I'LL REMEMBER YOU

by Barbara Ankrum

  "Look at that!" the twelve-year-old Joe had crowed, arms thrown wide. "Did you see her, Jan? She's gonna win. I know it. Have you ever seen a dog jump so high?"

  "Never," he'd shouted back, caught up in his younger brother's unvarnished optimism.

  "Fifty-dollar prize. It's mine," Joe told him without an ounce of doubt.

  A wave of nausea rushed over Jack as he reached down for his T-shirt.

  Joe, who'd shadowed him from the moment he could walk, who had grown into a hell of a man and followed Jack into the Navy, where he'd made a damned fine officer.

  The crushing memory pressed on his chest and Jack knelt down, trying to catch his breath. He didn't want to remember the phone call he'd gotten in the middle of the night from L.A., where Joe had gone to be a cop after washing out of SEALS training. He'd made a name for himself in L.A. and found his place. Which was why the phone call in the middle of the night had nearly ripped the ground from under Jack.

  Joe, dead. Suicide. Hanged himself, the LAPD captain's voice had announced, the way one might describe the brand of cereal he'd chosen to eat that morning for breakfast. But the other caller, who phoned later, described it as hinky circumstances. That was the word he'd used: hinky. As if there were anything hinky or even ordinary about his brother. And when they'd told him that Joe had been implicated in a crime – in a drug-smuggling payoff operation – Jack had laughed. Because it was as unimaginable that Joe could have been on the wrong side of the law as it was that he was actually dead.

  Grief struck Jack with the force of a two-by-four squarely across the back, and he braced his hands on his knees. He'd never shaken the picture of it from his mind, and he hated that his memories of his brother, the kid he'd practically raised, were tainted by that ugly image. Damn whoever was responsible for making him go through losing Joe twice in one lifetime! The last of his family. He was alone in this world.

  Jack's glassy eyes traveled over the dark water with a feeling of emptiness that frightened him. His reasons for coming here surged back to him, pushing away self-pity and every other emotion but vengeance. Suicide hadn't been in Joe's vocabulary, and he'd been helped onto that chair in that lonely room that night. They'd needed a fall guy, but Joe wouldn't fall. So he'd died – his good name dragged through the mud the men who'd murdered him had created.

  Jack had come here to clear his brother's name.

  The relief of that sent him down onto the hard surface of the pebble-strewn beach. He'd never wanted to believe what Tess had said they suspected him of. And now the truth came back to him. His path had already been drawn.

  A low, foul oath slid from his mouth. He'd failed Joe the last time. They'd won. At least they thought they had, the bastards. Well, he thought, reining in the venomous feeling rising in his throat, they may have won the round, but they were far from beating him.

  Grabbing up his shirt and leaving Tandy behind, he stalked into the house in search of Tess's phone. The search proved fruitless. She'd taken it with her, he decided, slumping down on the couch. The jingle of keys drew his gaze down to the cushions. A grim smile eased the hard line of his mouth.

  "All right then," he muttered to himself, tossing the keys in his palm. "All right."

  * * *

  Chapter 13

  «^»

  Dilly's was crowded with celebrants, fresh from the sailboat regatta Tess had seen earlier today on the lake. It seemed that everyone knew Dan and said their hellos to him as he moved through the crowd.

  The owner broke into a smile at the sight of them. "Sheriff! Over here. I have a special table for you!"

  "Just Dan tonight, Oscar," Dan requested with a humble shrug. "Not on duty."

  "Phooey!" Oscar said, turning to Tess. "He's the best darned sheriff we've ever had around here. Only the best table for you two."

  Dan introduced her. Oscar bowed in a low humorous sweep, then waggled his eyebrows meaningfully at Dan. "Very nice."

  Dan sent her a helpless look as they were led to a small table far enough away from the country band that they could hear each other talk. He pulled out her chair for her, something she'd forgotten men do, and sat across from her. "You look great tonight, Tess."

  She smiled, tucking her hair behind her ear. "So do you." Out of uniform – the first time she'd seen him that way since she'd met him – Dan had worn a pair of dark linen slacks and a handsome gray-green shirt that matched his eyes. The tie had been a nice touch, too, but as he ran his finger around the neckline, she guessed he'd worn it for her.

