Rain Dance

by Rebecca Daniels

  “Christian,” she said, whispering the name again as the picture of a bright-eyed, curly-haired boy formed in her mind. “He plays soccer and hockey and is a nut for video games.” She lifted her gaze to Joe, feeling a sense of wonder she hadn’t known existed. “And Robyn has long, thick red hair and gets straight As and loves to ride her bike.”

  Joe ran across the room to her, clutching her to him. “You remember.”

  It wasn’t until she felt the tears on her cheeks that she realized she was crying. “I remember.” She grabbed at him. “Oh, God, Joe, I remember them.”

  “What else, Rain?” he asked after a moment. “What else do you remember?”

  Looking up, she saw the tears in his eyes, too. “They’re not his children.”

  “What?”

  “Christian and Robyn,” she said, feeling herself growing cold all over. “They’re not Logan’s natural children. They’re his stepchildren.”

  “Stepchildren?”

  “Stepchildren! What’s this about stepchildren?”

  Joe heard Marcy’s startled question in the background.

  “Joe says Rain remembered that Logan Carvy is her children’s stepfather,” Cruz said in a muffled voice, relating the news to his wife.

  Joe rubbed at his scratchy eyes as he listened. It was nearly three in the morning Philadelphia time, making it around midnight in Mesa Ridge, but the message from Cruz and Marcy he’d had waiting when he’d finally gotten back to his room had asked that he call whatever the hour.

  After her startling recollection, Rain had been too keyed up to sleep, too emotional to settle down. He had sat with her for several hours comforting her as best he could. She had been so overwhelmed by all of this, so dismayed it had broken his heart. Too much was happening too fast and she was near the breaking point. What he’d wanted was to take her into his arms, to hold her and kiss her until all of this disappeared, but of course that had been out of the question. Instead, he had sat with her, holding her and doing what he could to help her adjust and accept.

  “Ask him how Rain is? Is she okay?” He could hear Marcy’s voice in the background.

  “Marcy wants to know—”

  “I heard,” Joe said, stopping Cruz with a stifled yawn. “And tell Marcy she’s okay. Tired, of course, but I think she’ll sleep tonight. She was exhausted when I left.”

  “And she’ll be meeting with this Logan Carvy in the morning?”

  Joe felt something go tight in his stomach. “That’s the plan.”

  “So you met this guy, this Logan,” Cruz said. “How’d that go?”

  “Okay, I guess.”

  “So what’s he like?” Cruz prodded.

  Joe closed his eyes and thought of the short, stocky man who was Rachel Carvy’s husband. He realized there was no way he could judge the man fairly—he was married to the woman he loved! That alone was reason enough not to like the guy. Still, he had tried his best to put all that aside, tried not to let his personal feelings get in the way of finishing the job he had come there to do—return Rain to her family.

  So what was it? Was it just the cop in him, or maybe just the Navajo, he wasn’t sure. But there was something about Logan Carvy—not Rain’s husband, but about the man himself—that set his teeth on edge. Something he just didn’t trust. Of course, the fact that Neal Rubin had told him that some of Carvy’s business dealings and associates were questionable didn’t help matters, either.

  “Decent enough, I guess.”

  “You guess?”

  He probably should have known he couldn’t keep anything from Cruz. They’d been friends for too long; Cruz knew him too well not to read between the lines.

  “I don’t know,” Joe confessed. “A little on the slick side, glib, cocky. It’s just hard for me to imagine Rain with someone like him.”

  “Is that it? That all it is?”

  Joe breathed out a silent laugh. Maybe Cruz had come to know him too well. “No, but it’s not important whether I like the guy or not.”

  “Well, I don’t envy you, friend,” Cruz said in a quiet voice. “It’s a tough position to be in.”

  He’d never talked with Cruz about his feelings for Rain—they were guys, they didn’t talk feelings and emotions. They talked sports and politics and money. But they were also friends, friends who had seen each other through some pretty tough times and he didn’t doubt for a moment that Cruz understood exactly how he felt about the woman and how difficult it would be to have to turn her over to another man—any other man.

