A Stone Creek Collection, Volume 2

by Linda Lael Miller

  A strange boldness surged through Ashley, fear borne high on a flood of pure, indignant rage. “I am Ashley O’Ballivan,” she said evenly, “and this is my house.”

  “Oh,” the man said.

  Just then, the inside door swung open and Jack was there, brandishing a gun of his own.

  What was this? Ashley wondered wildly. Tombstone?

  “Lay it down, Vince,” Jack said, his voice stone-cold.

  Vince complied, though not with any particular grace. The gun made an ominous thump on the tabletop. “Chill, man,” he said. “You told me to stand watch and that’s all I was doing.”

  Ashley’s gaze swung back to Jack. She was furious and relieved, and a host of other things, too, all at once.

  “I do not allow firearms in my house,” she said.

  Vince chuckled.

  Jack told him to get lost, shoving his own pistol into the front of his pants. The move was too expert, too deft, and the gun itself looked military.

  Vince ambled out of the room, shaking his head once as he passed Jack.

  “What are you doing here?” Jack asked, as though she were the intruder.

  “Do I have to say it?” Ashley countered, flinging her purse aside, fighting her way out of Big John’s coat, which suddenly felt like a straightjacket. “I live here, Jack.”

  “I thought we agreed that you wouldn’t come back until I gave you a heads-up,” Jack said, keeping his distance.

  Considering Ashley’s mood, that was a wise decision on his part, even if he was armed and almost certainly dangerous.

  “I changed my mind,” she replied, tight-lipped, her arms folded stubbornly across her chest. “And who is that—that person, anyway?”

  “Vince works for me,” Jack said.

  Another car crunched into the driveway. A door slammed.

  Jack swore, untucking his shirt so the fabric covered the gun in the waistband of his jeans.

  Tanner slammed through the back door.

  “Well,” Jack observed mildly, “the gang’s all here.”

  “Not yet,” Tanner snapped. “Brad’s on his way. What the hell is going on, Ashley? You set off the alarm, the dog is probably still barking her brains out, and the babies are permanently traumatized—not to mention Sophie and Olivia!”

  “I’m sorry,” Ashley said.

  A cell phone rang, somewhere on Tanner’s person.

  He pulled the device from his coat pocket, after fumbling a lot, squinted at the caller ID and took the call. “She’s at her place,” he said, probably to Olivia. A crimson flush climbed his neck, pulsed in his jaw. And his anger was nothing compared to what Brad’s would be. “No, don’t worry—I think things are under control…”

  Ashley closed her eyes.

  Brakes squealed outside.

  Tanner’s voice seemed to recede, and then the call ended.

  Brad nearly tore down the door in his hurry to get inside.

  Jack looked around, his expression drawn but pleasant.

  “Cherry crepes, anyone?” he asked mildly.

  CHAPTER 8

  “I know a place the woman and the little girl will be safe,” Brad said wearily, once the excitement had died down and Ashley, her brother, Jack and Tanner were calmly seated around her kitchen table, eating the middle-of-the-night breakfast she’d prepared to keep from going out of her mind with anxiety.

  Vince, the man with the gun, was conspicuously absent, while Ardith and Rachel slept on upstairs. Remarkably, the uproar hadn’t awakened them, probably because they were so worn-out.

  Jack shifted in his chair, pushed back his plate. For a man who believed so strongly in bacon and eggs, he hadn’t eaten much. “Where?” he asked.

  “Nashville,” Brad replied. Then he threw out the name of one of the biggest stars in country music. “She’s a friend,” he added, as casually as if just anybody could wake up a famous woman in the middle of the night and ask her to shelter a pair of strangers for an indefinite length of time. “And she’s got more high-tech security than the president. Bodyguards, the whole works.”

  “She’d do that?” Jack asked, grimly impressed.

  Brad raised one shoulder in a semblance of a shrug. “I’d do it for her, and she knows that,” he said easily. “We go way back.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Tanner put in, relaxing a little. Everyone, naturally, was showing the strain.