  Regarding her for a long moment across the table, Dan leaned toward her. "I'm really glad you came."

  "Oh," she said, scrambling for a response. "Me, too."

  "It's okay if it's not the truth," he said with a half smile, reading her mind. "I figure I'm ahead of the game just getting you out of that cabin. You hungry?"

  She could only smile. "Starved, actually."

  "Good. Well, that's a good start, anyway."

  He has a nice face, she thought, regarding him as he brought the menu up to browse it. Kind yet strong. A complex mixture of openness and mystery. He'd been sheriff here for almost two years, deputy sheriff before that. And yet no woman – and there had been plenty of volunteers – had landed him yet. Tess had always assumed that his interest in her lay in the fact that she played harder to get than most. And that his persistence could be attributed to the possibility that the chase was more interesting to him.

  But that assumption was unfair. And even as she studied him now, with his dark lashes casting crescents of shadow across his tanned, handsome cheeks, she couldn't help but compare him to another man, one infinitely more dangerous.

  "Wine okay?" he asked over the sound of the music.

  "Wine sounds good."

  He flagged down a waiter and ordered a bottle of chardonnay. "So, you're working too hard up here on your vacation. What exactly are you working on?"

  Survival, she thought, but she said, "It's not all that interesting. Just putting together some research I'm doing for a paper I'm hoping to publish." That much was almost true. It was what she'd been working on in her spare time before this whole thing started.

  "Impressive."

  She shook her head dismissingly. "A necessary evil. Funding never lasts long enough."

  The waiter brought the wine and poured two glasses. Dan lifted his and chinked it with hers. "Here's to publication and whatever else makes you happy."

  "Back at you." Tess took a sip of her wine. Happiness. What a concept. It had been so long since she'd felt it, she'd feared she wouldn't even recognize it if it ever happened to cross her path again. Tonight, with Jack, she'd realized she'd been wrong about that. Jack made her happy, and she had to find a way to convince him that she could do the same for him.

  "So," she said, searching for a topic. "What makes you happy, Dan?"

  "Lots of things. I'm easy," he said. "I like my job, my life, sitting down to dinner with a beautiful woman."

  Tess toyed with her wineglass. "I hear there's a long line just waiting to oblige you."

  He actually blushed. "Don't believe everything you hear. Besides, there's only one beautiful woman I'm interested in, and she's sitting across from me."

  Swirling the contents of her glass, she studied it. "My life is complicated, Dan."

  He nodded, sipping his wine. "How complicated is it?"

  She wrinkled her nose. "Pretty complicated right now."

  "You in love with him?" The band had stopped playing the second before Dan asked the question, and a few heads turned at the table beside them. He looked sheepishly up at her, waiting for an answer.

  Of course he knew it was another man. But the question stalled her pulse for a moment. In love with Jack? She'd hardly dared to contemplate it. Was she? She'd been in love once. But this felt … stronger. As if she'd slid into the right place at last, found something she hadn't known was lost. "Maybe," she told Dan, taking in the disappointment in his expression. "I'm sorry, Dan."

>   He shrugged good-naturedly. "So, let's just have a nice dinner, as friends. What d'ya say?"

  She'd never liked Dan more than she did at this moment. A woman would have to be crazy to pass up a guy like him. Strong, handsome, dependable – safe. He was exactly the sort of man any woman would want. Anyone but her.

  No, she had to go for a man who lived for trouble, who thrived on adrenaline rushes and risked his life for a living – an ironic turn of phrase, she thought. The heart, she'd learned, was not ruled by logic, and her feelings for the man she'd left back at the cabin couldn't be defined by anything so simple as that.

  She lifted her glass and touched to Dan's. "Here's to friendship."

  * * *

  Jack pulled Tess's car up beside the phone booth outside the pharmacy. A light illuminated the old-fashioned glass booth, and he pulled the door closed behind him, shutting out the sounds of foot traffic on the crowded street. He made one quick phone call to a number he'd torn out of the phone book, then punched in a long-distance number on the keypad. He shoved a handful of change he'd scrounged at the cabin into the coin slot.

