She'd needed to reestablish herself both as a woman and as a person and it had taken many years – and a few mistakes – to understand exactly what she needed. Casual romances had their place, but they no longer had a place in her life.
Her mother or Holland would be able to view an interlude with someone like Ryder O'Neal as just that – a blissful vacation from real life. For Joanna that would be impossible because, no matter how logically her mind worked, her terribly illogical heart would do her in every time.
#
What Ryder needed was a large glass of Scotch; what he didn't need was Alistair Chambers.
However, like it or not, there the Englishman sat, ensconced in the leather wing chair near the window with his ubiquitous brandy in hand, listening to Beethoven and waiting for Ryder to come home.
"Goddamn it, Chambers!" Ryder flung his crutches to the floor and hobbled over to the bar to pour himself some Chivas Regal. "You have ten phones in that Rolls of yours. Don't any of them work?"
"They're only truly effective when the other party deigns to pick up the receiver. Nasty complication, that." He switched off the stereo system. "You've been playing hard to get tonight, my boy."
"It's known as privacy." Ryder sat down on the sofa and put his right leg up on the glass table in front of him. "I'm acquiring a taste for it."
Ryder quickly downed his drink. He usually didn't allow himself bravura displays of machismo but, damn it, this was one of those nights.
"You don't gulp Chivas; you savor it," Alistair said. "You colonials lack common sense when it comes to the finer things."
"Stuff it, Chambers. We had sense enough to rebel, didn't we?"
"Is that what this show of independence is all about: a throwback to revolutionary glory?"
"If you've finished analyzing my behavior, why don't you tell me what the hell you're doing in my apartment."
"I would think my purpose is painfully obvious."
"I've had a tough night, Chambers. I'm not in the mood for guessing games."
Alistair stood up, and fished in his breast pocket for one of those foul-smelling cigarettes Ryder detested. "Things have heated up on St. George. The plane is waiting for us."
"How serious is it?"
Alistair took a long drag on his cigarette, then let the pale blue smoke out slowly. "Code 5." Critical but not dire.
"I'll go."
Alistair, who rarely displayed any emotion much less downright surprise, stared at Ryder. "What?"
"Give me five to grab a shower and we'll leave."
The older man shook his head. "You haven't even allowed me the pleasure of launching into my 'you-owe-it-to-the-organization' speech."
Ryder pulled himself up from the couch. "You can give it to me in the limo on the way to JFK."
"I must say you've taken some of the joy out of this triumph, Ryder. Is this a permanent change of heart or just your basic humanitarian instincts rearing their head?"
Twenty-four hours ago Ryder would have tossed the urbane Mr. Chambers out on his elegant ass by way of answer. But that was before he met Joanna Stratton, before he'd seen his future stretching out in front of him all shiny and new and his for the taking.
Before he'd realized how big a coward he really was.
The situation in St. George was serious; there was no denying that the lives of a score of innocent people hung in the balance. Why then did Ryder feel more like he was running away from something than running to help?
"Ryder?" Alistair's voice was quizzical, concerned.
"I don't know," Ryder said as he headed for the shower. I don't know one damned thing anymore.
#
"I thought you had an audition this morning," Joanna said when Holland showed up on her doorstep at the ungodly hour of nine. She covered her mouth and yawned as Holland, gorgeous even in her running outfit, swept into the apartment. "I wish you'd phoned."
"I'm too distraught to make phone calls," Holland said.
"What's the problem?" She followed Holland into the kitchen, abandoning all hope of going back to sleep. "Don't tell me you lost the job already."
Holland pulled a bottle of Bloody Mary mix out of the refrigerator and plucked a clean glass from the dishwasher while Joanna slumped onto a kitchen chair.
"The audition's this afternoon," Holland said distractedly. "That's not my problem."
Joanna watched her friend pour the thick red juice into a glass and winced. "Don't ask me where the vodka is. My stomach couldn't take it."
