by Tara Janzen
“Mr. Peterson?”
She had freckles. Chantal didn’t. He’d never seen, touched, or tasted skin like Chantal’s, satin softness, all over. Especially the hollow of her throat, the tender side of her breasts, behind her knees, the lithe curve of her inner thigh.
Forget everything.
“Mr. Peterson?”
Jaz blinked and actually felt a blush steal over his cheeks. Lord only knew what the clerk had read in his eyes. “No. I won’t be coming back.” Chantal had to come to him.
“Too bad. I’ve got two free days starting tomorrow.”
She’d read too much. “Sorry. My heart’s already been broken once in Aspen,” he said harshly, too distraught to hide his feelings. He finished signing his name and dropped the pen on the counter.
The clerk checked his signature against the credit card and handed it back to him. “Well, Jasper. If you ever get back this way, look me up.” She smiled, and Jaz found enough of himself to grin back. No one except the military and his mother ever called him Jasper. Even his dad called him Jaz.
He slung his duffel over his shoulder and searched the waiting area, finding the bank of phones on a far wall. There was one more thing he had to do before he left. Actually two, whether she liked it or not. Foolishly, he’d trusted her with his love. He didn’t trust her to leave town.
Chantal finished her second hot buttered rum and checked her watch. Elise was late, by five minutes.
She shifted in her chair and debated whether or not to leave. Maybe two showdowns in one day was one too many. More like two too many, she thought on a pained breath. At least she and Jaz hadn’t been to this particular restaurant. Hell, they hadn’t been anywhere except to heaven and back on an emotional roller coaster.
Lifting her hand, she signaled for another rum. With his appetite and her cooking, they would have hit every eating place in town before the week was out. If she stayed out of the Hotel Orleans, O.B.’s, and her own home, she could avoid the memories sparked by reality. The chances of her ever ending up on the roof of the Sandhurst mansion again were absolutely nonexistent.
The other memories, the ones brought on by a lapse of conscious effort, she fought every second and would continue fighting until his face blurred and the sound of his husky voice didn’t echo in the chambers of her mind.
But it was too soon for him to be part of the past, and the echoes were strong and painful. Don’t panic, babe . . . I love you . . . I love you.
She drowned the words with a long swallow of rum and pushed herself away from the table. Elise could take her apart later. She had to go someplace, do something, be with someone. Her feet carried her all of three steps before the grim realization hit her. She had no place to go except home, and she wasn’t ready to face the emptiness and violation there. She had nothing to do. Lodestar Realty was off limits. And worst of all, she had no one to be with, no one who meant enough to take her mind off Jaz’s smile.
Frustration evolved into distraction as she stood in the middle of the dining room, frowning and wondering how to outrun loneliness.
Mexico, she told herself. Run to Mexico and lie like your life depends on it. Take what you can and forget about what you can’t give. The selfish thoughts insinuated themselves into her heart, pushing hard against honor and rightness. The memory of her own cruel words made her wince. Her need to protect him had opened up many parts of her personality, some very hard parts. Those hadn’t been the words of a meek woman content to let other people or fate rule her life. They hadn’t been words of weakness. She’d live without him. How long could it take to forget two days of your life? How long could it take to forget he loved her?
* * *
He loved her. Jaz heard the disembodied voice call his flight for the second time and still he didn’t move from his chair. She’d told him to leave and he had believed her. He still believed her, but it wasn’t what he wanted, whether the party was over or not.
How big a fool can you be? his pride taunted him. He rose from the chair and picked up his duffel bag. Pretty big, his heart quickly answered. With a groan of pure disgust he dropped back in the chair and covered his face with his hand.
But when the final call came, he found the strength to leave her.
* * *
“Chantal? Dear?” Elise waved a hand in front of her face. “Are you standing here for a reason? I’m sorry I’m late, but you could have gone ahead and sat down.”
Chantal focused on her aunt. The time for reckoning had come, and she was ready. If she could fight off Jaz’s love, she could fight the world.
“I did start without you,” she said crisply, and directed Elise back to their perpetually reserved table. She waited until they were both settled, then said, “I’m only going to explain this once, Elise, and let you draw your own conclusions.”
So prepared was she for a battle that it took a moment for Elise’s benevolent smile to sink in. “You should have told me much sooner, dear.”
Elise was beaming from ear to ear, a rare enough occurrence to put Chantal on guard. “Told you what?” she asked uneasily.
“I’ve tried so hard to give you a good self-image. And when you finally do something absolutely noble, you don’t share it with me.” The barest hint of reproach crept into her aunt’s voice.
“Noble?”
“Don’t be coy, dear. Your Mr. Peterson called and told me everything. That’s why I’m late.”
