The door didn’t slam in her face. Actually, it closed very, very quietly. She heard the sound of the motor-home engine, and in another minute there was silence. A terrible, terrible silence.
Was it suddenly forty below? Anne wrapped her arms around her chest, shivering violently. Tears filled her eyes. He hadn’t even pretended to listen, she thought furiously.
Worse than that, she had a terrifying suspicion that he wouldn’t be back. This was his house, of course; he had to come back to take care of it sometime. In a thousand years. Jake didn’t care about the house. He’d never cared about houses.
The knowledge of desertion seared through her like a knife. Old scars opened for the blade. She knew exactly what desertion felt like. Her mother had changed loyalties so readily; her father had died; people had passed in and out of her life so often. She knew far better than to count on living people. Jake alone had always been there for her.
Only Jake…
Tears gushed into her eyes as she wandered through the empty rooms. Oh, you fool, you fool. So fast, so painfully fast, the old scars ripped open. How long had she equated security with the wrong things? Jake had always been there for her.
And you let him go? The finality of that door closing echoed in her ears. How could you, how could you, how could you…? Frantically, she wrenched open the door…but Jake had taken the motor home. The Jeep was still in Silver Valley. The boat, which she didn’t know how to operate anyway, wouldn’t take her anywhere except around the lake.
She fumbled for the phone book in a drawer in the kitchen. Too late, too late, too late. She dialed the number of a car-rental agency. Yes, it had cars available-if she could get there to pick one up. She could hardly walk all the way to Coeur d’Alene. How dare he just leave her like that? Dammit, he’d rushed her every step of the way was it so inconceivable that she just might need the chance to think for two minutes and realize what a total idiot she’d been?
A neighbor a half-mile down the road drove her to the car-rental agency. Mrs. Barker, a big-boned woman in purple shorts, was clearly not used to opening her door to a woman with hair streaming down her back, crying her eyes out. In the next life, Anne would undoubtedly remember that taxis existed. In the next life, perhaps, so would Mrs. Barker. In this one, one woman simply reacted to the panicked, incoherent pleas of another woman.
The rental agency offered Anne a Mustang with a stick shift, for the money she had in her pocket. Anne stopped crying. She had an hour’s shopping to do in Coeur d’Alene. Florists’ shops, but then Anne wasn’t thinking clearly. The backseat was filled with her purchases by the time she set off on Highway 90. There was no question where she was going. The airport at Spokane would have been the prudent choice. Jake had clearly written her off. Anne was only beginning to understand that in his own way he’d waited for her from the time she was eighteen, and had waited far long enough. If she was going to get bogged down with those kinds of details, though, she would certainly start crying again.
Actually, she did, as she drove east toward Silver Valley. It was two in the afternoon when she drove through Wallace. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Tears were streaming from her eyes, and sun poured through the windshield as she reached Killer Road. The first wild uphill curve made her sick to her stomach. Her hands gripped the steering wheel, wet and clammy, as she made the impossible curves and turns, downshifting, then gearing up, panicking on the downhill curves, terrified when the engine balked at the steep inclines.
She didn’t question where she was going, because if Jake wasn’t at the ghost town, she wouldn’t know where to find him. She had to find him. She had to find him…
Her heartbeat slowed down to normal as she took the last curve and turned off the road onto the gravel lane. Vaulting out of the car, she opened the gate, drove through and closed it behind her. The sign still said No Trespassing. Which made her start crying again.
When she saw the motor home in the valley, she slowed the Mustang down, stopped. A strange kind of silence seemed to rush through her heart. No one was around. The ghost town was the same. Wind whispered through the firs and aspens; sunlight beamed through the fluttering gold leaves; the stream picked up prisms of color and danced them back for her eyes. Biting her lip to hold back the tears, she got out of the car, pushed the front seat forward and reached into the back.
The scent of daffodils filled her nostrils, as sweet and intoxicating as a spring breeze. The fragile yellow blossoms were starting to wilt, but the scent was still there, surrounding her as she walked toward the motor home with her arms filled.
She didn’t knock, primarily because she didn’t have the courage. Opening the door was an incredible effort all by itself; her fingers were freezing cold, almost numb. And a thousand other things had gone wrong. Her hair was wind-tossed from the ride; she knew her face looked white and strained. And she couldn’t breathe; there was the most ridiculous huge knot in her throat…
Jake turned at the sound of the door. A coffee cup sat on the counter; he was standing in front of it. Something was terribly wrong with his face-it looked gray, not like Jake’s face at all. And his beautiful eyes were cold, the color of stone. There was nothing in his eyes-not shock, not welcome. Not…anything.