"Then look the other way." Holland pulled a tiny airline-size bottle of Stoli from her gym bag and added it to the Bloody Mary mix. "This is an emergency."
Joanna groaned and got up to start the coffee. "What on earth is the matter with you? Did you lose your union card or just your marbles?"
Holland took a long sip of her drink. "I shall endeavor to ignore your sarcasm, my dear Joanna."
Joanna leaned against the sink and stared at her friend. "'I shall endeavor to ignore. . .'?" Despite the early hour, she threw back her head and laughed. "One night with the debonair Mr. Chambers and you're ready for Masterpiece Theater."
"Correction: one evening with Mr. Chambers. His night remained his own." Holland sighed. "Not, I might add, from lack of trying."
"Oh, no." Joanna plugged in the Mr. Coffee machine and sat back down at the table. "Don't tell me he's gay."
Holland made a face, then quickly smoothed the faint lines on her forehead with her index fingers. "I almost hope he is. That, at least, I can understand."
"What exactly happened?"
"We went to Le Cirque. We drank. We ate. We danced until midnight, then, poof! He disappeared like Cinderella after the ball." Holland's laugh was shaky. "I almost expected my cab to turn into a pumpkin."
"Maybe he doesn't kiss on the first date," Joanna said, trying to make light of Holland's obvious distress. "Maybe he's playing hard to get."
Holland drooped over her Bloody Mary like a wilted stalk of celery. "And maybe he's already 'gotten.'"
"No," Joanna said. "He's not married."
Holland perked up. "How do you know?"
Ryder O'Neal was the one topic Joanna wanted to steer clear of, but it was too late. "I asked his friend."
Holland patted her right leg. "You mean that gorgeous specimen with the broken leg you were with yesterday?"
Joanna nodded. "That's the one."
"You realize if I wasn't in such an extreme state of emotional turmoil I would ask you why you were walking the streets made up like a bag lady, don't you?"
"I was trying out my makeup techniques," Joanna said, glad to steer the conversation away from talk of Ryder. "I did a darn good job, too, if I do say so myself."
"Unless you have that gorgeous man hidden in the bedroom, I'd say you did too good a job." Holland got up and poured them each a cup of coffee. "How did you manage to keep from yanking off that god-awful wig and throwing yourself into his muscular arms?"
"Superior self-control," Joanna said dryly. "Not to mention the fact that I'd have probably put him into cardiac arrest with that move."
"Maybe," Holland said, sitting back down, "but think of what fun you could have had administering CPR."
Joanna tore open a blue packet of Equal and dumped it into her coffee. "You know what your problem is, don't you? You're man crazy."
Holland flashed Joanna one of her best smiles. "I don't deny it," she said. "And until I find a man who's crazy about only me, I intend to stay this way." She reached for one of the bagels Joanna had put out on the table. "It's one of the last bastions of defense left to the modern woman."
Joanna grabbed a bagel for herself and laughed, glad that the subject of Ryder O'Neal had been successfully bypassed. "You realize I don't have any idea what you're talking about, don't you?"
Of course, when Holland Masters was on a roll, it hardly mattered. She launched into an elaborate and highly theatrical discourse on sexual politics that had Joanna holding her sides against th
e laughter. Holland didn't stop for breath until there was a knock on Joanna's door.
"Hold that thought," Joanna said. "It's probably Stanley about the leaky bathroom faucet."
"I hope he didn't bring those two Neanderthals he hired with him," Holland said as Joanna tightened the belt on her robe and went to the door. "There's something awfully sinister about them."
The two young men Joanna had seen in the mail room with Stanley might have been unpleasant but sinister wasn't a word she would apply to them.
"You're just a snob," Joanna called out over her shoulder as she opened the door. "If a man isn't in Harris tweeds, he's an escaped felon."
"An escaped felon?" Rosie Callahan, still tall and imposing in her aged mink coat, stood on the doorstep, carrying a pecan coffee ring fresh from the bakery down the block. "That sounds interesting. Anyone I know?"
