by BJ James
“Waiting won’t make it any easier.” Softly, as a mother would, she said what must be said. “We may never see Ashley again. He’s never in his life been able to keep an idea in his head long enough to bear a grudge, but this time might be different.”
“I’d hoped not.” Nicole closed the glass doors of the cabinet with a sharp thud.
“We all hoped it was a tempest in a teapot. Something he would get over like a disappointed schoolboy’s crush.”
“But he hasn’t. I hoped painting would lure him back and I tried to leave that door open, at least. Jeb has stayed away, thinking it would help.”
“So that’s why he’s been conspicuously absent.”
In Charleston and at the gallery, maybe, but not on the island. Every time she looked up, or took a step, Jeb was there. If not Jeb, then one of his crew. Mitch and Matthew had never been as visible as they were now.
“We both thought it best.” Nicole moved away from Annabelle’s perceptive gaze. She’d run an emotional gamut for three days, and her astute assistant was certain to see.
“Just like it was best he walked out of here when you needed someone. No,” Annabelle amended, “when you needed him.” She would be some time forgetting he’d walked away from Nicole. She’d made no bones about it over the days since.
“Jeb felt that by being here, he was responsible for how badly it turned out.”
A group of customers poured into the gallery. Nicole prayed they would prove a distraction, ending the conversation. But beyond responding to her greeting, they continued to laugh and talk among themselves. Annabelle’s unwelcome attention remained on her.
“You think,” Annabelle said, moving closer, her hands on her hips, dark eyes flashing. “You don’t know.”
“But I do know, Annabelle.”
“Has he told you?”
“Not exactly.”
“Then how?”
“I know Jeb. That’s enough.”
“Do you?” Through narrowed eyes she watched Nicole, as if by shutting out the rest of their surroundings she would discover some enlightening truth. But, oddly, she felt the truth hadn’t been written, yet. “I wonder if you do. I wonder if anyone knows Jeb Tanner.” Then thoughtfully, “I wonder if Jeb Tanner knows Jeb Tanner.”
A customer chose that time to ask for information about some small bauble, something to take home to his wife. Nicole gratefully addressed his question, and a pattern was set. It was the last day of a convention, husbands and lovers who’d spent their days on golf courses, the tennis courts, deep sea fishing and even occasionally the convention, rushed in to buy the definitive gift that would prove how hard they’d worked, and how much the loved one had been missed.
Nicole didn’t question the hypocrisy, or quarrel with it, she was simply thankful to be too occupied to think on Annabelle’s last observation. By the end of the day, she was exhausted. For one brief moment she considered staying over in the Charleston, then realized that would make her too easily accessible to Annabelle. She loved the woman dearly, but tonight she wasn’t ready for any more of her incisive analysis. It was a distinct possibility that the same incisiveness could be brought to the island. Annabelle was certainly familiar with it, and all its news. But the island had a deterrent Charleston didn’t.
“...Jeb?”
Nicole whirled from her last chore of the day to stare at Annabelle. Her first thought was that Annabelle had finished a thought she’d spoken aloud; her second, that this clever woman who seemed attuned to her had added mind reading to her skills. Then she realized it was only a question.
“Hey!” Annabelle backed away from Nicole’s hard, intense look. “I was only asking. You act as if I committed a sin.”
“I’m sorry, I was thinking of something else, I didn’t really hear you.”
“There’s a lot you don’t hear lately. Or see.”
“What does that mean?”
“Be switched if I know. Just a passing thought. But you will be seeing him tonight, right?”
“Jeb.”
“Who else?”
“He usually drops by sometime during the evening.”
“For what reason?”
“Does he have to have a reason?”
“Most people do.”
“I’ll be sure to ask him,” Nicole said dryly.
“You do that. The answer might surprise both of you.”
Nicole refused to ask what the cryptic remark meant. “You don’t like him very much now, do you?”
