“How can I help it? Every time I turn around, things seem to be going from bad to worse. I feel caught in the middle of some twilight zone or something.”
He knew exactly what she meant, only he also knew she, at least, had an out. “It can end, you know. All you have to do is walk away. Leave Nooton.”
That brought her head up, and she stared at him as though he’d suggested she rob the local bank. “How can you suggest such a thing after last night? You need me, Joe.”
“I don’t need you. I want you more than I want my next breath, but I don’t need you.”
He may as well have struck her; her expression turned that bewildered, that hurt. Her soft, insightful eyes scanned his face, and she slowly shook her head, laughed mirthlessly and looked away. “I knew you’d regret it in the morning. What I didn’t expect is that you’d be so bitter about it.”
“The hell you didn’t.”
It was a brutal thing to say, but he said it as much for her good as his own. He knew she was already too close to having control of his heart, and he needed to remind them both that last night’s decisions were made with their eyes open; they’d known there would be a price to pay.
Nevertheless, when she uttered an unintelligible reply and tossed the sheet aside to scramble from bed, he reached out, caught her around the waist and dragged her back against him.
“Don’t!” she cried.
“I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re not. You meant it. Nothing’s changed at all. What’s worse, you’re tempted to continue testing me because you can’t get past the suspicion that I may be setting you up.”
Tired of the doubts, Joe swore under his breath and tried to ease his inner turmoil by stroking his beard-rough cheek against her hair. “Hasn’t the reason for that occurred to you?”
Rachel went still, cautious. “Of course it has. You don’t know how to trust. Me or anyone else for that matter.”
“And why is that?”
“Because you’ve been a cop too long and you’re hardened through and through.”
“Sure I am,” he replied, aware she was reacting to her wounded feelings, which allowed him to speak with more honesty than he might have. “But maybe I’m also a little scared. Maybe I’m a lot scared.”
“Of what?” she asked, resentment lingering in her voice.
“You, for one thing. Some other things, but you most of all.”
“Don’t make me laugh. You’re one of the most disciplined, awesome men I’ve ever met. I’m not in your league.”
“That’s what you think…and up until a few hours ago, you couldn’t convince me that you were more than a beautiful, cold-blooded bitch. So much for us reading each other accurately.”
Although she didn’t answer right away, Joe felt the rigidity drain from her body. Slowly, he shifted his hold, and this time caressed her hair with his fingers, slow strokes that continued downward to trace the feminine line of her spine. At her helpless shiver, he grasped her right shoulder and she tilted her head to touch her cheek to his hand.
“Roddie used to say that judging people fairly and accurately was most people’s downfall.”
“Was he the one who died?” Joe didn’t mean to resurrect painful memories, but they were her memories and he wanted to own a piece of them, too. Again, maybe not smart, he admitted, but necessary.
“Yes. He was an expert at being misjudged.” As though needing something useful and immediate to do with her hands, Rachel reached for the pot of coffee and poured some of the steaming brew into the single matching cup and saucer Jewel had provided.
When she offered it to him, Joe shook his head, trying not to focus on the enticing picture she made and how tempting her uptilting breasts were. “She meant that for you. Besides, you look like you need it.”
“We both do, but we’ll share. Go ahead. It isn’t poisoned,” she insisted once she noticed he continued to hesitate.
“How would you know? That woman hates my guts.”
“But as you said, she thought she was bringing this to me.” She immediately turned back to the tray, moved it onto the bed and lifted the stainless serving cover from the platter. A huge omelet oozing with chopped ham, peppers and cheese, and accompanied by hash browns and toast smothered with Jewel’s homemade jam, sent an aromatic temptation drifting up toward them. “Do you think we can keep from hurting each other long enough to do this justice?” she asked in a tired voice.
He gave up on thinking he could be hard-nosed and instead of giving her a verbal answer, snatched up a portion of toast and forced her to take a bite. “She’s got incredible timing,” he muttered. “I’ll give her that.”
They were silent for a few moments as they passed the coffee, then the fork so they could each get some food in them. At last, with the first pang of hunger appeased, Joe ventured, “You’ve never really allowed yourself to talk about what happened to him, have you?”
“Roddie, you mean? How did you know?”
“I may misjudge you when it comes to figuring out what I want from you, and what I think you want from me, but you can’t hide from your dreams.”
She pushed a piece of mushroom with her fork. “Did I talk in my sleep?”
“Not last night. But you have in the past, and I’ve heard you.” Joe reached over and exchanged the fork for the coffee cup. “Why don’t you tell me about him?”
Rachel delayed making any response by taking another longer drink of the coffee and afterward refilling the cup. She didn’t want to talk about Roddie, not now when there were other problems, equally sad—perhaps soon to be equally tragic—to contend with. Yet because he’d asked, she knew she couldn’t shut him out.
“To understand Roddie, why he did what he did, you’d have to know what my father and older brother are like. Are you sure you want to hear all that?”
“You said it yourself—we’re not strangers anymore. Doesn’t intimacy demand its own price?”