"I wouldn't be surprised," Joanna said, motioning her inside. "You seem to know everyone in town."
Rosie's laugh was hale and hearty.
"I'd know that sound anywhere," Holland called out. "Come on in, Rosie, and join the party."
"A party, is it?" Rosie headed toward the kitchen. "You should have told me, Joanna. I would have dressed for the occasion."
"This wasn't my idea," Joanna said, taking down some plates from the cupboard above the sink. "This seems to be my day for attracting uninvited guests."
"Excuse me," Holland said, plucking a big pecan from the coffee cake and popping it into her mouth. "Uninvited guests have feelings, too, Stratton."
Rosie shot Joanna a knowing look. "It's not the uninvited guests who interest me. I want to know about the guest you did invite in last night."
Joanna kept her expression blank. "Whatever do you mean, Rosie?"
"Yes, Rosie," Holland said, her eyes twinkling. "Whatever do you mean?"
If she hadn't been so sleepy, Joanna could have cheerfully taken both her friends and tossed them out her ninth-floor window without a second thought.
"Well, after Joanna left last night," Rosie said, slicing herself a generous piece of pecan ring, "I went out to the incinerator to check for my girdles –"
Holland turned to Joanna. "Check for her girdles?"
"It's a long story," Joanna said. "Trust me."
Rosie cleared her throat. "As I was saying, I went to the incinerator to check for my girdles when I heard the elevator open. Now those two new helpers Stanley hired have been doing an awful lot of prowling around this building lately – and I never liked men with red hair – so I picked up the broom that Mr. Mott in 917 was throwing out and was ready to go at it when I saw Ryder heading for Joanna's door, carrying a bottle of wine and looking as happy as you please."
Holland leaned forward. "Ryder-with-the-broken-leg Ryder?"
"Who else?" Joanna muttered. "My life is an open book."
"Anyway," Rosie went on, "he saw me standing just inside the door of the incinerator room and he gave me the biggest smile I've seen since Mary Tyler Moore went off the air."
"That's a terrible analogy, Rosie," said Joanna. "Couldn't you have picked a male star, at least?"
"I think the analogy is wonderful," Holland said, "Who has more teeth than Mary Tyler Moore?"
"Now, I don't know what happened while he was in here, Jo –"
Joanna muttered "Thank God" under her breath.
"—but I do know what happened afterward. At precisely 3:23 a.m. on the GE alarm clock I bought on sale at Alexander's last week, Ryder O'Neal and that dapper English fellow, Alistair Something-or-other, climbed into that snazzy Rolls-Royce I've seen before and drove off." Rosie, whose blood still ran thick with greasepaint, paused for dramatic effect. "And," she said slowly, "he hasn't come back home yet."
Before Joanna could begin to make sense out of Rosie's stream-of-consciousness news bulletin, Holland let out a moan and buried her face in her hands.
"Oh, my God," Holland said, her voice strangled. "They're in love!"
Chapter Nine
At that exact moment, Ryder was cursing Alistair Chambers, PAX, and his own shortcomings for getting him into this situation.
He was 150 yards away from the American embassy where a radical group – insanely determined to drive the U.S. and her tourist dollars out of St. George – was threatening to blow up the embassy building and the surrounding villas.
Although it was just seven in the morning, the blistering Caribbean sun beat down on his back as he crawled through the underbrush, slapping away assorted tropical pests, as he made his way toward the spot where he would set up his equipment. He'd demanded to be cut out of his cast two days early and now his leg, stiff and tender from weeks of disuse, dragged behind him, slowing him down.
Joanna Stratton and the night before seemed light-years away.
This was reality, the one thing he was good at, the one thing he knew he could handle.
Strapped to his back was a million dollars' worth of technical hardware designed to defuse an explosive from up to two hundred yards away. It was the backbone of PAX's extensive antiterrorist paraphernalia – and Ryder's proudest achievement to date. Using the latest information on the terrorists who were holed up in the embassy, he had fed all his information into the computer terminal on the flight down to St. George and had come up with a series of variables delineating the probable type, amount and composition of the explosive he was up against.