The waitress arrived with a split of champagne—Elise always had champagne with lunch—and described the daily special. Elise ordered it and glanced at Chantal.
“That’s fine.” She waited for the waitress to leave and leaned forward, her mind racing in confusion. “Jaz? Called you?”
“Yes, he did, and he was quite candid with me. Honestly, Chantal, if I had ever dreamed that the Cochard area of expertise could be put to such patriotic endeavors, I might have taken more interest as a child. Well, probably not,” she admitted. “All that climbing around and dead-of-night stuff never quite captured my imagination. And of course, in my generation, the women weren’t nearly as involved.” Elise took a sip of champagne.
The pieces fell into place, slowly, one by one. Even after her cruelty he hadn’t abandoned her.
Jaz had told her aunt a whopper, had painted her escapade with a whitewash of clandestine government activity.
Feeling an all-encompassing gratitude from the bottom of her broken heart, she went along with his game plan. He’d made it so easy for her.
“It was all very hush-hush, Elise. Even last night, at the Orleans, I wasn’t sure how much I could tell you.”
“I understand that now. I hope you’ll forgive me.” Elise leaned forward to whisper, “I’m so glad you didn’t invite the Sandhursts to the charity ball. They really aren’t our kind of people.”
Elise had the world neatly categorized, and although Chantal didn’t agree with all her designations, Elise had hit that one right on target. “No, they aren’t. But I know some people who are.” She paused, weighing her next words carefully. What Jaz had given her she didn’t want to waste, not one precious moment of reprieve. “A whole group of people, little people without families, in Denver. They could use our help, Elise.” The orphanage had been a touchy subject between them for weeks before Chantal had let it drop. She hoped her aunt saw things differently now.
“Is that where your commissions have been going?”
Chantal nodded.
“Well, if you promise to spend more money on your wardrobe, I’ll double your contributions. Maybe we could throw in a ski weekend or two. Maybe we could have some of the children up for the charity ball.” The idea took hold and snowballed. “Spring skiing will be better for them. Lots of sunshine. I’ll get Roger to donate the lodging, and Lord knows we spend enough money eating out for a number of restaurants to reciprocate with food. You know, dear, this is just the sort of thing the television stations are always looking for. We could get statewide coverage for a project of this
size.”
Chantal breathed a sigh of relief and joy. She didn’t care about Elise’s ulterior motives, and neither would the children. Somehow, in all the muddle and disaster, solid goodness was coming out of her regression into thievery, and she owed it all to Jaz. She still didn’t know how long it would take to forget two days, to forget his love, but she knew she would never forget the man and what he had given her.
Ten
Jimmy Sandhurst went down in the early part of March and set the whole town talking. The government froze all his assets and confiscated his and Angela’s matching black Mercedes and the multi-million-dollar mansion. Aspen was no novice to scandal, but the sheer global magnitude of the Sandhurst case had the town crawling with national and international press, and Elise had to do her darnedest to restore a more pleasant image to the ski resort, trying to get coverage for the impending Lodestar Charity Ball.
For her part, Chantal was ushering children up and down Aspen Mountain, Snowmass, and Buttermilk. The little ones struggled valiantly with their skis, and the very little ones decided it was easier and more fun to scoot on their bottoms with their legs in the air. Or they just forgot the skis entirely and threw snow at one another. They weren’t given ski poles. Anything that similar to a sword or light saber was just asking for trouble.
Chantal was also struggling valiantly with her memories. The news accosted her every night, reminding her of two days in January and one night with Jaz. Two months had passed, and she hadn’t forgotten a single moment, a single kiss, a single one of his smiles. She wasn’t crying herself to sleep, but every morning she woke to a damp pillow. Somewhere, deep in her subconscious, the memories were stronger, and during her dreams they controlled her tears. The magic place where she and Jaz had made love in their sleep cried for her.
The underworld of crime unfolded on the television screen and in the newspapers, but neither his name nor his face ever appeared. The omission didn’t surprise her. “Unsung hero” was more his style. What did surprise her, and frighten her in retrospect, was the amount of danger they’d both been in. Jaz had known from the beginning and, undaunted, had plowed ahead to get the job done. The full realization of who she’d been dealing with would have stopped her cold long before she’d gotten to the roof of the mansion, long before she’d met Jaz.
But she had met him, loved him, and let him go, and because of all those things she was playing chauffeur to a van full of rowdy, sunburned teenagers.
“Swiss House,” she called above the noise, and waved at Josh Palmer, waiting on the curb. “David, that’s you, and Phillip and George and Casey. Everybody out.”
The boys tumbled out, and Chantal drove another block. “Chalet,” she announced. “Pammy, Kathleen, Diane, and Lisa. Come on, ladies. You’ve got three hours to get ready for the ball. Mr. Neville will pick you up at eight o’clock.”
