by Tami Hoag
REILLY FOLLOWED JAYNE home, keeping his Jeep a discreet distance behind the red MG—just in case. Jayne’s driving was enough to keep a team of guardian angels sweating. Her little sports car wandered from one side of the winding road to the other as Jayne’s attention swayed from one point of interest to the next. She nearly clipped a pair of bicyclists while admiring the view of the seashore and just managed to swerve out of the path of a tour bus in the nick of time when a sheep at the side of the road caught her interest. It was enough to give a man a heart attack. Even the Australian sheep dog sitting in Reilly’s passenger seat whined in anxiety.
“I know, Rowdy,” Reilly mumbled. “She’s enough to drive a man bonkers.”
Heaven knew she had done it to him, he reflected, unable to keep his own mind from wandering. Lately Jayne had occupied his thoughts to the exclusion of all else. Now they would find out once and for all if this thing between them was more than passion, more than the lure of the forbidden. Anticipation coiled, warm and tight, low in his belly.
He slowed the Jeep and hit the signal, following Jayne off the coastal highway and onto a private drive that climbed around a hill and cut through a stand of pine trees. The drive eventually widened into a farm yard. Jayne’s car skidded to a halt, and she jumped out as if she’d just won a race.
“Here we are,” she said with forced cheerfulness. Her heart was in her throat. Inviting Reilly here and having him here were two very different things. The farm was so much a part of her that having him on it seemed strangely intimate to her.
Wondering if she’d done the right thing, she wound two fingers into her bracelet. Nothing happened. No buzzing, no warmth, nothing. She smiled nervously at Reilly, then scowled at the bracelet as Reilly climbed down out of his Jeep. The darn thing was getting mighty selective about its premonitions all of a sudden. Great. Just when she most needed the charm’s guidance, the thing had developed some kind of psychic snafu.
She turned her worried gaze to Reilly. There was a fine layer of dust on his leather jacket, and his golden hair was wind-tossed. He squinted as he looked around, etching lines into the tan skin beside his sky-color eyes. He looked supremely male, rugged and tough, ready to conquer the untamed wilderness and the odd stray female he might find in it. The thought made a little whimper catch in Jayne’s throat. Maybe bringing him here hadn’t been such a hot idea after all.
“So where’s the house?” he asked as his dog jumped to the ground and ran off to explore.
“This is the house.” Jayne swung an arm in the general direction of the building and self-consciously tugged at her wild mane with her other hand, thinking she probably looked like the bride of Frankenstein after the drive up the coast in her convertible.
Reilly stared at the large weathered gray building she had indicated and frowned. “Jaynie, that’s a barn.”
“Was a barn,” she corrected him. “I had it converted.”
“I don’t guess I’m surprised by that,” he said with a shrug. It was something Jayne would do. Other women in her financial position would have built themselves a palatial estate with manicured lawns and statuary. Jayne lived in the middle of nowhere in a converted barn.
He studied the building more closely, taking note of the large multipaned windows that punctuated one long side. There was half of a whiskey barrel overflowing with dainty purple and white flowers beside the door. On a wooden park bench beside the flowers a black and orange cat was curled up, its tail twitching back and forth as its yellow eyes glared at Reilly’s dog. Rowdy gave a sharp bark at the cat and quickly dodged away, loping off across the yard.
Reilly’s gaze swept the farmyard, taking in the assortment of other smaller buildings. There was a chicken coop with exotic chickens browsing in the fenced pen around it, brilliant-colored birds with elaborate combs and extravagant tail feathers. Nearer the house stood a small dairy parlor with herbs growing on the sod roof. A large patch of the yard had the beginnings of a vegetable garden sprouting. On the far side of it stood a small stable with a split-rail corral extending beyond. Rowdy stood with his paws on the lowest rail, intently regarding the small herd of shaggy, long-necked llamas on the other side.
A fond smile tugged at the corners of Reilly’s mouth. Jayne couldn’t have sheep or cows, like anyone else. She had to have llamas and chickens that looked like they were from another planet. She probably didn’t even think that was unusual. She was blessed with an innate naïveté he had heretofore encountered only in young children. But Jayne was certainly no little girl, he reminded himself as the lapel of her jacket gapped away and he glimpsed a small, full, unencumbered breast outlined beneath her T-shirt.