The beauty of his system was its flexibility; the program actually took into account the human element of unpredictability. It had worked flawlessly at the Cannes Film Festival when an Arab extremist group threatened the U.S. filmmakers, as well as during an unpublicized attack against the U.S. Senate that had come closer to full-fledged disaster than Ryder cared think about.
Alistair's voice crackled through the tiny receiver attached to the inner curve of Ryder's right ear. "Ten more meters to the right will bring you in line. Set it up, then move fifteen degrees due east. Foster will be there to pick you up."
Ryder, who was outfitted with a sophisticated communications system the size of a peppercorn, had only to tape his thumbnail to his watchband twice to signal receipt of Alistair's message.
He was almost there.
According to the terrorists' threats, the bombs were set to explode in eighteen minutes. According to Ryder's calculations, he would have the system programmed in and fully operational within thirteen minutes; the bomb would be defused two minutes later.
Not much of a margin for error, but then, Ryder O'Neal had never needed one.
Seventeen minutes and counting . . .
#
PAX never stayed around long enough to take a bow.
Ryder and Alistair were back in their private jet and lifting up into the skies above St. George before handcuffs were slapped on the last of the terrorists.
Ryder was flying high himself on a mixture of relief and excitement.
"The possibilities are limitless," he said, pacing the plushly carpeted cabin. "This was the toughest time limit we've ever worked under and with the least information – if it worked this time, it'll work every time."
Alistair watched him carefully, his blue eyes guarded and thoughtful. "I know what you're thinking," he said, "and it can't be done."
"The hell it can't. Nothing's impossible."
"Detecting the existence of plastic explosives is impossible, Ryder. Israel came close three years ago but the variables were too many to make it feasible. England managed one improvement on the Israeli formula but the limitations outweighed the advantages."
"I think I can do it." It had taken returning to his old life to discover the key to a new one.
Alistair's expression didn't change. "Is this your adrenaline speaking or the Scotch?"
"Neither," Ryder said. "It was being out there today." He explained the idea that had crystallized for him as he set up the equipment outside the embassy in clear, simple terms. "Given the molecular structure, it should work."
"That's an enormous project you're
talking about, Ryder. Things change so quickly, the other side would be onto something new before you even got set up."
Ryder wasn't about to tell his friend that his idea was almost operational. His recuperation period hadn't been wasted. "Worth the risk, wouldn't you say?"
Plastic explosives were the most insidious of all terrorist tactics. Opening a letter, taking the cap off a can of deodorant, twisting a tube of lipstick – in the hands of a madman, each simple action could mean death to scores of innocent people. The benefits of a device like the one Ryder outlined would be incalculable.
Ryder could see Alistair's mind weighing the issues involved and he waited for the result.
"I can't deny that what you've outlined shows promise, Ryder, but I feel there is more here than meets the eye." Alistair leaned back and lit a cigarette, an obvious bid for time.
Ryder knew he had his old friend exactly here he wanted him. "Do you want me to jump right to the bottom line?"
A cloud of smoke wreathed Alistair's head as he spoke. "Yes."
"If I come up with a viable device, I get to write my own ticket from then on."
Alistair threw his head back and laughed. "Come now, my boy. You already write your own ticket. You have for years. Look at that apartment at the Carillon, your place in Hawaii, your –"
"I'm not talking about possessions," Ryder broke in. "I'm talking about my freedom."
Alistair sighed. "You sound like a dissident seeking safe haven. I wish you would find other words."
"Okay," Ryder said. "I'm talking about the rest of my life. I want to work on my projects and then train other people to implement them." He drew in a deep breath. "I want to stay in one place for the first time in my adult life and find out what in hell the real world is like. Damn it, Chambers! I want what you had: someone to love."
"Nothing lasts," Alistair said. "There's little enough out there to compare to what the organization can offer, Ryder."
Playing for Time Page 9