  “Me, too,” Jack admitted, and though he didn’t sigh, Ashley sensed the depths of his relief. “How do we get them there?”

  “Very carefully,” Brad said. “I’ll take care of it.”

  Jack seemed to weigh his response for a long time before giving it. “There’s a woman’s life at stake here,” he said. “And a little girl’s future.”

  “I get that,” Brad answered. His gaze slid to Ashley, then moved back to Jack’s face, hardening again. “Of course, I want something in return.”

  Ashley held her breath.

  Jack maintained eye contact with Brad. “What?”

  “You, gone,” Brad said. “For good.”

  “Now, wait just one minute—” Ashley sputtered.

  “He’s right,” Jack said. “Lombard wants me, Ashley, not you. And I intend to keep it that way.”

  “So when do we make the move?” Tanner asked.

  “Now,” Brad responded evenly, a muscle bunching in his jawline. He could surely feel Ashley’s glare boring into him. “I can have a jet at the airstrip within an hour or two, and I think we need to get them out of here before sunrise.”

  “Can’t you let Rachel and her mother rest, just for this one night?” Ashley demanded. “They must be absolutely exhausted by all this—”

  “It has to be tonight,” Brad insisted.

  Jack nodded, sighed as he got to his feet. “Make the calls,” he told Brad. “I’ll get them out of bed.”

  Things were moving too fast. Ashley gripped the table edge, swaying with a sudden sensation of teetering on the brink of some bottomless abyss. “Wait,” she said.

  She might as well have been invisible, inaudible. A ghost haunting her own house, for all the attention anyone paid her.

  Brad was already reaching for his cell phone. “When I get back from Nashville,” he said, watching Jack, “I expect you to be history.”

  Jack nodded, avoiding Ashley’s desperate gaze. “It’s a deal,” he said, and left the room.

  Ashley immediately sprang out of her chair, without the faintest idea of what she would do next.

  Tanner took a gentle hold on her wrist and eased her back down onto the cushioned seat.

  Brad placed a call to his friend. Apologized for waking her up. Exchanged a few pleasantries—yes, Meg was fine and Mac was growing like a weed, and sure there would be other kids. Give him time.

  Ashley listened in helpless sorrow as he went on to explain the Ardith-Rachel situation and ask for help.

  The singer agreed immediately.

  Brad called for a private jet. He might as well have been ordering a pizza, he was so casual about it. Only with a pizza, he would at least have had to give a credit card number.

  When Brad said, “jump,” the response was invariably, “How high?”

  Because she’d always known him as her big brother, the broad scope of his power always came as a surprise to her.

  Things accelerated after the phone calls.

  Resigned, Ashley got to work preparing food for the trip, so Ardith and Rachel wouldn’t starve, though the jet probably offered catered meals.

  Her guests stumbled sleepily into the kitchen just as she was finishing, herded there by Jack, their clothes rumpled and hastily donned, their eyes glazed with confusion, weariness and fear.

  The little girl favored Ashley
with a wan, blinking smile. “Have you been taking care of Jack?” she asked.

  Ashley’s heart turned over. “I’ve been trying,” she said truthfully, studiously ignoring Brad, Tanner and Jack himself.

  Vince had wandered in behind them. “Want me to go along for the ride?” he asked, meeting no one’s eyes.

  “No,” Jack said tersely. “You’re done here.”

  “For good?” Vince asked.

  “For now,” Jack replied.

  Vince turned to Brad. “Catch a ride to the airstrip with you?”

  Jack gave the man a quick glance, his eyes ever so slightly narrowed. “I’ll take you there myself,” he said, adding a brisk, “Later.”

  “You stopped trusting me, boss?” Vince asked, with an odd grin.

  “Maybe,” Jack said.

  Some of the color drained from Vince’s face. “Am I fired?”

