“I didn’t want to be held against my will. Sounds like the paperwork’s going to be ready in a day or so. New social security number, driver’s license, bank accounts, that kind of thing.”
“You’re going to run?”
“It’s for the best.” Just what his father had told her.
“What’s your name going to be?”
“John Doe.”
“Really? Isn’t that too obv—you’re not going to tell me.”
“Nope.” He ran his fingers along the edge of the table, in deep thought. Finally, he looked up at her. “Do you think I’m a coward for not wanting to face charges?”
“I admired you for being willing to face them, but I don’t want you to go to prison because I don’t believe you killed Julie.”
“I am a coward, Maddie, no better than any other common criminal.”
“Why are you trying to convince me of that?”
“Because you’re looking at me like…how are you looking at me?”
“Not like I love you or anything. But what if I went with you? As a friend, of course.”
“No. You have a family, a life. Going on the run with me would strip those away from you.” He pulled his hair away from his face.
“Then we’ve got to find out what happened.” She’d told him what she’d uncovered, how his being with Julie on the boat didn’t make sense.
“But you forget, sweet Maddie, that I remember fighting with her.”
“No, you remember fighting someone.”
“No one else was on the boat. Unless they fell off, but…no, forget it.”
“I won’t. Remember, I’m Maddiestein now.”
She leaned closer, her knees pressing against his. The thought of him out there sailing from island to island tore her apart. She knew running was the wrong thing to do, but if it kept him safe, she didn’t care. What bothered her was that he’d be doing it without her.
“Are you going to leave as soon as the paperwork’s ready?”
He took one of her hands in his, then the other, keeping his gaze on them. “Yeah. There’s a charter that needs a crewman at one of the other marinas. They’re from Seattle, so they won’t recognize me. They’re sailing for the islands in a day or two, and I’ve already signed on.”
She’d never felt so helpless before…no, she had. When Wayne was heading toward the oyster bar. She felt the same crushing sense of disbelief and helplessness. At least Chase wasn’t dying. But in a way, he was. He was becoming someone else, and as far as she was concerned, he’d be…dead.
He stroked her fingers, gently, as though they would easily break. When he looked up at her, the smoky haze in his eyes nearly made her heart stop.
He asked in a voice that matched his eyes, “What does it feel like to love someone the way you loved Wayne?”
She didn’t have to think about it; the words spilled out of her. “It’s smiling the moment you wake up because you know you’ll see him. It’s feeling a twinge of sadness when he leaves for a while. It’s feeling something indescribably warm and tender inside when you look at him. It’s relishing even the briefest of touches. And it’s knowing you’ll do whatever you have to do to make it work.” Unfortunately, she wasn’t thinking about Wayne when she’d said all that.
Chase absorbed her words, opened his mouth, then closed it. While she waited breathlessly for his response, he surprised her by kissing her. His kiss was slow and sweet, like warm molasses, and she gave herself up to it. The melody for “Bittersweet Symphony” played through her mind as they moved in a dream state. He peeled off first one piece of clothing, then another. Nothing like their first time, that frenzied rush of passion, this time when they made love, it was languid and surreal. Bittersweet.
Afterward, he held her without words, squeezing her against him every so often. His leg was slung over her legs, his arms tight around her. She couldn’t see his face, only the curtain of his hair and the curve of his shoulder. She wasn’t sure how long they stayed like that. As far as she was concerned, it could have lasted forever.
Forever was cut far short when the sound of voices outside brought Chase to his feet. “Damn, I fell asleep. We’d better get dressed.”
“Why?”
He shoved her clothes at her, then stepped into his own clothing. “I’m going to leave you behind, Maddie. I have to, have to forget about everything I ever was. It’s the only way I can get through. I’m going to leave without saying goodbye, because I hate saying goodbye. And just to make sure you don’t try one of your Maddiestein stunts…”
Chase climbed up the companionway, then motioned someone to come down. She almost expected his father’s beefcakes to come down and abduct her. But it was even worse.
