Higher Than Eagles (Donovans of the Delta)

by Peggy Webb

  o0o

  By the next evening, when she hadn’t heard any more from him, Rachel thought Jacob had given up and gone home.

  She should have known better. There he was, standing in the shallow water, gazing up the beach. Those stubborn Donovans never gave up. She dragged her feet in the sand, slowing her jogging pace almost to a crawl. She briefly considered turning around and going back to the house, but she knew that wouldn’t stop him. Nothing would.

  She knew the precise moment he spotted her. His head came up, and his whole body tensed. Finally he started toward her, walking at first, then jogging, then sprinting, spewing the white sand up behind him. In the sunset, it looked like a plume of fairy dust.

  The fairy tales she read to her son came to mind, but she was too old to believe in fairy tales. Jacob could never be hers again. No amount of longing would restore things to the way they had been.

  “How did you know I would be here?” she asked when he stopped in front of her.

  “I gambled, Rachel.”

  “Gambled?”

  “Yes. You’re a creature of habit; you like to take a good, hard run before a performance. The beach in front of your house seemed the logical place.”

  “So you’ve found me. What now? More questions?”

  Instead of answering, he reached out and touched her hair. She stood very still as he lifted the blond strands and let them sift back through his fingers.

  “While I was reading your Dear John letter, do you know what I thought about?”

  She closed her eyes, wanting to shut him out. But his image seemed to be stamped on her eyelids. Taking a deep, steadying breath, she dared a look at him.

  “What did you think about, Jacob?”

  “The way your hair looked in the sunset, Rachel. Gold with touches of fire. And the way you smelled. Always of roses.” He leaned close, smoothing her hair back from her face. Abruptly, he stepped back. “The memories were enough to drive a man wild.”

  “I’m sorry it had to be that way, Jacob.”

  “Are you?”

  “Yes. An ocean separated us. A letter was the only way.”

  “Couldn’t you have waited? What difference would a few weeks have made?”

  “I couldn’t wait.” For reasons you’ll never know, she thought. “I thought that what I had to do was best done quickly.”

  “And callously. Dammit, a letter, Rachel! I had no way of defending myself.”

  She lifted her chin. “Are we going to fight again, Jacob? If we are, tumble me quickly in the sand, because I have an eight o’clock performance.”

  Jacob looked at her the way he used to, in admiration tinged with amusement. She squelched the quick surge of hope that tried to spread through her.

  Suddenly he laughed. “I hope Bob Devlin appreciated the feisty side of you.”

  She grinned. “Not the way you used to. He preferred docile women to hell raisers.”

  “Then he must have been a fool.” Quickly contrite, Jacob put his hand on her arm. “I’m sorry, Rachel. He was your husband. I have no right to speak ill of the dead.”

  She covered his hand with hers. She’d always thought one of the most endearing things about Jacob was the heart-tugging innocence of his quick apologies. “It’s all right.”

  She caught a brief flash of tenderness on his face before he pulled his hand away. “Don’t be sweet to me, Rachel.”

  “Why?”

  “It makes me forget.”

  “Forget what?”

  “That I don’t love you anymore.”

  Standing there in the sunset, she longed to wrap her arms around him and beg, Love me, Jacob. Love me. But she knew that would be insane. Instead, she waited with all the dignity and self-possession she could muster.

  Jacob’s piercing blue eyes caught and held hers as a thousand memories flooded back. Overhead a sea gull cried out to its mate, then drifted away over the water.

  “Don’t you, Jacob?” she whispered.

  “If I loved you, Rachel, I would show you in a thousand ways.” Jacob reached out and cupped her face. “I would touch you” —his thumbs gently massaged her chin— “and kiss you.” His mouth covered hers in the briefest, tenderest kisses she’d ever known. “I would hold you” —he pulled her into his arms and buried his face in her hair— “and cherish you.”

  For one glorious moment, their heartbeats joined. Then Jacob moved away. His arms dropped to his side, and he stepped back. The tide came in and washed between them.