Rage, the last emotion she felt, was the only one she could cope with. Trembling, she hurled the entire armload of flowers in his direction. “Everyone is entitled to a moment of panic now and then,” she told him furiously. “That doesn’t mean you just walk out and scare someone to death. Don’t you ever do that to me again, Jake!”
She whirled and stalked out of the motor home toward the car, moving too fast to think, stumbling, not caring. She scooped up the second armload of daffodils, brought them in and pelted Jake with the flowers one by one. “If you think I care whether we live in Colombia or on the dark side of the moon, you’re a fool. If you think our children will care, you’re just that much more of a fool. Fools inevitably get their priorities mixed up. It’s different with us, Jake-how could you have been so stupid? We count on each other. What on earth is the matter with you? Some people have never had anyone to count on, but that’s not us. How could you be such an idiot?”
She ran out of flowers and threw her hands up in the air. “The kids’ll have us to hold on to and each other to hold on to and that’s exactly what the difference is. I don’t know what on earth’s been the matter with you all this time that you couldn’t see it! Sometimes you can be scared of something for so long that you can’t see the forest for the trees. Who cares? It’s about time you changed, Mr. Rivard! Because when you’ve found love, the kind of love worth holding on to, you’d darned well better hold on to it!”
He hadn’t moved. He didn’t move.
For that century of an instant, Anne didn’t move either, and then her toes moved on springs again, bursting out of the motor home for the second time. Moisture was forming beneath her eyelids again. These tears were very different, as soft and helpless as they were inevitable. You’re just making a fool of yourself. She stalked back to the car and clasped the last of the flowers to her chest, dropping some of them and breaking the stems of others. She picked up each one so very carefully and then gathered them tightly to her chest so that more stems broke; stems she didn’t see. She walked back one last time into the motor home, not looking at Jake, unable to look at him this time. She looked instead at the incredible sweet-scented mess she’d made.
Flowers were everywhere. Broken stems and crushed petals. Jake’s shoes were covered in daffodils. One was hanging from his shoulder.
Anne lifted her chin, pretending there were no tears in her eyes. “I’m disgusted,” she said flatly. “Totally disgusted. What on earth is wrong with a town that doesn’t stock more daffodils? So they’re out of season. That’s no excuse. Some people manage to buy violets when they’re out of season…”
Her voice trailed off jaggedly. She just couldn’t keep up the act any longer. Through blurred vision, she finally found the courage t
o look at Jake. He was still standing by the counter, all but buried in daffodils, setting down his coffee cup after taking a sip. Taking a sip of coffee? Now? And his face no longer had that grayish cast to it. “I do love you, Anne,” he said mildly, “but it took you a hell of a long time to get here.”
She could have killed him.
There wasn’t time. In the blink of an eyelash, he had his arms around her and was lifting her high in a crushing rib-breaking hug. She was the one holding on so very, very hard. “You’re home, Anne,” he said vibrantly.
She was. Home. Not to a place, but to her mate. Security was where love was. Roots were where the heart set them down.
His lips hovered over hers for an instant, and then moved in. That kiss…she could smell the heady fragrance of spring all around them, taste all the sweet heat of a languid summer, hear the sensual crackle of leaves in autumn, feel the warmth of his arms around her on a cold winter’s day. Let the seasons come and go. As long as Jake was here…
About the Author
Jennifer sold her first book in 1980, and since then she has sold more than eighty books in the contemporary romance genre. Her first professional writing award came from RWA-a Silver Medallion in l984-followed by more than twenty nominations and awards, including being honored in RWA’s Hall of Fame and presented with the RWA Nora Roberts Lifetime Achievement Award. Jennifer has been on numerous bestseller lists, has written for Harlequin Books, Avon, Berkley and Dell, and has sold over the world in more than twenty languages. She has written under a number of pseudonyms, most recognizably Jennifer Greene, but also Jeanne Grant and Jessica Massey.
She was born in Michigan, started writing in high school, and graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in English and psychology. The university honored her with their “Lantern Night Award,” a tradition developed to honor fifty outstanding women graduates each year. Exploring issues and concerns for women today is what first motivated her to write, and she has long been an enthusiastic and active supporter of women’s fiction, which she believes is an “unbeatable way to reach out and support other women.” Jennifer lives in the country around Benton Harbor, Michigan, with her husband, Lar.
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Silver and Spice Page 18