  “Call after the meeting tomorrow?”

  “Will do,” Joe promised.

  He lowered the phone onto the cradle and fell back against the mattress. His body ached, his head pounded and his brain was exhausted. He wished he could just close his eyes and drift into the peaceful oblivion of sleep, but unfortunately he knew that wasn’t going to happen. He’d been concerned that Rain hadn’t gotten any rest in the last forty-eight hours, but the truth was he couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept.

  He closed his eyes, his mind playing a jumble of pictures, scrambled images and senseless sounds behind his lids. He thought back to the quiet nights they had spent in the loft of his cabin, of lying on the feather bed with Rain in his arms. Such peace he had known during those nights, a peace he couldn’t even fathom now. It was if they had been in another time, another place, another galaxy.

  Images of her flashed through his mind, frozen in time, trapped in his memory. Hundreds of scenes played through his brain like a slide show run amok— Rain laughing at a joke he’d told her, Rain working at her desk at the office, Rain wearing one of his T-shirts and nothing else, cooking eggs in the kitchen. Image after image, creating a portrait of what they had shared, a portrait of a woman dearly loved by her man.

  He opened his eyes, staring up at the shadows streaking across the ceiling above the bed. Only he wasn’t her man. Logan Carvy was her man.

  Her man. The thought of Carvy with his beady blue eyes and thin lips that framed a mouth that turned up on the ends in a perpetual smirk had a knot forming in the pit of his belly. Was it that smirk that made him uneasy, or was it something in the man’s cold blue gaze that brought the hair on the back of his neck standing on end?

  He thought of how Logan had acted, pompous and insolent, but it was the way he talked that had sent alarms going off in his head. The cocky way he’d answered their questions, flippant and insincere—like a defendant on the stand lying through his teeth.

  Lying. Joe turned and walked back to the bed. There was nothing to indicate Carvy had been lying, nothing other than his own suspicions, his own uneasiness. The only one he knew for sure had been lying was himself.

  Rain had asked him if Logan had spoken of her, if he had talked about finding her, about wanting her back and he had lied to her. The truth was, Logan had said very little about finding his wife. He’d talked about the kidnapping, about the ransom demands and about the ordeal he’d been through, but he’d said very little about finding her, about having her back again.

  Even after he’d given Rain’s pictures to Carvy to identify. His reaction hadn’t been right. Carvy hadn’t acted like a man who’d just been given a wonderful gift, like a man who had just found the wife he thought had been lost to him forever.

  Joe pulled off his T-shirt, letting it fall to the bed and headed for the shower. He hadn’t the heart to tell Rain her husband had looked at her picture with about as much emotion as if he’d been looking at the latest model of luxury car—maybe even less. He’d lied, he’d covered for Logan Carvy because Rain had enough to deal with, and a cold, unfeeling bastard for a husband wasn’t what she needed right now.

  The hot water scaled his skin, but he steeled himself against it. He wanted to burn out all those unpleasant images, wanted the steam to sweat out all his suspicions and misgivings.

  How was he going to do it? How was he going to walk away and leave her with that man? It would have been hard under any circumstances,
even if he was returning her to a man who at least acted as though he were happy that she was found, but to someone like Carvy who had displayed no emotion at all— How was he going to do it?

  He thought of Carvy again, about him touching Rain with his soft, fat fingers, about him embracing her with his short, thick arms. He thought of those thin lips kissing her warm mouth, thought of those cold, watery eyes looking at her beautiful body.

  “No, no,” he groaned in coarse, raw voice that echoed off the white tiled walls of the shower. “I—I can’t. I can’t do this. I can’t.”

  But he had to. Somehow, some way he was going to have to find a way to do just that—to walk away, to stay away, to forget.

  “No,” he said again, his fist hitting the tile. “No.”

  Yanking the shower curtain to one side, he stalked out of the shower, out of the bathroom and to the telephone.

  “Hello?”