  “If I loved you, Rachel, you wouldn’t have to ask. You would know.”

  Jacob turned and walked down the lonely beach.

  CHAPTER THREE

  It was early when Jacob walked through Rachel’s gate.

  She wouldn’t be up yet. He knew, because he’d sat through both her shows the night before. She hadn’t finished the late show until two. And she’d looked tired. He hoped his presence in Biloxi had something to do with that. He selfishly wanted her to be losing as much sleep over him as he was over her.

  He wanted her to be yearning, too.

  The gate swung shut behind him, and he walked to her nearly naked flower bed. There were great bare patches where she had uprooted her petunias. Setting his box on the ground, he grinned sheepishly.

  He could understand his sleeplessness and his motive for revenge. What he couldn’t figure out was why he’d conned the owner of a landscape nursery to open his gates at seven and sell him a big box of petunias.

  Still grinning like a penitent schoolboy, he knelt beside the flower bed and dug a hole for the first petunia.

  “What in the world are you doing?”

  He looked up, and what he saw took his breath away. Rachel was standing on the front porch, her honey and butterscotch hair tumbled over her shoulders, her green eyes still dreamy from sleep. The filmy pink concoction she was wearing couldn’t be called a nightgown and robe by any stretch of the imagination. To Jacob, it looked more like a bit of cotton candy or a pink cloud or even a chunk of heaven that had fallen from the sky.

  He swallowed his grin and pinched the head off the petunia he was holding.

  “I’m gardening.”

  She threw back her head and hooted with laughter.

  “Unless things have changed, you know as much about gardening as my son.”

  He tore his gaze away from the enticing vision on the veranda and patted the earth carefully around the broken petunia. Then he started digging another hole.

  “Madam, how dare you insult me? I grew up on a farm.”

  She laughed even harder.

  “You’re a pretender, Jacob. Your mother once told me that if you had spent as much time with your books as you did thinking up excuses to get out of gardening, you’d have been a genius.”

  He remembered the time he’d painted himself red, using a leftover bucket of paint he’d found in the barn, and had told his mother he had a rare disease. It took Anna three days to get all the paint off him, and when she did, part of his skin came with it. He’d paid the price with two weeks of irritating pain. It had been the high point of his career in deception.

  As he looked up at Rachel, he realized he hadn’t come to her house merely to plant petunias. He’d come to see her. He wondered what the consequences of his deception would be.

  “That just goes to show you, Rachel. I’m a man of many talents. Pretending is only one of them.” He grinned at her. “Want to see my others?”

  “No.”

  For the first time since she’d heard him in her flower bed and had impulsively run out of the house, she became aware of her attire. It was not exactly the costume she’d have chosen to face Jacob Donovan in, but it was too late now. She’d just have to make the best of it. She drew herself up and tried to pretend her legs weren’t weak from longing.

  “Are you planning to put a flower in that hole?”

  He kept on digging. “Yes. Gardening is simple. Just dig a hole and drop the plant in.”

  “Unless you�
��re digging all the way to China, I’d say the hole is deep enough.”

  Chagrined, Jacob looked down. Sure enough, he had dug a hole big enough to bury a good sized cat. Rachel descended the steps and came toward him.

  Suddenly he was smothering in a cloud of pink chiffon and the heady scent of roses. The first consequence of his impulsive decision to plant petunias was upon him; he wanted to pull Rachel into the flower bed and make love to her, right there in the dirt. The intensity of his desire shocked him.

  Rachel was a heartbreaker, and he was determined he wouldn’t be her victim again.

  “Would you mind stepping back a little, Rachel? You’re blocking the sun.”

  “Blocking the sun?” She stood where she was, so close, her fantasy nightgown was brushing against his arm and her perfume was turning him to putty.

  “Yes, dammit! How can I see to plant petunias when you’re in the way?”

  “Well, who told you to plant petunias in my garden anyway?”

  “You needn’t shout, Rachel. I’m not deaf.”

  “I’m not shouting!”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “Get out of my garden.”