“Are you kidding?” Eyebrows rose theatrically. “As far as I’m concerned, its a toss up to decide which of the three of them is the hottest number to come to town in a long, long while.”
“You didn’t answer my question, Annabelle.”
“Let’s just say the jury’s out on that question, and leave it at that, shall we?” To make sure Nicole didn’t press her for an answer she couldn’t give, Annabelle gathered up her keys. “If that’s all for the day, I’d like to get on home. Harry’s making a special dinner.”
Nicole was quick to grasp this straw that offered escape. Their conversation was going nowhere. “Let’s both go home,” she suggested. “And forget this day.”
* * *
Dressed in slacks, a long flowing shirt and barefoot, Nicole tarried in her kitchen, spending more time putting away food she’d prepared, than she had eating. In Annabelle’s words, she’d skinnied down some in the past week or so, but she hadn’t bothered with stepping on the scales after her shower. She’d worry about her weight when there was nothing else to worry about.
A tread on the stairs leading from the beach signaled what she’d been waiting for. She was at the door, sliding it open, by the time he stepped on the deck.
She thought he would kiss her as he had the other evenings he’d finished his nightly stroll with dropping by her house. Instead, grim-faced and without a word, he slipped his arms around her, and tugged her to him. His fingers ruffled through her hair, drawing her cheek to his chest. His embrace was tight, hard, the slow, easy beat of an athlete’s heart played a steady rhythm in her ear.
He held her so tightly, so silently, alarm crept through her immediate pleasure. “Jeb?”
She would have struggled to lift her head, but his lips were there at her crown, brushing light kisses over dark tresses. “Shh,” he ordered, his warm breath rushing over her. “Just for now don’t think, don’t worry, just let me hold you.”
She didn’t understand, she hadn’t for some time, but nothing in the world would have kept her from answering the strange, fierce hunger she heard in his voice. Slipping her arms around him, she nestled closer, filling her lungs with the crisp, clean scent of him. Alarm quieted, lulled by the sure, vital strength of the heart beneath her cheek, the arms that held her. Her mind drifted, blocking out thought and worry. Her body softened, responded.
As if he’d been waiting for this moment, needed it, he muttered softly and held her closer in a dance without steps, with only the sound of the sea for their music. There was feverish desperation in his touch as if he would never let her go. Yet, after a minute, he murmured something unintelligible and relaxed his embrace.
Nicole stepped back, hoping she wouldn’t see the haunted look that had become disturbingly familiar. Yet knowing she would.
“You look tired, sweetheart.” Jeb stroked circles like bruises under her eye, wishing this ordeal were over. That Tony Callison would come, not within the few days projected, but now. Then he could get out of her life, and she could restore what order she could.
All the gentleness left him as he lifted his gaze from her face, letting it sweep the room as if he were searching for something that should be there. Something abominable.
His eyes were cold, icily perceptive.
Gray ice.
Nicole shivered, every vestige of warmth fled from her. Stunned by the meteoric transformation, she stepped back again. As she looked away, a brutally honest part of her admitted the change in him wasn’t
so stunning after all. It had begun with the restless watchfulness. Perhaps it had always been there, but she hadn’t been so keenly aware of it until the super-cautious approach to Eden.
Restless. The day she’d warned Annabelle he was restless and would sail away one day, loomed like a ghostly specter. A reasonable warning, for Annabelle, for herself. But her heart hadn’t listened.
Jeb’s gaze returned to her. He saw her pallor, the tremble of her lips. The stark hurt in glittering eyes that branded his soul with a look that matched the mood that had plagued him all day.
She knows. The thought struck him like a thunderbolt. Not what I am, he thought, but what I can never be.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. She knew, but didn’t understand what she knew. But she would when this was done. “I shouldn’t have come.”
“Jeb...”
He didn’t mean to touch her again. But he found himself taking the hand that reached out to him. A small hand, delicate, but not fragile. Like the woman. She would be all right in time.
Time. There would never be any for him. Only to say goodbye.
“Rest, sweetheart. This will be over soon.”