She shrugged and looked around her, her wild hair bouncing around her slender shoulders, the dark strands catching fire in the morning light. “What do you think?”
“I like it,” he said, his voice low and rough, his gaze glued to Jayne. When she looked up at him like a startled doe, he cleared his throat and gave his attention over to the object of her question. “It’s a nice place.”
The farm didn’t much resemble the sheep station he’d grown up on and had thought to spend his life working, but it gave Reilly a sense of home, just the same. It was a simple place. It was a place where a man could smell the earth and feel the clean air on his skin. It was a far cry from L.A. It suited Jayne. And it suited him, he decided.
“How much land have you got?”
“Four hundred acres. It’s mostly wilderness. I always wanted a farm,” she rambled on, poking her nose into the open back of Reilly’s Jeep to see if there was anything she could carry. “I don’t mean to farm it, though. I don’t take to all that machinery.”
She grabbed the handle of an enormous duffel bag and wrestled with it until Reilly gently shooed her aside. He lifted out the battered bag as if it weighed nothing and slung the strap over his broad shoulder. Jayne looked up at him and swallowed hard. He was standing much too close. The twinkle in his eyes and the quirk of his lips made her breath catch.
“I’ve always believed having lots of natural open space around frees a person to become spiritually in touch with the primordial planes of pure existence.” She swallowed hard. “Don’t you think so?”
“Grew up on a farm, didn’t you?” Reilly said, ignoring her mystical prattle.
“Yes. My daddy was a barn manager at one of the big thoroughbred farms in Kentucky. Paris, Kentucky. I always used to pretend it was Paris, France, but—”
“Jaynie?” he questioned softly, his azure eyes dancing. Moving no more than half a step, he had her trapped between his body and the side of the Jeep. “Are you nervous about havin’ me stay in your house?” His voice dropped a velvety octave to a tone that made all Jayne’s nerve endings hum. “What’s the matter? Don’t think you can trust yourself with me sleepin’ in the next bedroom?”
She hadn’t actually allowed herself to think that far ahead. Now that he had raised the question, the scene sprang to life in Jayne’s fertile imagination: Reilly stretched out, naked, the white sheet tangled around his slim, tan hips, moonlight spilling through the big window and across the bed. All the air seeped out of her lungs in a slow hissing sigh. She was suddenly much too warm inside her clothes.
“We could skip the preliminaries, you know,” he whispered, leaning closer. “I don’t have any objections to us gettin’ to know each other in bed.”
Jayne licked her lips and said nothing. It was really quite frightening how badly she wanted him to kiss her. She had to make a concerted effort to keep the heels of her low boots on the ground instead of raising them up until she was on tiptoes, straining to get her lips closer to his.
The sudden slam of the screen door jolted her as if it had struck her.
“Did you get my Fig Newtons? I’m just gonna die if you forgot them again, Jayne,” a distinctly feminine voice with an East Coast accent whined.
Reilly jerked around to glare at the source of the voice, and his mouth dropped open in sheer shock. Stan
ding at the door of Jayne’s house was a girl of about sixteen wearing ragged jeans and a black T-shirt with the logo of a heavy metal band emblazoned across the front. She wore her orange and black hair in a crown of spikes that resembled the headdress of an exotic lizard. She had a safety pin dangling from the lobe of one ear, and she was very, very pregnant. She stared back at him with kohl-ringed eyes that grew wider and wider and wider.
Jayne used the moment of silence to compose herself. She stepped away from Reilly’s Jeep—and Reilly—straightening her oversized jacket and recapturing some of her sense of inner calm. She wasn’t going to be alone in the house with Reilly. Far from it. She concentrated on the sense of relief that ran over her and ignored the disappointment.
“Ohmygod! Ohmygod!” the girl mumbled incoherently, pressing her hands to her pale cheeks. Her fingernails were painted black. “It’s—it’s—ohmygod!”
Jayne shook her head and cast a wry look at Reilly. “If you could bottle your effect on women and sell it, you’d be able to call Donald Trump poor white trash.”