  He rose to face her. “These petunias are my apology, and I intend to plant them.”

  “Apology! Don’t you think six years is a little too late to apologize?”

  He caught her shoulders and pulled her against his chest so tightly, she grunted.

  “What am I to apologize for, Rachel? Loving you too much? Trusting that you would wait for me so we could work things out?”

  “You’re just as stubborn and mule headed as you were six years ago, Jacob.”

  “And you’re just as unbending.”

  “It’s a good thing we didn’t marry each other.”

  “A hell of a good thing.”

  They glared at each other, panting. The air around them was hot with anger and pulsing with passion.

  “Mommy, look!” A small boy burst through the door, his Big Bird pajamas drooping at the waist and a bedsheet flapping around his neck. “I can fly!” The little boy ran to the edge of the porch. “I can fly!”

  A big black Labrador barked at his heels.

  “Benjy, no,” Rachel called, but it was too late. Benjy had launched himself off the edge of the porch and was flying straight at them.

  Jacob turned and held out his arms. The landing would have been perfect, except that Benjy was coming with such force, he knocked them to the ground. The dog bounded down the steps and circled them, barking.

  Benjy bounced up, laughing. “Let’s do that again.”

  Rachel caught him around the waist and hugged her to him. “Young man, how many times have I told you not to fly?”

  “Sixty ‘leven. Granpa says I’m a beardevil, just like Gramma. What’s a beardevil?”

  Jacob was enchanted. If he’d had a son, he’d have wanted him to be exactly like the small boy standing in the crook of Rachel’s arm. He stood with his sturdy little legs planted apart and his freckled face shining. His eyes were green like his mother’s, and his streaked blond hair stood up in front with a cowlick.

  His question already forgotten, Benjy turned his attention to Jacob. “Hi, I’m Benjamin Deblin. Who are you?”

  “Jacob Donovan.”

  The little boy stuck out his hand. “Please to meet you, Mr. Donoben.”

  Jacob solemnly shook his hand. “So, you like to fly, do you?”

  “No,” Rachel said.

  “Yes,” Benjy said at the same time.

  “Oh, Lordy have mercy!” A large woman bustled through the front door, wringing her hands on her white apron and rolling from side to side with each step she took. “I’m sorry, Rachel. The little scamp got away from me.”

  She made her way down the front steps and across the lawn. When she reached them, she took Benjy’s hand. “Now, little mister Benjamin. We’ll march right back upstairs and put that sheet on the bed where it belongs. Then we’ll get all cleaned up and have a nice breakfast.”

  Jacob could hardly believe his eyes. Standing beside them was the same woman who had been housekeeper to the Windhams and surrogate mother to Rachel since Mrs. Windham’s death, the woman who had once told him she wanted to live long enough to give his and Rachel’s children a proper upbringing.

  He dusted the dirt off his pants and stood up. “Vashti? Vashti!”

  “Lordy, Mr. Jacob! Is that you?” She enveloped him in a warm embrace. She smelled like gingerbread and dime-store talcum. “If you’re not a sight for sore eyes. Let me look at you.”

  She held him at arm’s length. Clucking her tongue, she smoothed back his tousled red hair and wiped at the dirt smudge on his cheek.

  “Just look at you.” Vashti’s glance swung to Rachel, who was still sitting in the dirt. “And Rachel, too. Turn my back for one minute, and look what happens; the entire household falls apart.” Stepping back, she put her hands on her hips. “Now you two just march right inside and wash that dirt off, while Benjy and I put this sheet back on the bed. Then we’ll all go onto the sun porch and have a nice, big breakfast.”

  She didn’t wait for a reply. Leading Benjamin, she sashayed back into the house with the air of a woman who knew that her word was law.

  Rachel shot Jacob a withering glance. “Don’t you dare even consider it.”

  He gave her an innocent smile. “I’d never dream of leaving you to face Vashti’s wrath. If I know her, she’d practically tar and feather you if you sent me away hungry. And with dirt on my face to boot.” Still grinning, he leaned down. “Give me your hand, my love. There’s no need for you to spend the rest of the day in the dirt.”