  FBI Agent Neal Rubin’s voice sounded hoarse with sleep over the line.

  “This is Joe Mountain,” he announced, the carpet beneath his feet becoming soaked. “Tell me what you know about this Logan Carvy. I want to know everything.”

  Chapter 14

  “You okay?”

  The wave of nausea that washed over her was so strong it brought her to a dead stop. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

  Joe reached for her, catching her before her knees buckled beneath her.

  “Maybe we should reschedule this.”

  “No!” She pushed him away and struggled to regain her balance. She pulled a deep, cleansing breath into her lungs. “I couldn’t take it. Not another night like last night.” She looked up at him, taking another deep breath. “Not again.”

  “I take it you didn’t get any sleep.”

  “Not a wink,” she confessed. She squinted, pointing to his bloodshot eyes. “You didn’t fare much better.”

  “I look that bad?”

  “No, you just look like someone who hasn’t slept in two days.” She straightened up, rubbing a hand over her volatile stomach and squared her shoulders. “But then, maybe it’s just the suit. I’ve never seen you in one before.”

  Joe reached up and straightened his necktie. “Well if it makes me look like an insomniac, I may never wear one again.”

  Despite her ailing stomach, she had to smile. Actually, he looked so handsome in the dark-blue suit with his long hair pulled back into a long ponytail, it almost hurt too much to look at him. But she had resigned herself to what was happening, resigned herself to her fate.

  Somewhere in the night she’d trembled all she was going to, worried all she could. It was as if she had exhausted all her fears, all her nerves, all her anxieties. She would never find peace with the situation, but somewhere in the night she’d found an acceptance. Like a prisoner facing the gallows, she had accepted the inevitable. She just hoped she could do it without throwing up.

  “The funny thing is,” she said, trying not to think too much about just how handsome he did look, “I don’t feel tired.”

  “No?”

  They both turned at the sound of the elevator.

  “No, too much adrenaline I guess.” She started for the empty elevator, motioning for him to follow. “Come on, let’s get this over with.”

  “You sure you’re up to it?” he asked, reaching out to hold the elevator door for her. “I mean, if you need a little more time—an hour or two to get ready—”

  “I’m fine,” she said, straightening her jacket. She’d labored a good part of the morning trying to decide what to wear for this first meeting, finally deciding on a sedate wool blazer with a matching knee-length skirt. She had never worn the suit. It had been part of the wardrobe she had bought on her shopping spree with Marcy.

  She remembered how delighted they had been that she’d gotten it on sale, and how she had saved it in her closet for a special occasion.

  She ran a hand over her skirt, smoothing out the fabric. She sort of thought the “special occasion” would be a dinner out with Joe or something like that—not the day she would be forced to say goodbye to him.

  He stepped into the elevator behind her and the door silently closed behind him. He pushed the button for the lobby and they both stood there, watching the numbers of the floor tick by, one after the other.

  She was still reeling from the sudden recollection last night, remembering Christian and Robyn, but so many parts of the puzzle remained missing. She had no recollection of giving birth to them, no recollection of the common, ordinary, everyday mothering of them. And probably most disturbing of all, she had no recollection of who their natural father was. All she knew was that Logan Carvy was their stepfather.

  But she did remember the love. Despite all the gaps in her memory, she knew without a doubt that she loved Christian and Robyn and somehow, that made today just a little bit easier.

  “Are we taking a cab?”

  “No. Actually, an FBI agent is meeting us downstairs. An Agent Rubin.”

  She watched the buttons light up, counting down fourteen, thirteen, twelve. “FBI? Is that necessary?”

  “Just procedure,” he said, watching the buttons, too. “Unlike missing persons, kidnapping is a federal offense. Technically this is still their case.”

  “But, you’ll be coming with us, right?”

  “Of course.”

  The buttons continued to light, one after the other, the motion of the elevator making her feel light-headed.

  “Joe,” she said, watching as the buttons six, five and four lit up.

  “Yes?”

  Three. Two.