Reilly scowled at the remark but didn’t take his eyes off the awe-struck punk creature advancing on him. He took a wary step backward.
“Candi, heel,” Jayne said, catching her young charge by the shoulder, halting her pursuit of Reilly, who was plastered against the side of his Jeep. “Candi, this is Pat Reilly. He was a good friend of my late husband. He’s going to be staying with us for a little while.”
Her description of their relationship didn’t escape Reilly, and he shot Jayne a cold look. She was trying to put a barrier between them, trying to resurrect Mac’s ghost. Well, it damn well wouldn’t work. He opened his mouth to tell her so, but her next words brought him up short.
“Reilly, this is Candi Kane. She’s living with me until she has her baby.”
“She’s what?” he croaked as all his hot visions of bedtime games were thoroughly dowsed with the cold water of reality.
Jayne’s lips curved slowly upward in an incredibly smug smile. “Candi lives here. With me. In my house. Twenty-four hours a day.”
Reilly planted one hand on his hip and rubbed the other across his jaw, caught between equally strong urges to laugh and to wring Jayne’s pretty neck. He gave in to the first and quelled the second. The little minx! No wonder she’d given in so easily to his request for housing. His broad shoulders shook as he wagged a finger at her. “Don’t think you’ve got the better of me, sheila.”
Jayne sniffed. “I didn’t know there was a better of you.”
“It all looks choice to me,” Candi whispered reverently, her eyes eating Reilly up.
Jayne shot her a scorching look. “It’s talk like that that gave you an expanding waistline, young lady.”
“Jayne!” the girl wailed, mortified. Her face flushed a furious shade of red. She lowered her voice to an embarrassed hiss. “Jeeze, did you have to bring that up?”
Jayne rolled her eyes. “Honey, I don’t think it escaped his attention. Reilly’s not naïve enough to think you were just hiding a medicine ball under your blouse.” Her hands cupping Candi’s shoulders, she gave the girl a serious once-over. “Now, how are you feeling today? You don’t look in imminent danger of death from lack of Fig Newtons. Good thing, too, ’cause I forgot to get groceries.”
“Again?” Candi shook her spikey head and cast a woeful glance Reilly’s way, apparently having survived being star struck. “I hope you didn’t come here for the food. What little there is, is weird. Just wait until you get a taste of her tea.” She made a face that more than described her opinion of the brew.
Jayne took umbrage at the slam against her cooking. “I grow the herbs for that tea myself. And, I’ll have you know, my all-natural cuisine is very healthful.”
Candi snorted. “Sprouts and oat gook. A person could starve.”
“You eat like a marine!” Jayne argued, throwing her hands up in disbelief.
Candi tugged on the bottom of her T-shirt and stuck her nose in the air, presenting them with her ample profile. “Well, I am eating for two.”
“Who? Arnold Schwarzenegger and Refrigerator Perry?”
The girl ignored Jayne and looked at Reilly hopefully. “Can you do anything besides look devastating? Like cook?”
He chuckled. “I can fry steak and eggs with the best of them.”
She sighed heavenward. “Maybe there is a God, after all. Now, if you two will excuse me, I have to go get prone; my feet are swelling. Nice meeting you, Reilly.”
“Mr. Reilly,” Jayne corrected her with a dire look.
“Whatever.”
Reilly dropped a hand on Jayne’s shoulder and stood beside her, watching in silence as Candi waddled back into the barn-cum-house. “Did her folks really name her Candi Kane?”
“Yep.”
“Crikey, they were askin’ for it.”
“And they got it, too.” Jayne shook her head. “She’s a handful.”
“How’d she end up with you? Sounds like she’s from New York or someplace like that.”
“Providence, Rhode Island. She’s a runaway,” Jayne explained. “I sort of adopted her from a shelter in San Francisco. A friend of mine is a counselor there. He introduced me to Candi, and I just kind of brought her home with me.
“She’s a good kid, really,” she said, appealing to Reilly with her liquid black eyes. “She’s just made a lot of bad choices. She could have a very bright future if she’d quit trying to sabotage herself.”
Reilly lifted a hand to brush his fingertips along the curve of Jayne’s cheek. “Trying to save the world, Jaynie?” he asked softly. There was no sarcasm in his voice, no derision, but a kind of sweet curiosity. His eyes glowed with it.
