didn’t push, didn’t look offended, seemed happy just to be talking to Derek. “No matter what you write, I’m looking forward to reading the story.”
The freaking guy was impossible to hate. No wonder Jess liked him. Even Derek was beginning to like him, dammit.
After Jess and Eliot left, Derek set up his laptop on the coffee table in the living room and sat on the carpet, his back braced against the couch, his legs stretched in front of him. He was plotting the ending of his next book. The FBI agent saved the day—and his ex-wife who’d been taken hostage by bank robbers. He was still in love with her. He still didn’t fully understand why she’d left him in the first place. And now . . .
Derek’s original plan had been to have her fall back in love with him once she sees him in the hero role, sees firsthand what he does. In the past, all she’d known was that he was never home for dinner, that he often had to go back to work in the middle of vacation, that she always felt like she came second to the job. Now, with the bad guys bleeding on the ground, a dozen victims saved, she falls into his arms.
Except . . . What if she didn’t?
What made a woman fall back in love with a man?
Derek felt a lot less sure about that now than he had a few weeks ago when the plot had first occurred to him.
He typed and deleted, then typed again, his attention straying to the door. When were Jess and Eliot coming back?
Zelda puttered around in the kitchen, making batches of pizza dough to freeze for later. Chuck and his granddaughter, Kaylee, usually came over once every week or so for a pizza dinner. Derek too had been invited a couple of times. He never said no. Anything Zelda made, he ate.
“She grew up beautiful, didn’t she?” the woman asked when she caught Derek looking at the door once again.
God, he had it bad. He glanced at his watch. They’d only been gone an hour.
He nodded to Zelda. “She sure did.”
“She grew up strong. Both of you did.”
He agreed with that too, yet he didn’t feel strong enough. He wasn’t nearly as strong as he’d been in the service. He’d lost some muscle during his six months of captivity, to inaction and to being sick. And then there was his damaged leg.
A while back, when lying in the hospital with a butchered leg and having nothing but time, he’d realized that by going into the navy, by becoming a SEAL, he’d subconsciously wanted to make himself into an invincible supersoldier so what happened in the camper in the woods could never happen again.
He never wanted to be in a position where someone he cared about was being hurt and he was too weak to defend them. And he had been that supersoldier, the toughest of the tough, for years and years. But he wasn’t one now. He was a gimp novelist, dammit. And Jess was back.
He tipped his head back and rested his gaze on the ceiling for a couple of seconds. He couldn’t focus on the book worth shit. He closed his laptop and got up. “Jess told me you might move down to the dining room.”
“I talked to Rose on the phone yesterday,” Zelda said from the kitchen. “She said it’d be OK.”
“You want me to take you in to see her?”
“Not today. I keep having dizzy spells.” She gave an annoyed shrug. “Blood pressure. I’ll call her tonight.” She paused for a moment before saying, “Jess has been in to see her every day.”
“I took my mom in too. They had a good talk. Principal Crane was there. He says he’s ready to break ground for that cottage of his as soon as the ground thaws. A few more weeks, he figures.”
Zelda made some sounds of agreement as she cleaned the last of the flour off the table.
“Is something going on with the two of them?” Derek went to help. “I swear I caught a vibe.”
Zelda raised a thin eyebrow.
Right. He had to get out more. He was getting too deep into the small-town stuff. Another year and he’d turn into a gossip.
“He does come around a lot.” Zelda wiped her hands on her apron, her eyes twinkling. “Used to, before Rose went into the hospital, I mean. Not now.”
“More than the sale of a plot of land would warrant?”
Zelda nodded, her smile alight with mischief.
“Good for them,” Derek said.
His parents too were acting the lovebirds ever since his father had given up the booze. Chuck and Zelda had always been a couple, no matter what Zelda said. Now Rose and Principal Crane were hooking up. And Jess was out with Eliot . . .
Derek cut off that thought. So what if it was Cupid Island around here suddenly? He was not lonely. He closed his eyes for a second and shook off the lie. He wasn’t lonely in the general sense, but he was lonely for Jess.
There, he could admit that and still resist doing something about it. Because doing something about his wayward impulses wouldn’t be right. For either of them. He just had to remember that.
“How about I take the dining room furniture out into the garage?”
“Wait till Eliot and Jess get back to help.”
“Don’t need no help from no city boy,” he said in his best lumberjack accent and made Zelda laugh.
He cleared out the dining room in no time. The dolly did most of the work. Burning off some energy made him feel better. Maybe he just needed more exercise.
He stashed the last load in the garage, and then he popped his head back into the kitchen. “I’ll go take my walk.”
After that, he was going to track down Mark Maxwell and warn him away from Jess. Nobody was going to mess with her on Derek’s watch.
“Would you like to take a thermos of coffee?”
“I’m good. Thanks.”
He found Jess and Eliot at the cliffs. Not that he was looking for them. Fine. He was. He’d been curious about what they were doing. They were on top of Tall Stack, checking their equipment.
“You were right,” Eliot was telling Jess as Derek walked out of the woods. “This side is a whole other level of difficulty.”
They looked like a matching pair, in high-tech climbing suits and nearly identical harnesses,
while Derek suspected he looked like a country yokel in his Timberland boots, jeans, and quilted flannel jacket.
After he moved back home, he began to dress to fit in. Some guys, fresh out of the military, kept wearing their army fatigues, but Derek didn’t want to wear BDUs—battle dress uniforms—ever again. He wanted no reminders of the last six months of bloody torture and his friends dying around him. He needed a clear indication that that nightmare was over, and that he was starting new, starting fresh.
“How’s it going?”
The two turned toward him with nearly identical startled expressions. They hadn’t seen him, hadn’t heard him coming. Civilians.
“We started on the north side, then moved over here. It’s a better climb.” Jess’s mouth curved into a grin. She was clearly in her element.
The north side of the cliffs, Short Stack, faced the river, the pretty side that people liked to photograph. This spot, the east side of the half circle of rocks, stood surrounded by white pine, some a hundred feet tall.
“We’re about to go back down,” Eliot said, eyes shining with excitement. He turned to Jess. “I can definitely see a high fall with airbags.”
They were like two kids at the candy store.
“They design the airbags now so you don’t fall off the edge,” Jess explained to Derek over her shoulder.
Eliot peered down the sheer cliff face. “If you walk around, you can meet us down there. Tricky, isn’t it? You done anything like this in the service?”
“Once or twice.”
That had the man’s full attention. “How would you do it?”
“Depends on the objective. Am I carrying a load? Do I need to stay invisible? Am I creeping up on an enemy camp?”
Eliot thought for a second. “If you needed to go fast. To save a friend. If somebody’s life depended on it.”
Instead of explaining, Derek got a running start and leaped over the edge.
The last thing he heard was a faint scream from Jess. Then he hit the tip of the tallest pine he was aiming at, his head turned to the side so the thin branches on top wouldn’t poke out his eyes. The treetop bent under his weight, enough so that when he let go, he could vault over to a shorter tree.
