by Anne Stuart
“Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t.”
“It was a mistake, an aberration. It won’t happen again,” she said in a fierce little voice, glaring at him.
Unmoved by her animosity, he stretched out in the sand and eyed her with nothing more than casual curiosity. “Of course it will, Jane,” he said gently. “And you know it as well as I do. Maybe not right away—we’ve got some things to sort out first. But sooner or later we’re going to have a relationship.”
“Sooner or later I’m going to torch my brother’s laboratory and head straight back to Baraboo, Wisconsin.”
“We’ll see about that.”
“We’ll see about nothing. I don’t want your help, I don’t need...”
“Too bad,” he interrupted. “You’re getting it. I’m too deep in this already, and I’m certainly not going to walk away without knowing the outcome. Besides, if you insist on your illegal schemes, you’re going to need a qualified defense attorney by your side.”
“You don’t really strike me as a model of rectitude. It was your idea to break into Technocracies, wasn’t it?”
“It was.”
A sudden thought struck her. “What would have happened to you if we got caught?” she asked in a less strident voice.
He shrugged. “It’s always possible I could have been disbarred. I imagine I would have gotten off with a reprimand.”
“Uncle Stephen would have prosecuted.”
“Yes, well that might have made things more difficult,” he agreed.
She said nothing for a long moment: “You risked your career because of me?”
“Don’t get all sentimental on me,” he said with real horror. “I risked my career for the same reason I went along with your mistaken assumption that I was Jimmy the Stoolie. I was bored, miserably, fatally bored. If I’d been caught and it had gone all the way to being disbarred I would have relished the challenge.”
“Of course,” she said flatly. “It was silly of me to think you might have had any noble motives in mind.”
“Jane...”
She rose in one fluid motion. “If you want to go straight back to the city I can find my own way to Princeton.”
“I want to go back to Princeton with you, and then I want to drive to Vermont and see if we can find your brother’s lab.”
“And if I refuse?”
“I can always go to Tremaine and tell him where the lab is.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“I would. If you don’t let me go with you you’re going to run into a whole mess of trouble. The only way I know to stop you is to tell Tremaine. So take your pick. Him or me.”
She stood with her hand on the rusty door handle. “It’s a hard choice.”
“Not that hard, Jane. Give in gracefully. I’m coming to Vermont with you, whether you like it or not.”
“I don’t like it,” she said. And they both knew she lied.
*
The ride down to Princeton, while devoid of the simmering, unnamed hostility of the day before, was riddled with sexual tension. He would have thought the previous night’s tumultuous encounter would have taken the edge off his desire for her. It only seemed to make it worse.
Jane, however, appeared entirely unmoved by the whole thing. She kept her distance, treating him like one of those beneficial garden insects, the sort of pests you tolerate because they happen to eat slugs, or something. She accepted the fact that he was going to keep tagging along, but the few hours they spent in the darkness upstairs in the old cottage might well have never happened. And she could have carried it off, if she didn’t happen to blush occasionally, for no apparent reason. And if she didn’t happen to steal small, surreptitious glances in his direction when she thought he wasn’t looking.
He knew, for all her year or so of married life, that she wasn’t as sexually experienced as he was. He’d known it from her hesitancy, her initial passiveness, her unfeigned surprise at the depth of her own reaction. That surprise had touched him more deeply than he cared to admit. Jane got to him on all sorts of levels, conscious and unconscious, and for all his casual talk about something as trendy as a relationship, he knew he wanted more than that. For the first time he wanted to spend his life discovering all there was to know about someone. He wanted to wake up with her, fight with her, father her children and grow old with her. With a sudden, alarming intensity he knew that he wanted to marry her, and the shock of it kept him silent for most of the drive back to Princeton.
It was going to be rough going for a while. She didn’t trust him, and with good reason. She hated lawyers, also with good reason. She was so tied up in knots about her brother and Stephen Tremaine’s villainy that she didn’t have much to spare for her unwanted suitor. What he needed to do was help her find some sort of resolution to that whole affair, preferably with Tremaine in jail and Jane still relatively law-abiding. Then he could work on regaining her trust and breaking down her prejudices.
In the meantime, the best thing he could do once they got back to the sleazy splendor of the Princeton motel was take a long, cold shower, maybe run a couple of miles, then go for another icy shower. Then maybe he’d be too tired to think about the way Jane shivered when she wrapped her beautiful legs around him.
He shifted uncomfortably in the leather seat of the Audi, and Jane looked at him, fortunately at his face and not at his pants. “Did someone really steal your MGB?” she asked. “I assume it was your MGB and not Jimmy’s?”
“It was mine, and yes, it was really stolen. I called my secretary and had her file a report on it. Not that I expect to ever see it again,” he added mournfully.
“Don’t be so sure. Any self-respecting thief would abandon it as soon as it started acting up. Tell the police to look within a couple of blocks of where we parked it.”
“Very funny. That car was a classic.”
“That car was a disaster.” She rolled down her window, letting in some of the crisp autumn air and the recycled exhaust fumes. “You have a secretary?”
“Two, actually.” He sounded apologetic, but he couldn’t help it.