  The phone rang and a man answered. "Tanner."

  "Hey, PB, it's Ian." PB – short for Polar Bear – was the name earned by the man on the other end of the line for enduring the icy waters off the coast of Greenland the longest without succumbing.

  "Mac?" Seth replied incredulously, then sighed in relief. "Oh, man. Where the hell are you? Are you all right? Sarah and I have been worried sick about you. I called three days ago and they said you'd taken some personal leave. But you were supposed to check in four days ago at commanding and nobody's heard from you. They know as well as I do you'd never go AWOL of your own free will."

  It was good, amazingly good, to hear Seth's voice again. "I, uh, ran into a little trouble."

  There was a long pause. "How bad?"

  "Bad enough." He shifted the phone to his other ear, turning from a couple passing on the street. "But I'm still standing."

  "Where the hell are you?"

  "California."

  "California?" He could hear the gears in Seth's brain grinding. "Is this about Joe?"

  "They killed him, Seth. Murdered him in cold blood and set him up to take the fall. I'm next on the menu."

  Seth's curse was low and foul. "I'm on the next plane. Just tell me where and when."

  Jack's throat thickened with gratitude that he hadn't had to ask. He heard Sarah in the background asking who was on the phone. Seth told her.

  "Ian?" he said into the phone. "Sarah sends her love."

  "Back," he said, running his thumb along the edge of the pay phone. "Will she be okay with this? I wouldn't ask but I don't know who else to—"

  "Forget about it. She's got another month yet before the baby. I've got some personal time coming. I'll catch a flight first thing in the morning out of Dulles. What do you need?"

  He told him, and when he was finished there was silence on the other end of the line for a long beat.

  "Christ, Ian," Seth said softly. "You can't go in alone."

  "It's not me I'm worried about. Will you just do what I ask?"

  "You're crazy, you know that?"

  A foregone conclusion. "That's why ya love me, right?"

  "Get outta here…" He laughed.

  "Thanks, pal. And thank Sarah for me, too."

  "Hey, Ian?"

  "Yeah?"

  The humor had leached out of his voice. "Give the bastards one for me."

  He dipped his head and rubbed his aching shoulder. "It'll be my pleasure."

  * * *

  Tess and Dan had filled more than an hour talking about their lives and about inconsequential things before he'd managed to drag her out onto the dance floor. The girl singer's voice had a sexy, breathy quality to it as she crooned a bluesy version of an old Hank William's song, "I'm So Lonesome, I Could Cry." But even as Dan's hands tightened around hers, her mind was on Jack. She couldn't shake the feeling that something was going to happen, or help wondering if he would even be there when she got back.

  The thought sent a chill down her. Jack said he wouldn't leave until he knew she was safe. On the other hand, she thought with a surge of panic, he may have decided that he couldn't leave her in any better hands than Dan Kelso, the town's sheriff. But rocking with him there on the dance floor with her eyes closed, she wished it was Jack's shoulder she was leaning on, not Dan's.

  He turned them past a handful of couples and eased through the crowd, swaying with the music. She didn't care where they were going. But she wasn't prepared for what she saw when she lifted her eyes to the row of people sitting at the old-fashioned oak bar right in front of her.

  Half-hidden by the people milling there, sitting alone on a bar stool as if she'd conjured him with her thoughts, was Jack!

  Tess gasped audibly.

  Dan flinched and pulled back to look at her. "Sorry, did I step on your foot?"

  She felt as if she were on an elevator that had just dropped seven floors. "No," she told Dan, unable to pull her gaze from the dark, forbidding figure at the bar.

  Dan pulled her back against him, satisfied with her answer.

  Jack's piercing gaze followed her every movement. It was no trick of lighting that the dark shadow that lingered on his bruised cheek lent a ruggedness to his breathless good looks. But the predatory intensity of his stare sent a tingle down her spine, almost as if he were touching her.

  Dazedly, she wondered what he was doing here and how he'd managed it. Oh, her car, came the next thought. She'd left her keys at home. Never let it be said that this man wasn't resourceful. But what was he doing, risking being seen? And by Dan of all people.