“What?” Her hand convulsed in his. “No!”
“Shh,” he soothed. Lifting her hand to his lips he kissed her fingers. As he released her he stepped back. Lover had become hunter, as he always should have been. The smile that curved his lips gently did not touch his eyes.
Forgive me.
Long after his footsteps were swallowed by the night, the words fluttered in her mind like moth wings. Hushed, surreal. Had he said them, or had she only imagined?
Dry-eyed, she stared into the darkness, as still as stone, as blind. Hours might have passed, or only minutes, when she roused. She didn’t know or care.
Forgive me.
He’d made no promises, she’d wanted none.
For a while she’d been happier than she ever thought she could be. What did that leave to forgive? Nicole turned her back on the brooding darkness.
“There’s nothing, Jeb. Nothing that needs forgiveness.”
* * *
Matthew caught the first hint of movement at the edge of his vision. A clump of sea oats shuddered where there was no wind. Sand tumbled without reason from the top of a dune. If he were a man given to assumption, his first would have been a foraging animal. His second that Jeb had returned.
The Watch lived by fact, and died by assumption.
Swinging the night glasses toward the disturbance and holding his breath, he waited. Nothing. Still he waited. His hand itched for the radio.
“Not yet,” he muttered. Sweat trickled in his eyes. He didn’t blink or wipe it away. Another stem of oats shook, the heavy head shivering in still air. Sand slipped in a miniature avalanche, this time closer to the house. His eyes strained.
Nothing.
The Apache word for patience rolled softly off his tongue. Then, as if assimilated by refracted light, a figure appeared at the base of the first piling of Nicole’s house. Matthew reached for the radio, as instinct and intuition sounded a silent warning.
A rare curse ripped from him.
His face was hard, his eyes angry slits, his lips a cruel slash when he finally spoke. “Jeb.”
Jeb was lying in the dark, staring at the ceiling, damning the long hours of waiting. His name sliced through his thoughts, a disembodied whisper summoning him from hell. In one fluid move he was on his feet, listening.
“He’s here.” The radio hissed its alarm.
Every nerve and muscle was honed, ready, in a chaotic mix of relief and fear. “Where?”
“Close enough that he’ll be inside in thirty seconds.”
Jeb grabbed a shirt. “I’m on my way.”
“Jeb! There’s more.” Matthew’s urgent voiced crackled through the room. “Listen.”
With a sinking feeling that turned to rage, Jeb listened.
* * *
Nicole stirred as something scratched at her mind, drawing her from her shallow sleep. She’d slept fitfully, dreaming of riddles with no answers, waking often. Yet never as completely as now. Never with the feeling of...
What?
She knew only that her heart was racing, her skin prickled with the feel of eyes watching from the dark.
A whisper of sound barely beyond her bed set a shock wave spiraling through her. Her heart lurched, a painful pressure stabbed her chest. Her mouth was dry, her throat too taut to scream. Sitting upright in a jerky motion, not out of boldness, but because she couldn’t face the unknown lying down, she called a name in a labored voice, and prayed. “Jeb?”
A mirthless chuckle flowed out of a shadow darker than the rest, a hollow sound, plucking at her nerves like a guitar string tuned too tightly. “Not this time, Nicole. But I’ve brought someone else to see you.”
It took a minute for recognition to penetrate the befuddling haze of fear. Gathering the covers to her breasts, she sat up, willing herself to see through murky shade. This was crazy! It couldn’t be. “Tony?”
“Right, the second try.” He moved soundlessly, his body seeming to materialize in a pool of light falling from the window. Nicole choked back a cry as she found herself looking at an older, masculine version of herself. As she stared, he laughed again. “What? Nothing to say to your long lost brother?”
She couldn’t think, couldn’t feel. There was only confusion. Striving to make sense of this, of his sudden appearance, and his obvious need for secrecy, she forced herself to be calm. Only her fingers twitched nervously against the covers. “What should I say?”