  “Don’t push it,” Jack answered.

  In the end, it was decided that Tanner would drive Vince back to his helicopter once Brad, Ardith and Rachel were aboard the jet, ready for takeoff. Later, Tanner would see that Jack boarded a commercial airliner in Flagstaff, bound for Somewhere Else.

  Holding back tears, Ashley handed her brother the food she’d packed, tucked into a basket with a cheery red-and-white-checkered napkin for a cover.

  Something softened in Brad’s eyes as he accepted the offering, but he didn’t say anything.

  And neither did Ashley.

  A gulf had opened between Ashley and the big brother she had always loved and admired, far wider than the one created by their mother’s death. Even knowing he was doing what he thought was right—what probably was right—Ashley felt steamrolled, and she resented it.

  Soon, Brad was gone, along with Ardith and Rachel.

  Approximately an hour later, Tanner and the chastened Vince left, too.

  Jack and Ashley sat on opposite sides of the kitchen table, unable to look at each other.

  After a long, long time, Jack said, “My mother died three years ago. And I didn’t have a clue.”

  Startled, Ashley sat up straighter in her chair. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Breast cancer,” Jack explained gruffly, his eyes moist.

  “Oh, Jack. That’s terrible.”

  He nodded. Sighed heavily.

  “I guess this is our last night together,” Ashley said, at some length.

  “I guess so,” Jack agreed miserably.

  Purpose flowed through Ashley. “Then let’s make it count,” she said. She locked the back door. She flipped off the lights. And then she took Jack’s hand, there in the darkness, and led him upstairs to her bed.

  Every moment, every gesture, was precious, and very nearly sacred.

  Jack undressed Ashley the way an archeologist might uncover a fragile treasure, with a cherishing tenderness that stirred not only her body, but her soul. Head back, she surrendered her naked breasts to him, reveled in the sensations wrought by his lips and tongue.

  A low, crooning sound escaped her, and she found just enough control to open his shirt, her fingers fumbling with the buttons. She needed to feel his flesh, bare and hard, yet warm against her palms and splayed fingers.

  They kissed, long and deep, with a sweet urgency all the better for the smallest delay.

  In time, Jack eased her onto the bed, sideways, and spread her legs to nuzzle and then suckle her until she was gasping with need and exaltation.

  She whispered his name, a ragged sound, and tears burned in her eyes. How would she live without him, without this? How colorless her days would be, when he was gone, and how empty her nights. He’d taught her body to crave these singular pleasures, to need them as much as she needed air and water and the light of the sun.

  But, no, she thought sorrowfully. She mustn’t spoil what was probably their last night together by leaving the moment, journeying into a lonely and uncertain future. It was now that mattered, and only now. Jack’s hands on her inner thighs, Jack’s mouth on the very center of her femininity.

  Dear God, it felt so good, the way he was loving her, almost too good to be borne.

  The first climax came softly, seizing her, making her buckle and moan in release.

  “Don’t stop,” she pleaded, entangling her fingers in his hair.

  She hoped he would never cut his hair short again.

  He chuckled against her moist, straining flesh, nipped at her ever so lightly with his teeth and brought her to another orgasm, this one sharp and brief, a sudden and wild flexing deep within her. “Oh, I’m a long way from finished,” he assured her gruffly, before falling to her again.

  Ashley could never have said afterward how many times she rose and fell on the hot tide of primitive satisfaction, flailing and writhing and crying out with each new abandoning of her ordinary self.

  When he finally took her, she gloried in the heat and length and hardness of him, in the pulsing and the renewed wanting. Her body became greedier than before, demanding, reaching, shuddering. And Jack drove deep, eventually losing control, but only after a long, delicious period of restraint.

  They made love time and again that night, holding each other in silence while they recovered between bouts of fevered passion.

  “I’ll come back if I can,” Jack told her, at one point, barely able to breathe, he was so spent. “Give me a year before you fall in love with somebody else, okay?”