“Well, Mr. Hot-Shot lawyer, if you’re a partner in a major law firm and you’re so busy you need two secretaries, what were you doing staying in a dive like the Princeton Pike motel, and how come you can just disappear off the face of the earth and start running around with me? Or do you make a habit of doing things like this?” He could tell by the way her adorable nose wrinkled and the glasses slid down it that she didn’t like that notion one tiny bit. A good sign, he thought.
“No, I don’t make a habit of doing things like this,” he said patiently. “Until I called yesterday they thought I was on vacation in the Canary Islands. I was all set to go once Jimmy’s trial was over—I had tickets and my bags were packed.”
“How could you be certain the trial would end that day? I thought trials tend to drag on and on. What if you hadn’t gotten an acquittal?”
“That was unlikely.”
“Okay, Mr. Perfect, why were you at such a sleazy place?”
“For the same reason I went along with your outrageous proposition instead of spending last week sunning myself and having meaningless sex,” he snapped. “I told you, I was bored. Burned out, fed up and bored. The trial with Jimmy was just the last straw in a list of cop-outs and compromises and I got sick of it. I was tired of getting slimy little criminals and rotten huge corporations out of the trouble they so richly deserved. I thought for once I could put my energies into something that mattered, helping the underdog.”
“Me being the underdog?” she questioned, but there was a blessed trace of humor in her voice.
“And there was one more overriding reason,” he added, knowing he was pushing his luck.
“Dare I ask?”
He wanted to tell her he’d fallen in love with her the first time he saw her. In retrospect it seemed as if he had, but he knew what her reaction would be if he said any such thing. “I took one look at you,” he said
instead, “and developed a case of advanced lust.”
Her expression didn’t change. “Well,” she said briskly, “you must be well on the road to recovery after last night.”
At that point he laughed out loud. “Lady, were we in the same bed? After last night I think it’s terminal.”
“I’ll send flowers.”
“No physical therapy?”
“You’re on thin ice, Caldicott.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He subsided, satisfied at having completed his objective. Once more her cheeks were stained red, and she had trouble keeping her gaze from straying toward his face, his hands, and points south. He managed to swallow his grin, but suddenly he felt a great deal more hopeful. “Lovely weather, isn’t it?”
Jane looked out at the gray sky. “Just peachy.”
The Princeton Pike Sleep-a-While Motel looked, if possible, even sleazier. The cold gray weather didn’t help, and the turquoise paint job that surely dated back to the fifties seemed to be peeling at an even faster rate. While the place had never been fully occupied, it now appeared that they were the only guests registered. Jane, already depressed, sank into a deeper gloom.
“I’m going to take a nap,” she said outside her door, backing away from him to try to minimize some of the difference in their heights. She didn’t like him towering over her—it made her nervous and far too aware of him.
“Jane, you fell asleep at six-thirty last night, and you must have slept at least until six this morning. Why do you need a nap? Did I tire you out that much?”
“This will only work,” she said in a fierce, angry little voice, “if you stop reminding me about last night. I’m not going to sit around having you throw that mistake in my face. It’s over and done with. The next time you bring it up will be the last.” She didn’t know what she could threaten him with, but at that moment she felt capable of restaging her moments of fury from the night before. However, there wasn’t anything handy to throw at him, and the sight of his cut forehead still had the power to make her flinch.
He must have thought better about goading her. “Yes, ma’am,” he said meekly enough, but she could see the laughter lurking in the back of his gray eyes. She decided she could ignore it for now.
“Maybe I’ll go for a drive instead.”
“You just went for a two-hour drive.”
“That was with you. I find I’m feeling a little claustrophobic.” She turned her back on him, heading for her parked car, but his hand reached and caught her arm, the first time he’d touched her since she left the bed.
She yanked her arm free, glaring at him, but he was singularly unmoved. “Listen, sweetie, we’re talking about murder here. If Tremaine has any brains at all he’ll know you’re getting too close to the truth. So I’m not going to let you out of my sight. If you want to go for a drive, I’ll drive you.”
“I’ll drive. You can tag along if you want.”
Traffic was still heavy when Jane tore out onto Route One. She stomped on the accelerator, and the rental Escort did its valiant best, inching its way up toward fifty. She sped along the highway, turning off past the Mercer Mall, and the Escort inched up toward sixty. She cast a tentative glance at her reluctant passenger, but he appeared unmoved by her maneuvers. He did have his seat belt on, and his hands were clutching the sides of the seat, but he was keeping his expression calm and serene.
“I bet you’re a good poker player,” Jane said, pushing the car to sixty-five. The road narrowed, turning by the Delaware Canal, but she’d driven those roads for years and had no doubt that with a light touch of the brakes she could control the curve.
Sandy didn’t have the same assurance. “That’s a fairly sharp turn up ahead,” he said faintly.
“I know.” She grinned.
“You might want to slow down a bit.”
“I might.” She sped a little faster. The road was completely deserted—most cars either took the highways or the more direct shortcuts through the back areas outside of Princeton.
“Damn it, slow down!” Sandy finally snapped.
She was being unforgivably childish, and suddenly she was ashamed of herself. “Yes, sir,” she acquiesced, stepping on the brake.