She’d already begun paying hers; she felt it with every painful beat of her heart. “All right.” She focused on the twisted sheet riding up at their feet and took comfort in how it exposed how close they lay together. “Kirk is my oldest brother and he remains very much my father’s son—ambitious, political and ruthless. Once my father decided he wanted him to go to West Point, Kirk went. My father told him to become a career officer, and he did. Someday he’ll be told to retire and enter politics, and Kirk will.”
“You don’t approve?”
“I don’t believe in feeding into a system, any system, but especially a political one. As a lobbyist my father is always seeking another foothold in the metaphorical door, searching for someone else to use, establishing another link in the almighty networking chain. Don’t be fooled, his choices for Kirk have never had anything to do with paternal pride, they have to do with his personal goal for power.”
“Lord—you are angry.”
“You wanted to hear. Listen. Roddie was several years younger than Kirk and different. Gentler, more sensitive, he wasn’t meant to follow in Kirk’s footsteps and he tried to tell my father he didn’t want to be another ‘mental gladiator,’ as he called it. The truth is, he didn’t know what he wanted to be, and my father wasn’t interested in waiting for him to find out, let alone listening. I think Roddie’s softness embarrassed him.”
“But you two were close?”
“Not in character or temperament. But we respected each other’s ideals and dreams. We were also supportive of each other’s right to determine our own future and to make our own mistakes. Unfortunately, I wasn’t enough to buffer the battering ram of my father’s anger or our mother’s chiding. Barely two months after he got to West Point he was expelled. An upperclassman accused Roddie of making indecent overtures.” She shrugged, still unsure what really happened.
“We’ll never know the truth, but my father was furious. I’d never seen him so angry—not violently angry, but cold. Brutal. For all his shortcomings, Earl Harper Gentry is eloquen
t,” she noted sardonically. “He sliced Roddie to shreds and crushed what was left of his spirit into the ground. A few hours later Roddie shot himself.”
“And you found him,” Joe finished for her.
So he remembered their previous conversation, as well. Rachel nodded and took another sip of coffee. “His death changed me. From that moment on I was determined to live separate and away from the Earl Gentrys of the world.”
It was a full minute before Joe asked, “What plans did your father have for you?”
“Oh, he thought I should study law at his alma mater. Exactly what the world needed, don’t you think?” Her laugh was bitter. “But I wasn’t going to be just another lawyer, oh, no. He saw an eventual bench seat and, ultimately, a supreme court position on my horizon. The man does not think small.” Then she sighed, partly in relief and partly fatigued by the mere thought of all that wasted cunningness. “Imagine the power he would have had with one offspring running the country from the oval office or at least the senate, while the other helped legislate his dogma. His only regret was that my mother couldn’t give him other children so he could cover more territory.”
“Having a doctor in the family isn’t too slouchy,” Joe said, taking the cup from her hands and replacing it with the fork.
Rachel didn’t protest, but put it down, her appetite gone. “What good was a doctor to him? No, he fought me. Hard. But I wouldn’t give up any more than I could forgive him for what he’d done to my brother. In the end I saved him the trouble of having to disown me by moving out on my own. That’s why I had to take out those loans I told you about.”
“And the rest, as they say, is history?”
“More or less.”
“You know your father’s not the only willful person in your family,” Joe drawled.
“I never said drive and focus were bad. It’s where you direct it that matters.”
“Like at me, for instance?” His voice was smooth, as seductive as the backs of the fingers he stroked down her left breast and across her nipple.
Rachel felt her focus slip and couldn’t keep from shivering as needles of pleasure danced through her body. However, she managed to hold his unreadable gaze. “Yes. But only for the best reasons. Which brings us back to square one, doesn’t it?”
“Looks that way. Getting dizzy yet?”
For the most part he’d been respectfully reticent throughout her explanation, but now Rachel wondered if that had been shrewdness instead? What was going on in his mind? He gave so little away. “Joe, I stay dizzy around you, and I think you like it that way. But there’s one thing I’m clearheaded about and that is that time’s running out for you.”
He attempted a sardonic smile, but it didn’t quite form…and, like hers, his appetite suddenly seemed to disappear. “I’ve got to go with my gut hunches, Rachel. And my gut hunch says I’d better see my plans through to the end or else I won’t get another chance. I can’t sit back and let Garth get elected.”
“What does that do to us?”
He bowed his head. “It should end it before it goes any farther.”
“There goes that push-pull maneuver again. You can’t say the things you’ve said to me, share what we’ve shared, and expect me to walk away from you.”
“Great sex with a man who’s got a target painted on his back, Doc,” Joe reminded her with the cold and unpampered outspokenness that was his trait.
She remained silent. Resolute.
“The crazy thing is,” he admitted, his voice barely audible, “I’d be disappointed if you did.”
It was the most thrilling, most heart-wrenching thing he’d said to her, and she almost sent the tray skidding as she wrapped her arms around his neck. “Then there has to be a way to find out what to do to resolve this,” she said with renewed energy surging within her. “If we—Oh, God! How could I have forgotten?”
“Forgotten what?”