Her family had come. And they’d brought their secret weapon.
“Uncle Maddie!” Q yelled as he jumped down the steps and threw himself into her arms. “Mom said you were off…bal…bal…lanced, and I didn’t know what that meant, and I was scared.”
Maddie squeezed him tight and buried her face in his copper curls. “I’m not off-balanced. Just…” She met Chase’s grim face. “misled.”
“Honey, we were so worried about you,” Mom said once she’d managed the steps. “And when Chase called and told us…well, he said to come right away, so we got your second-cousin Peter in Tampa to fly us in his little airplane.”
Chase’s betrayal burned in her stomach and increased when he handed her Mom her bag.
Q’s face was bright with excitement. “We saw Matchbox cars, but grandpa said they was real!”
Maddie tried to smile at him, but her face hurt. Everything hurt. So, Chase wanted to send her away. Fine, she’d go. She wasn’t going to force her devotion on him anymore.
“We’re going to drive back with you,” Mom was saying while crushing Maddie in a bear hug.
“But—”
“No buts.” Mom steered Maddie to the steps. “If we have to strong-arm you home, we will. You don’t want Quigley to see that, do you?”
“It’s Q, grandma,” he said, tugging on her pant leg. “And what can’t I see?”
“You’ll see nothing.” Mom glanced at Maddie. “Right, Baby—Maddie?”
She forced herself to look at Chase again. His expression was blank. If he loved her, he’d take her with him. That’s how love was, because she’d damned well go with him.
So, he didn’t love her. Or maybe he didn’t know how to love. Then why had he asked how it felt?
She climbed up the steps.
“Thank God you didn’t put up a scene,” Colleen said from behind her. “The way you’ve been acting—”
“Off-balanced, I believe you put it,” Maddie said.
“That’s how you’ve been acting.”
“Where’s Bobby?” Maddie asked.
Colleen said, “There wasn’t room on the plane.”
Mom said, “Let’s grab a bite before we head back to Sugar Bay. Is there someplace near here?”
Maddie chose Salty’s.
“This is a bar,” Mom said when they walked beneath the chickee roof.
“Maddie,” Lila said from behind the bar, question in her eyes.
“This is my family. They’ve come to take me home.” She debated telling Lila about Chase being on her dad’s boat but ultimately kept it to herself. “This is my friend, Lila.”
Lila nodded at them and gave Maddie an Are you okay? look.
Maddie nodded a yes, an outright lie, and herded her family to a back booth near the water. Since it was past the lunch crowd, Salty’s was fairly empty. As usual, nobody mentioned having to fly out and save Maddie from her impertinence. They seemed grateful when the sandwiches arrived and no one had to make lame conversation for a few minutes. As soon as Q finished his grilled cheezer, he skipped off to the edge of the dock to look at the fish.
“What did Chase tell you?” Maddie said, after giving up on pretending to eat her blackened grouper sandwich. She kept seeing that grim look on Chase’s face.
“Just that he was in trouble. Oh, and that he was a murderer.”
“He didn’t kill anyone. He just told you that so you’d come right away.”
“Well, he didn’t have to tell us that,” Dad said. “We’d have come anyway.”
“No doubt.” She surveyed her family, loving them and annoyed with them at once. They wouldn’t understand her devastation at Chase’s betrayal. They’d think he was a coward for running. She had no allies, not even Chase himself. She looked at Colleen, eager to change the subject. “Have you and Bobby worked things out?”
“Found all those trash magazines you read,” Colleen said to Maddie instead of answering. “I was storing some of my gnomes in your closet, and there they were. Enquirer, Star…”
“Reading about other people’s tragedies made me feel better when I was ignoring my life. Some woman having an alien baby had to be worse than me losing my husband. You can always convince yourself things aren’t so bad when you read those or watch Sally. And we’re so good at ignoring problems in our family. Does Q know what’s going on with you two?”