  “I love you.”

  He turned his head, looking at her as the bell rang for the lobby. “I know.”

  The doors slid open and she stepped off the elevator. She didn’t want to look at him—she couldn’t, or she probably never would have been able to go through with all this.

  It really hadn’t been necessary for her to tell him how she felt. He already knew. But she’d just wanted to say it again, wanted to say it one last time while she was still Rain, before they stepped off the elevator and went their separate ways. She just wanted to hear the words one more time because she would be feeling them in her heart for the rest of her life.

  “Sheriff Mountain.”

  Rain hadn’t needed anyone to tell her who the middle-aged man with the crew cut and dressed in a dark-gray suit was. He looked just exactly what she had imagined an FBI agent would look.

  “Agent Rubin,” Joe said formally, extending his hand. “Neal, this is…well, this is the woman you came to meet.”

  “Ma’am,” Rubin said politely. “I know Sheriff Mountain has explained to you we’ve arranged a meeting at the Carvy house this morning.”

  “Yes, he has,” she said, feeling a little as though the floor beneath her feet was still descending at a rapid rate.

  “Sheriff Mountain thought you’d be more comfortable if this first interview took place at the Carvy residence.”

  “Interview?” She stopped as they started for the door.

  “You’ve been the victim of a federal crime,” Rubin explained. “We’d like the opportunity to ask you about that.”

  “You realize I don’t remember a lot.”

  Rubin glanced up at Joe, then back to her. “The sheriff has explained your injuries.” He motioned toward the door again. “And as you probably already know, your husband identified you last night from the photographs the sheriff brought, but the meeting this morning will just make it official.”

  “Official,” she mumbled as she let the two men escort her out of the hotel and into the unmarked sedan that was waiting.

  “You doing okay?” Joe asked, ducking his head inside before closing the car door.

  There was such emotion on his face, such feeling in his eyes. He had never told her he loved her, had never said what he felt for her or what their time together had meant to him. Maybe he didn’t love her, maybe he’d been motivated more by pity than by any true feeli
ngs for her, but she had touched something in him. It was there on his face and in his eyes. He would go back to Mesa Ridge, back to his job, to his ranch and in time he’d forget about her. But she would never forget him. They would be thousands of miles apart, but Joe Mountain was going to be with her always.

  “I’m fine,” she whispered, settling into the back seat and reaching for the seat belt.

  He hesitated for a moment, then straightened up and slammed the door closed.

  “It’s about a twenty-minute drive to the house,” Rubin said, peering at her from the driver’s seat through the rearview mirror. He twisted the key in the ignition, bringing the engine to life. “Traffic should be pretty light this time of day.”

  Joe slipped into the front passenger seat across from Rubin and adjusted the seat belt. “We’re in no hurry.” He turned to Rain in the back seat. “Are we?”

  She didn’t answer, she couldn’t. She was afraid if she opened her mouth she would either start screaming, or throw up—neither of which she wanted to do. So she just kept her mouth shut and turned her head. She looked out the window, watching the buildings pass in a blur. The city had a cold, unfamiliar feel to it. It didn’t feel like home, didn’t feel warm or welcoming. Would it ever? Would she ever feel as though she belonged, or would she always feel like a stranger?

  She thought of Christian and Robyn. Her children. She remembered them, loved them—loved them dearly. The love was there in her heart, real and sincere. She wanted to see them, to gather them into her arms and hold and nurture them. So why didn’t she feel like a mother, why didn’t she feel like their mother?

  She looked at Joe, sitting in the seat. Was it always going to be this way? Was there always going to be gaps in her memory, pieces missing from her life? She was a mother who couldn’t remember what it was like to be a mother. She was a wife who couldn’t remember her husband but remembered all too well the love she felt for another man.

  This was more than just her homecoming. This was her moment of truth, her Armageddon, her Waterloo.

  She watched as they left the skyscrapers and the office buildings behind and the landscape became more suburban. But as warm and comfortable the parks and the homes looked, nothing looked familiar.