“Something J—something he said about an old woman.” Feeling Joe pull away as soon as the words were out, she quickly captured his face between her hands. “You have to listen, even if you don’t like hearing me call him by your name. Last night I didn’t pay that much attention because of what he’d said about me, about us. But I remember now. He told me to speak to an old woman. ‘The old woman knows,’ he said.”
“What old woman?” Joe asked, his tone reluctant but curious.
“I didn’t know. Not then. He was rambling somewhat, talking about understanding fate or destiny or something. But think about it. Who else could he have meant if not Jewel?”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
In the lengthy silence that followed, the sound of old man Bernard’s ancient VW revving up and pulling out of the driveway was more like a bus. In fact Joe took so long to respond to Rachel’s comment, he wasn’t surprised when the light went out of her eyes and she drew back from him.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“I don’t trust her, and I sure as hell don’t want you talking to her about any of this.”
“It’s not as though I’d blatantly—”
“No, Rachel!”
He expected her to argue. She didn’t. With a brief, stiff nod, she slid off the bed, snatched up her shirt and left, murmuring, “I’m going to go get cleaned up.”
Letting her go was hard, but Joe knew it was necessary. They needed some time apart. Some space. He had to have the opportunity to think, and it wouldn’t happen if she was around. Then all he wanted was to drag her back into his bed and lose himself in her softness and heat as he’d been doing most of the night.
God, he was tired—tired of living an existence where he was constantly looking over his shoulder, of not knowing who was harmless and who was dangerous. He was fed up with denying himself almost everything that usually gave him pleasure because it was just too risky, or costly, or unavailable. But most of all, he was tired of not knowing what was going to happen.
And as though that wasn’t enough, there was the bridge.
From down the hall came the sound of the bathroom door closing. The unmistakable hard thud had Joe slumping back against the pillows and muttering, “Hell, Rachel.”
He’d never been good at relationships. It was why he’d hooked up with Terri. She hadn’t been interested in anything permanent, any more than he’d been. All she’d wanted was a convenient bed partner when she was between assignments—and safety in that convenience. Considering the risky times they were living in, it had made good sense.
That wasn’t to say they hadn’t been fond of each other. He’d put his life on the line for her, hadn’t he? But he’d known the words love and permanence hadn’t been in her vocabulary, nor his.
Rachel made him think of those words. She made him think of too many things he had no right to dwell on.
Hearing the shower water start in the bathroom, Joe swallowed the dregs of coffee remaining in the cup and reached for his jeans. As he drew them over his hips, he heard the sound of an approaching vehicle and then a shout.
He went to the front window and recognized Mudcat leaning out of his chrome-adorned pickup, which was glossy in spite of the dreary weather. The front door opened and Joe recognized a female voice berate Mudcat for having no respect for “folks still resting.” He’d had to deal with Jewel’s humorlessness only a short while ago.
“Don’t know what’s wrong with him,” she added waspishly. “You wanna know, you go on up and ask.”
“Aw, now, I ain’t got time to do all that, Jewel. I got me a business to run.”
“And I don’t? Get going, why don’t you, and stop wasting my time.”
Joe leaned down to speak through the screen. “Hey.” Once he got Mudcat’s attention, he lifted his bandaged hand. “I won’t be in today.”
“You ain’t serious? You can’t do that to me!”
“Well, I am. Doctor’s orders. She says I can’t afford to open it up again. Have to watch it for a few days.”
“Days!”
From benea
th him, Joe heard Jewel’s snort. Then the porch door opened and slammed shut again, indicating she’d heard enough and had gone back inside. Good, Joe thought. The less audience he had the better. He shrugged, waved his apology to Mudcat and withdrew from the window.
“Hey…wait a minute!” Mudcat yelled.
It was a risk—he needed the job, especially if it meant he had to stay around here much longer—but Joe didn’t respond to Mudcat’s call. He didn’t want to argue with the guy, and he sure as heck wasn’t going to the garage and leaving Rachel here alone. He didn’t want to think of how much trouble she could get into during that time.
The sound of Mudcat’s truck spitting gravel as it backed out of the driveway drew Joe to the side window. Mudcat happened to look up as he shifted into drive and yelled, “You’re finished, hear? Don’t you try and come back. And don’t bother trying to collect any back pay, because I don’t owe you anything!”
Then dirt and gravel spat every which way, and the truck shot up the drive. Great, Joe thought, slumping down on the window ledge. Now he’d done it.
He looked toward the bridge and his mood grew more grim. The thing was doing more than bringing him bad luck; it was beginning to give him the creeps. He hunched over and rested his forearm on his knee, studying the swirls of denser mist in the center of the bridge. He still couldn’t see anything—he simply wished he understood how, why Rachel did.
“I wish the whole damn thing would drop into the—”
A dark flash of movement in the corner of his eye stopped him. He swung his head around to identify it at the same instant the thing slammed into the screen at cheek level.
Joe threw himself from the ledge to the floor and caught his balance by landing with his back to the bed. What the hell? he thought.
Not three feet away, a bat clung to the screen, its claws digging into and bending the wire mesh, its eyes staring at him blindly. Joe didn’t know what looked more repulsive—its claws, milky eyes or the intricate pattern of fine blood vessels delineating its widespread, quivering wings.
Night Mist Page 14