“No, and he doesn’t want to know,” Colleen said. “We told him Bobby’s remodeling our house, so he has to stay there.”
Maddie said, “He’s probably scared to death that his family’s coming apart and no one’s telling him anything. Either get divorced or work it out.”
Colleen’s shoulders stiffened. “Maddie, I don’t know who you think you are—”
“I am a member of this family.” She took them all in. “A family that has, including me, had their heads in the sand for much too long. I used to think it was okay to live my life for everyone else. But Chase changed everything—”
“This is all his fault,” Mom said. “He’s the rotten apple in the barrel.”
“And thank goodness. He saved my life in more ways than one. He was the first person to treat me like an adult. Sure, he said some ugly things to me, but they were the best ugly things I’ve ever heard. He taught me to believe in myself. And no matter what he thinks about himself, I believe in him. He let me think he’d already gone on the run so I’d go home. Calling you here, that proves his honor, much as I hate to admit it.”
Mom tilted her head. “He did say he didn’t want you dragged down with him. He obviously cares a great deal about you.”
“Hot damn, maybe he is your angel.” Colleen took a long drink of her iced tea.
Maddie didn’t want to think about that right then. “He used to have a drinking problem, but he hasn’t had a drink since the accident. And, in fact, he never drank when he sailed, never…” Her voice trailed off, and her eyes widened. “He never drank while he sailed.”
“You said that,” Colleen said.
“He was drunk that last night.”
“And that’s a good thing?” Mom asked.
“Yes! He wouldn’t have sailed with her because he’d been drinking. And that son of a bitch isn’t going to run! He’s going to turn himself in, and he knew I’d stay if he did.”
“Maddie, where are you going?” Mom asked as Maddie shoved her way out of the booth and nearly tripped on a chair to get to the bar. “I have never heard her use language like that before.”
“Lila! Where’s the nearest police station?”
“What’s wrong?”
“I’ll explain later.”
Maddie ran to Shades of Heaven without a backward glance at her family. She lost her footing and slid down the steps to the cabin. It only took seconds to know he was gone. She turned and ran to her car.
What if she was too late?
CHAPTER 22
Maddie pulled out in front of a black car similar to Allister’s. She waved an apology, then glanced back to see if Eduardo or Allister were driving. The driver didn’t look familiar, so she focused on finding Chase again. She spotted him a half-block from the station. The sun reflected off his dark hair, reminding her for a moment how it felt between her fingers. Making her forget for a moment that the determined set of his shoulders meant he was indeed going to turn himself in. She pulled up beside him. “Get in the car!”
He didn’t even look at her, only tilted his head back and closed his eyes.
“Get in or I run you down!”
“In front of the police station?” he asked, nodding toward a police car pulling out of the parking lot.
“If I have to.”
He leaned down into the car. “I thought you were mad at me for bringing your family here.”
“I am. Now, do you get in the car or do I go to jail for running you down?”
With an aggravated sigh, he yanked open the door and dropped into the passenger seat. He’d probably been walking since she left the boat. His white cotton shirt was wrinkled, and he smelled like sun-heated male.
“I’m not going to get into that you lied to me, since you think you did it for my own good. I won’t even yell at you for bringing my family here.”
He watched as she drove past the police station but said nothing.
“Everyone thinks they know what’s right for me. This time I’m listening to my heart, and my heart tells me you’re right for me.”
He leaned against the door. “How did you know what I was going to do?”
“Your honor gave you away. Any man who would go to these lengths to preserve my sense of well-being is not a man who runs away from responsibility.”
“Don’t give me too much credit. I really did think about taking my father’s offer.”
“For what, a minute?”
He shrugged. “An hour.”
Their gazes met, and she couldn’t help but smile. “If you won’t believe in yourself, then let me believe in you.”