“Just a little piece of it,” Jayne replied honestly, her lush mouth turning up at one corner in an endearing smile.
As much as he had wanted to have her all to himself, Reilly couldn’t find it in him to be angry or even annoyed at the presence of Candi Kane. Looking down into Jayne’s sweet face, all he could feel was a strange warmth in his chest. It was something like pride, only more intimate, something that seemed very special, very rare.
“You’re one in a million, Calamity Jayne,” he murmured.
And he leaned down and kissed her—not in the possessive, sexual way he had kissed her before. This kiss was gentle, a benediction. Jayne drank in his approval. She felt as if the sun had come down and encircled her with a golden glow.
When he lifted his head, Reilly tweaked her nose and gave her a wink, nodding in the direction of the converted cow barn. “Come on, luv, show me to my stall.”
Jayne loved her house. She had designed it with two things in mind—comfort and open spaces. One room flowed into the next with scarcely a wall in the place. One bonus she hadn’t even considered at the time was the lack of privacy. It was going to be very difficult for Pat Reilly to get her totally alone in a room … or for her to get him alone, she added with a frown.
Her common sense might have been wary of Reilly and his motives for wanting to rekindle the previously forbidden flame, but her hormones were all for jumping into the nearest bed with him, Jayne admitted to herself. It seemed she was no more immune to Reilly’s roguish charm than the rest of the women on the planet were.
Who was she kidding? She had no immunity to it whatsoever. If she had, she would never have given him a second look when Mac had introduced her to him all those years ago. The temptation to betray her beloved husband would never have crossed her mind or blackened her conscience.
Mac’s dead, Jaynie. Dead and buried. There’s no reason for the livin’ to go on feelin’ guilty.
But guilt was only a part of the bigger picture.
Reilly stood with his hands planted at the waist of his jeans, staring off across the sweeping expanse of the first floor with something like disbelief in his eyes. He’d never seen anything quite like it. The living areas were divided by various groups of furniture or by curtains of hanging plants. There were heavy pos
ts and beams aplenty, but there was nary a solid wall on this level.
They walked through an enormous kitchen where copper and iron pots and bunches of dried herbs and flowers hung from the heavy ceiling beams, and where a polished, pine harvest table dominated the floor space. The cupboards had been constructed of weathered barn siding. The cobalt-blue tiled counter tops were crowded with Kentucky salt-glazed pottery.
Beyond the kitchen, on the north side of the building and up three steps, was a more formal dining area. On the south side and down three steps was a sprawling living room with plush lavender carpet. The south wall was virtually all window, decorated by nothing more than a deep purple velvet swag valance artfully slung on a thick brass rod.
The collection of furniture in the room could only be called eclectic. Bon Jovi blared from a tall French armoire crammed with stereo equipment. A low, black-and-gold japanned trunk topped with a thick slab of glass served as a coffee table. It was cluttered with old books and magazines. There were iron floor lamps with fringed shades and a bamboo cage made in the likeness of an elaborate house with two tiny birds flitting about within it—no doubt trying to escape the rock music, Reilly thought.
For lounging there were three huge, ornate Victorian sofas upholstered in purple brocade. Two were piled with paisley-print pillows in shades of mauve and purple and green. One was occupied by Candi, sprawling the length of it with her stocking feet propped on one arm and her spikey hair sticking up over the other. She was thoroughly engrossed in the latest copy of WE magazine.
Reilly scowled at the picture of himself staring out from the cover of the magazine with a crooked grin. Turning away, he nearly plowed into an aquarium. He pulled himself up short and stared in utter disbelief at the contents of the tank.
“Bloody hell! That’s a tarantula!”
“I know,” Jayne said calmly, as if everyone she knew kept one. “You shouldn’t be so surprised. After all, you sent him to me.”
Reilly opened his mouth and clamped it back shut. He looked from Jayne to the huge hairy arachnid and back again. He had bought the thing at a pet shop and sent it to her when she’d panned Deadly Weapon. It had been a practical joke, just one of many he had played on her over the years. “I never expected you to keep it!”