  A year. It seemed like an eternity to Ashley, she was so aware of every passing moment, every tick of the celestial clock. At the same time, though, she knew it was safe to promise. She’d wait a lifetime, a dozen lifetimes, because for her, there was no man but Jack.

  She nodded, dampening his bare shoulder with her tears, and finally slept.

  * * *

  Jack eased himself out of Ashley’s arms, and her bed, around eight o’clock the next morning. It was one of those heartrendingly beautiful winter days, with sunlight glaring on pristine snow. Everything seemed to be draped in purity.

  He dressed in his own room, gathered the few belongings he’d brought with him, and tucked them into his bag.

  Given his druthers, he would have sat quietly in a chair, watching Ashley sleep, memorizing every line and curve of her, so he could hold her image in his mind and his heart until he died.

  But Jack was the sort of man who rarely got his druthers.

  He had things to do.

  First, he’d meet with Chad Lombard.

  If he survived that—and it was a crapshoot, whether he or Lombard or neither of them would walk away—he’d check himself into a hospital.

  Feeling more alone than he ever had—and given some of the things he’d been through that was saying a lot—Jack gravitated to the computer in Ashley’s study. He called up his dad’s website, clicked to the Contact Us link, wrote an email he never intended to send.

  Hello, Dad. I’m alive, but not for long, probably…

  He went on to explain why he’d never come home from military school, why he’d let everyone in his family believe he was dead. He apologized for any pain they must have suffered because of his actions, and resisted the temptation to lay any of the blame on the Navy.

  The mission had been a tough one, with a high price, but no one had held a gun to his head. He’d made the decision himself and, in most ways, he had never regretted it.

  He went on to say that he hoped his mother hadn’t had to endure too much pain, and asked for forgiveness. In sketchy terms, he described the toxin that was probably killing him.

  In closing, he wrote, You should know that I met a woman. If things were different, I’d love to settle down with her right here in this little Western town, raise a flock of kids with her. But some things aren’t meant to be, and it’s beginning to look as if this is one of them.


  No matter how it may seem, I love you, Dad.

  I’m sorry.

  Jack.

  He was about to hit the Delete button—writing the piece had been a catharsis—when two things happened at once. His cell phone rang, and somebody knocked hard at the front door.

  Simultaneously, Jack answered the call and admitted Tanner Quinn to the house he’d soon be leaving, probably forever.

  No more cherry crepes.

  No more mutant cat.

  No more Ashley.

  “Mercer?” Lombard asked affably, “is that you?”

  Jack shifted to the Neal Mercer persona, because Lombard knew him by that name, gestured for Tanner to come inside, but be quiet about it.

  Ashley was still sleeping, and Jack didn’t want to wake her. Leaving was going to be hard enough, without a face-to-face goodbye.

  On the other hand, didn’t he owe her that much?

  “What?” he asked Lombard.

  “I’ve decided on a place for the showdown,” Lombard said. “Tombstone, Arizona. Fitting, don’t you think?”

  “You’re a regular John Wayne,” Jack told him.

  Tanner raised his eyebrows in silent question. Jack shook his head, pointed to his gear bag, waiting just inside the door.

  Tanner picked up the bag, carried it out to his truck. The exhaust spewed white steam into the cold, bright air.

  Leavin’ on a jet plane… Jack thought.

  “Tomorrow,” Lombard went on. “High noon.”

  “High drama, you mean,” Jack scoffed.

  “Be there,” Lombard ordered, dead serious now, and hung up.

  Jack sighed and clicked the phone shut.

  Glanced up at the ceiling.

  Tanner returned from the luggage run, waiting with his big rancher’s hands stuffed into the pockets of his sheepskin coat.

  “Give me a minute,” Jack said.

  Tanner nodded, his eyes full of sympathy.

  Jack turned from that. Sympathy wasn’t going to help him now.

  He had to be strong. Stronger than he’d ever been.