“You’re a cool one now, aren’t you? No bloodcurdling shrieks of fright, no happy tears. So, how about ‘long time, no see’?” He lounged against the chair at the foot of her bed. “There was a time you would’ve run to me, wrapping yourself around my neck like a limpet.”
“Limpet.” The word battered at her, repelled her. “Is that what I was to you? All I was?”
“Eventually. Why else do you think I walked away from you, with your diploma clutched so proudly in your hand, all those years ago?”
Nicole felt sick, and she felt foolish carrying on a conversation from her bed. Throwing back the sheet, not caring that her shirt stopped short of her knees, she slipped into her robe. “Let’s continue this conversation, if that’s what it is, in the other room, shall we?”
This was her brother. She’d spent the greater part of her life worshiping him. Now she was speaking to him as if he were a stranger and denying the excoriating pain his words inflicted after a lifetime removed from him.
She was shaking and dazed as she walked past him and into the next room. She was afraid that if he touched her she would scream. Her brother! Dear God, she was afraid of her brother!
“Don’t!” His command lashed out of the darkness as she fumbled for the light switch. “No lights, please. The moonlight’s so much cozier for an old-fashioned family reunion, don’t you think?”
Nicole sank to the sofa, her strength sapped by the harsh command, the scornful mockery. “What do you want, Tony?” She was shivering and horrified that all she felt for him was mistrust and dread. Wrapping her arms tightly about herself she forced an even tone into her voice. “Why are you here, like this? Why now?”
“You don’t know?” He leaned against the doorjamb, watching her. “He hasn’t told you?”
“He?” She felt dense, disconnected, as if she’d come into the middle of a very bad movie.
“Your new boyfriend, who else?”
“Jeb?”
“Ahh, a little honesty, at last.”
“What would Jeb tell me about you, Tony? He’s never mentioned you more than once or twice. What would he know about you? You haven’t seen each other in fifteen years, what could he say?”
“Now isn’t that strange? Considering what close buddies we were and he never mentioned me, never asked about me. But you didn’t notice, did you? Too starry-eyed? Why would he mention me?” The soft unctuous voice d
ropped to a low snarl. “Because he’s a cop, sugar. Do you hear me, a cop!”
“That’s insane.” Her nails were sharp and piercing against the tender flesh of her arms. She moved her head violently side to side. To clear it, to deny, she didn’t know. “Jeb’s retired. He made his fortune in stocks and bonds.”
“Sure, and he just happened to retire a continent away from his home, on the island my sister just happens to live on, as well.” A grimace drew down his mouth. A bizarre, wooden expression, as if any feeling was a travesty. “Makes a nice fairy tale, wouldn’t you say?”
“You’re guessing. You don’t know for sure.”
“I don’t have to know for sure. And I don’t have to know who he’s working for, what private or public sector, or even if he’s legit at all. I know the breed when I see it.” He caught her quick look of dismay. “Hit a nerve, did I? You’ve wondered a little about him yourself. Like what’s a man like him doing here, with a crew like his?”
Another conversation came back to haunt her. She could close her eyes and hear Annabelle expounding about Jeb Tanner, the man of mystery. Asking who really knew him. Nicole bit her lip. She hadn’t known him. Not even a little.
“You’ve been used, sugar. Whoever he works for was smart enough to figure you were my last option. All old Jeb had to do was weasel into your good graces, and from the looks of things, your pants, then sit back and wait for me.”
Nicole hugged herself tighter, and felt sicker. She wouldn’t think of Jeb, what he had done or why. “What have you done, Tony? Why would the authorities, or whoever, want you?”
“A long story. If I’d needed you to know, I wouldn’t have walked away from you in the first place.”
“That long?” She raised startled eyes to his and found them lackluster in the half-light. “What you’ve done was that long ago?”
“For that long,” he corrected, letting her understand it wasn’t a one time thing. No childish prank, nor one single thoughtless act.
“If you knew he was here waiting for you, why did you come?”