“Maddie…”
“I don’t believe you killed Julie—”
“Not on pur—”
“Not at all.” She turned back to Shades of Heaven. “You never drank when you sailed.”
“Okay.”
“You didn’t. That’s what your friends said. So why, when you were drunk that night, would you have sailed with Julie?”
“Lapse of judgment?”
“That boat was your life. I don’t think you would have taken the chance.”
He started to argue but shrugged instead. “Good point.”
When she’d turned off the car, she grabbed two fistfuls of his shirt. “We’re going to go out on the boat tonight and re-enact that night, you as Chase, me as Julie.”
“I don’t know…”
“You don’t have to know. You said you kept thinking something would trigger your memories. If this doesn’t do it, nothing will.” That she chanced him becoming the old Chase didn’t matter just then.
They were nose-to-nose when he asked, “Why are you doing this?”
She grinned and used his line. “I’ll tell you later.”
He recognized his own retort. “All right. But if I remember, and I did kill her, I’m turning myself in. You can’t stop me again.”
“I won’t.”
“And you’ll go home.”
“Let’s just take it one step at a time, shall we?”
With Chase tucked away on the boat again, Maddie went back to Salty’s to find her confused family.
“We’ll just take ourselves a vacation in Miami,” Mom said with a lift of her chin when Maddie suggested—nicely—that they go home. “Can’t stop us doing that. We’ll find a hotel near here and tell you where we’re staying. Just in case.”
“Call and leave a message with Lila,” Maddie said, and got the phone number for the bar on their way out.
“Did you know that Chase was on our table?” Dad said.
“I’m sure he was. Now, go. I have a lot to do. I’ll talk to you soon.”
She heard Colleen say, “I think an alien has taken over her body.”
Maddie headed to Shades of Heaven. When she climbed back onto the deck, a male voice said, “What are you doing, Maddie?”
She turned to find Patrick standing ther
e, dressed for work yet looking somewhat rumpled. He ran his hand back through his hair in that agitated manner.
She well-remembered his threat that if he saw Chase, he’d turn him in. “Just…taking a look at Lila’s dad’s boat. Before I leave. I’m leaving. Chase is gone, so there’s no need to stay if he’s gone, right? Right.”
His blue eyes narrowed, and he stepped aboard. “He’s here, isn’t he? That’s why you haven’t left.”
“Didn’t you hear me? He’s gone. That’s why I’m leaving”
“He’s here.” He climbed down into the cabin of the boat.
Maddie held her breath and tried to figure out what to do. Trap Patrick in the cabin so he couldn’t alert the police? What if he yelled? She could run to get Lila, but she didn’t want to leave the two men alone for even that long. Stand there and worry? That was the number one choice.
It seemed he was down there for an hour, though she knew it was probably only a few minutes.
When he returned to the deck, he wore a mask of defeat. “Why are you so devoted to him?”
She tried not to look relieved. “Probably the same reason you’re devoted to Julie.”
He conceded with a twist of his mouth. “She wasn’t seeing someone in South Beach.”
“How do you know?”
“I cleaned out her apartment when she died, and I kept a lot of her paperwork, wallet, that kind of thing. But I hadn’t looked through it.”
Because he was afraid to find something. “And?”
“I found a charge on her credit card for a karate shop down in South Beach. I talked to the instructor. She’d been taking lessons for about two months. No sordid secret.”
“She didn’t tell you she was taking lessons?”
“She probably wanted to surprise me. She did that sometimes, like taking belly dancing lessons. Stop trying to find something that isn’t there.”
“So, what are you doing down here?”
He nodded toward the line of windows of the yacht club. “Had lunch with a friend and saw you.”
“And figured I was preparing the boat for Chase.”
“Exactly.”
He didn’t buy that she wasn’t by the suspicious gleam in his eyes. She squinted up at him in the afternoon sun. “He’s already gone, thanks to your father.”
Heavenly Stranger Page 27