  Had he come to say goodbye? The possibility almost made her knees give way.

  At the bar, Jack lifted a glass of what looked like water to his mouth and emptied it in one long drink, all the while watching her move with Dan. He dragged the back of his hand across his mouth deliberately, but the slow, possessive narrowing of those hooded blue eyes was the only indication that he knew she'd seen him.

  The erotic memory of their encounter on the back porch tonight tumbled through her as if she'd stored it somewhere in her cells. She shivered at the physical sensation of it and wantonly imagined where his hands would touch her if he could.

  Dan moved her through the crowd as the singer crooned her smoky number and the pedal-steel guitar wailed along with her. She tried to keep Jack in sight. The crowds seemed to recede, leaving only the two of them, their heated stares meeting across the dance floor. She saw the muscles in Jack's jaw work as he put the glass down, crumbling the cocktail napkin in his fist as if the action held him in his seat instead of pushing past a dozen people to steal her away from Dan.

  She blinked heavily, keeping her eyes on him as they moved. Don't go, she told him silently. Wait for me, Jack.

  But he got slowly to his feet as Dan guided them in the other direction. A half-dozen couples blocked her view of the bar. She'd lost sight of him and half expected to see him standing over Dan's shoulder, cutting in for a dance.

  But when she looked again, he was gone. Vanished. Tess's heart sank.

  Her eyes were burning as the music ended and an easy applause broke out for the band. Dan pulled back and smiled down at her. Feeling flushed and disoriented, she forced a smile back up at him.

  He brushed the tip of his finger against her nose good-naturedly. "You are a million miles away."

  She dropped her gaze to the floor. "I'm … I'm sorry. You're a wonderful dancer, Dan."

  "The pleasure was all mine, Tess." A wistfulness edged the smile he sent her as the band started a new song. "C'mon. I'll take you home now."

  * * *

  It was close to ten when Dan's car pulled up in front of the cabin. He went around the vehicle, opened her door for her and escorted her up the walk.

  Tess glanced at the house, noticing how dark it was. She'd left a few lights on when she'd gone. Her car was parked in the drive ag
ain, but she had already decided that Jack would probably bring it back for her, and find another way off this mountain.

  Beside her, Dan slid his hands in the pockets of his slacks as they reached the door. She turned to him with a smile. "Thank you for a lovely evening, Dan. I really enjoyed it."

  "So did I." He studied her face in the dim light of the lamp, looking as comfortable in his skin as any man she'd ever known. "I've never made it a secret that I'm interested in you, Tess. I like you." He shrugged. "My timing's off. But just so you know, if things don't work out with you and… Well, I guess what I'm trying to say is, don't be a stranger." He extended a hand to her in lieu of a kiss. "G'night."

  She gave him a kiss on the cheek. "Night."

  She watched until the taillights of his car disappeared around the bend in the road. She lingered at the door, afraid to go inside, not wanting to know if Jack had left. But the faint sound of music coming from inside the house made her heart suddenly race.

  It was dark inside. Utterly dark. She knew the way, though, as she dropped her keys on the counter and moved toward the sound of the stereo. Its green power light glimmered like a little beacon, silhouetting the figure sitting there alone in the dark in the overstuffed chair.

  "Jack?"

  Slowly, the figure moved, got to his feet. Relief bled through her. She would know him anywhere, the way he moved and held himself. The scent that belonged to him.

  "Jack." This time it wasn't a question but an answered prayer.

  He opened his arms and she found her way into them, pressing her face against his shoulder as he held her tightly to him.

  He kissed her hair.

  "I thought you'd gone."

  His fingers curled against her skull. "I told you I wouldn't leave until you were safe."

  "When I saw you there tonight, I thought you'd come to say goodbye."

  He took her face between his hands and dropped his mouth on hers in a hard, answering kiss, meant to say what he could never, would never say. Tess surrendered to it, leaning into his embrace, the slick glide of their mouths against each other feeling as natural as breathing. The erotic tide rushed back, stealing the strength from her legs and flooding her senses as Billie Holiday's voice filled the darkness behind them with a throaty, soulful sound.