  Rachel knew she’d been outfoxed. She conceded the victory but not gracefully.

  “All right.” Putting her hand in his, she allowed herself to be pulled up. “But don’t you dare get any ideas. This is the first and last time you’ll be allowed to set foot in my house. And then I want you out of here—out of my house and out of my life.”

  “There’s a price for that, and you know what it is.” Turning on his heel, Jacob stalked up her front steps and into her house.

  o0o

  Rachel took her time showering and dressing. For six years she’d felt as if she were in the jaws of a giant trap, and now the trap was closing shut. After she’d dressed, she paced the floor, wondering exactly how she would handle this encounter between Jacob and her son.

  Their laughter drifted up the stairs, and she felt sick at heart. For six years her secret had been safe, and now Jacob was here. His mere presence threatened everything she held dear.

  She walked to her Louis XIV desk and sat down. Taking a small key, she opened the middle drawer and pulled out a letter. It crackled as she took it out of its envelope.

  Her eyes misted over as she read the words she’d written six years ago.

  Dear Jacob,

  When you left for Saudi Arabia, I wanted to beg you to stay. I almost did. I wanted to pull you into my arms and bind you to me with the wonderful secret I was carrying. Instead, we quarreled. It’s not that I hate your work, Jacob, for I know how you love it. It’s simply that I can’t bear for our child to grow up with only one parent. I can’t stand the thought of putting a baby through the same kind of childhood I had— raised by only one parent, and that one too preoccupied with making a living to pay me much attention.

  I’m pregnant, Jacob. I’m carrying your child. Please come back safely so we can make a home for our baby.

  It was a letter she had never mailed. The more she’d thought about it, the more she’d known she couldn’t face every day not knowing whether Jacob would live through another of those nightmare oil field fires. When Jacob had first signed on with the troubleshooting team, two men had died in an offshore fire in the North Atlantic. Jacob was a daredevil, just like her mother. He took too many chances. She knew she couldn’t ask him to give up a job he loved, and she wasn’t strong enough to live with the risks.

  She’d done the safe, se
nsible thing. She’d mailed a Dear John letter to Jacob and had married Bob Devlin. He was older, more stable, and he had always loved her—even enough to raise another man’s child.

  Her plan had almost worked. Life with Bob had been steady and sensible and safe—all the things she’d imagined—and he had been very sweet to Benjamin. But he had not been Jacob. Her decision, however she rationalized it, had deprived Jacob of his son. And she’d borne the guilt alone.

  Reaching into her desk again, Rachel pulled out her diary. Flipping back through the pages, she found the one she’d made on Benjy’s first birthday.

  I wish you were here, Jacob, to see your son. His smile is so like yours. Though he’s only a toddler, he even walks like you, with that cocky arrogant stride that is all Donovan. Oh, Jacob! What have I done?

  She turned the pages, skipping to the entries she’d made on each of Benjy’s birthdays. They were all addressed to Jacob, and each one brought him up to date on news of his son. It was the only catharsis Rachel had had, for she certainly couldn’t have called him on the phone and told him those things. She’d kept her remorse firmly hidden, allowing herself only one day each year to mourn and to confess what she had done—and then only to her diary.

  It was too late now. The past couldn’t be changed. Taking a deep breath, Rachel locked the letter and the diary back into her desk and started downstairs to give the performance of her life.

  o0o

  They were sitting together at the glass-topped table on the sun porch. Jacob and his son. The two of them looked so much alike, Rachel had to steady herself against the door frame before going into the room. What if Jacob noticed? She had to get him out of her house as quickly as possible.

  She sat down at the table and gave them all a false smile. “I’m starving. Let’s eat.”

  Jacob leaned back in his chair in that elaborately relaxed way of his that fooled most people. It didn’t fool her, though. She knew from experience that Jacob was most dangerous when he appeared to be nonchalant.