Her foot sank to the floor as the car hurtled forward on the deserted back road.
Chapter Sixteen
“This isn’t funny, Jane!” Sandy shouted as they skidded around a gentle curve in the road.
“The brakes are gone!” She tried to shove the automatic transmission into a lower gear and the Escort responded with a shriek of pain and a hideous grinding noise. The road had only a gentle downhill slope, but they were fast approaching a sharp right-hand turn at a speed too high for her to cope with it. She could yank the wheel and hope they’d make it, but the alternative to the narrowing road was a thick forest on either side. Or she could go straight through the flimsy wooden barrier at the end of the road and end up in the Delaware Canal.
Neither choice was appealing, but water was a lot more forgiving than oak trees. “Get ready to jump,” she muttered, steering with one hand and reaching for the door with her other.
A moment later they were soaring through the air, through the splintered fence. Jane was out of the car before it hit, landing smack in the middle of the cold brown water.
The car almost made it to the other side. It crashed into the bank, then slowly sank, tail first, into the cold, murky water.
She treaded water for a moment, dazed, scarcely noticing the icy temperature of the old canal. “Sandy?” she called, but the sound came out as only a hoarse croak. She watched in horror as the Escort sank down beneath the surface, only the headlights showing for one brief moment before it settled on its side. She could feel the pull of the suction, and she had to use all her limited strength to keep from being sucked under with it.
“Sandy!” she screamed again, the sound echoing in the sudden stillness that was broken only by the gurgling water. “Sandy!”
The water erupted beside her, and there he was, blessedly intact and mad as blazes. “Thank God you’re alive,” she sobbed, flinging her arms around his neck. They both sank beneath the cold brown water, only to rise again, sputtering.
With more force than tenderness he detached her clinging arms and pushed her toward shore. “Let’s get out of here before we freeze to death.” His voice was terse through chattering teeth, and she went obediently enough, scrambling onto the bank from the steep sides with the last ounce of her energy. She fell in the grass, and Sandy collapsed beside her. For a moment there was only the sound of their hoarse, labored breathing, mixing with the wind through the trees overhead. And then the rain began to fall: thick, fat drops of icy precipitation. Jane sat up and sneezed.
Sandy didn’t move. He was soaked to the skin, covered with a brown sludge, and Jane knew she didn’t look much better. The wind had picked up along with the rain, and if they didn’t get warm and dry soon they were both going to die of pneumonia. “Are you just going to lie there?” she demanded with some asperity. “I know it was my fault, I know I was driving too fast. You don’t have to ignore me. I admit it. If I hadn’t been so furious, if I hadn’t come down this back road...”
“You would have been keeping up with traffic on Route One and the first red light you came to you would have smashed into another car, probably killing all of us. That doesn’t mean you weren’t driving like a bat out of hell, and if you ever do that again I’ll wring your neck. But it wasn’t your fault.” He sat up, shaking the water out of his hair like a large wet dog.
“Whose fault was it?”
He looked at her through the miserable gray drizzle. “Do you have to ask?”
She shut her eyes in horror. “Oh, no,” she whispered. “Uncle Stephen.”
“You told me he could be ruthless. He probably murdered your brother. It looks as if you’re next in line.” He rose, reaching a hand down and pulling her up beside him. “Let’s get out of this godforsaken rain.”
“How?”
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“By standing on the road and looking forlorn. Someone’s bound to take pity on us sooner or later.”
It was a great deal later, fifty-three minutes by Sandy’s still functioning Rolex, when a sod truck pulled to a stop. The rain had been steady the entire time, getting colder by the minute, and Jane thought that if another moment passed without getting under cover she’d dive back into the canal.
She sat huddled in the corner of the truck, barely conscious of Sandy’s directions, of the effortless stream of pleasant conversation, as if it were afternoon tea and her partner in crime weren’t as cold and wet and miserable as she was. When the truck stopped at a rambling split-level on Cherry Hill Road she dutifully climbed out of the cab, following Sandy’s drenched figure. It was only when they were standing under the shelter of the front entryway, waiting for someone to answer the doorbell, that she roused herself enough to ask where they were.
“My ex-wife’s house,” Sandy said cheerfully. “It was the closest place I could think of.”
Jane stared at him with complete loathing, wishing he’d stayed in the canal. She was about to tell him so when the heavy walnut door opened and a spectacularly beautiful, enormously pregnant woman appeared.
“Sandy!” she cried, her face glowing with delight as she flung the door open and enveloped her ex-husband in an embrace that showed a complete disregard for his wet muddy clothes and her designer maternity jumpsuit. “What in the world are you doing here, and looking like that?” She pulled him inside, chattering a mile a minute. “And what have you done to that poor woman?” She flung a gorgeous smile at Jane, who tried to resist its charm and found she couldn’t. “You never did know how to treat a date.”
“This is Jane Dexter.” He disentangled himself gracefully as he made the introductions. “My sister-in-law, Margery Caldicott.”
Relief swamped Jane. “I thought you were his ex-wife,” she blurted, then could have cursed her thoughtless tongue.
Things could only get worse. “I am,” Margery said cheerfully.