The girls filed out in a swirl of giggles and goodbyes, and Lily Palmer ducked her head in. “Good day?” she asked.
“It was great, Lily. Thanks for volunteering to chaperone.”
“It’s the least Josh and I could do. If the original stick-in-the-mud, Roger Neville, can pull through with a bit of time and a lot of condo space, we can offer a little parenting for a night. How’s that going, anyway?”
Chantal smiled. “I believe the stick-in-the-mud has transferred his affections to a more appreciative lady.”
“Elise?”
She nodded. “Don’t be surprised if wedding bells ring this summer.”
“Well, even with the age difference, they make a fine pair. Maybe a younger man can hold on to her.”
From everything Chantal had seen transpire during the last few weeks, Roger had every intention of holding on to Elise, and vice versa. “I think so, Lily. He’ll be by to pick up the girls at about eight o’clock.”
“They’ll be ready. I’ve got four sets of curlers heating up right now, and Lana from Lana’s is coming over herself to do them all up. Boys are my specialty, and I can’t remember when I last used a curler.” She tugged on one gray braid, then her impish smile faded. “How are you doing? Seen your prowler around lately?”
“Prowler isn’t exactly the right word, Lily.”
“Right.” Lily drew the word out skeptically. “You borrowed Josh’s twelve-gauge to scare off shadows.”
“Shadow is the right word,” Chantal said. “I haven’t seen her all week. Tell Josh I’ll be bringing the gun back.”
“Okay, little one. I’ll see you tonight.” Lily waved her good-bye and went about herding the girls into the condo.
Chantal drove to Lodestar Realty and exchanged the van for her car, her mind remaining on the mystery woman all the way home. Shadow was the right word, a very elusive shadow. Looking back, Chantal realized she’d first seen the woman sometime during the week after Jaz left—the hardest week she’d lived through, knowing where he was, knowing she was only a flight away—but it had taken her almost four weeks to dismiss her fleeting sightings as coincidence. Had it been a man, she might have been more suspicious.
The woman was young, with the well-scrubbed, apple-cheeked look of a healthy college coed. Hardly a threatening countenance, but once Chantal had noticed her, it seemed she showed up everywhere Chantal went. In the weeks before the government nabbed Sandhurst, the sightings had increased and gotten closer to home. For fifteen days running, Chantal had seen the woman ski past the cabin in the dusk. That was when she’d borrowed Josh’s trusty shotgun, strictly as a precaution. She couldn’t begin to imagine actually shooting anyone, let alone a young woman, but the clocklike appearances were enough to put her on edge.
Then, as elusively as she’d appeared, the woman had disappeared and the Sandhurst scandal had taken over. Ridiculously, Chantal almost missed seeing the slender form kick and glide through the meadow each sunset—part prowler, part shadow, and maybe, if her instincts were still to be trusted, part guardian angel.
“Ridiculous,” she whispered even as her gaze roamed the snow-covered landscape surrounding her cabin.
A plethora of new locks ran down the side of her door, and Chantal used a key on each one. She’d stopped playing games. She knew the combination to the new lock on her hope chest, and the only thing she’d soldered recently was an electrical connection on her new stereo system. Business had been good, and for the first time in her life somebody else felt guilt toward her. Elise was making partnership offers and Roger had let her in on a commercial deal for the big bucks. Chantal knew they had misinterpreted her obvious sadness, but she wasn’t willing to share the true reasons. Losing Jaz was a private pain, as their love had been a private pleasure.
* * *
“Captain Kelley.” Jaz extended his hand to the slight young woman rising from a chair behind a metal desk. Her blue uniform was crisp and neat, the only spot of color in the beige military office. Her hair was dark and short. She had a helluva tan.
She responded with a smile and a firm handshake. “It’s still Sally, Jaz. You haven’t been gone that long.”
“How’s the old man?” He sat down across from her after she had reseated herself.
“Still a bear. Generals don’t soften up with age.”
“I came by to thank you for . . . for everything. The daily reports were . . . well, I appreciated them. I’m sure they caused quite a stir through channels, but I appreciated them.” He was having a hard time meeting her brown eyes. The memory of Sally Kelley’s perceptive reports and her sign-offs had made him wonder how much he’d revealed in their initial phone contact. As the noose had tightened around Sandhurst’s neck, Sally had gotten closer and closer to Chantal.
“Don’t thank me, Jaz,” Sally said. “If I live to be a hundred, I’ll never pull a better duty. Skiing in Aspen for two months! And to top it off the lady eats in great restaurants and knows the best-looking men this side of the Mississippi.” Jaz felt a pang of jealousy as she continued. “I’m going to miss the Royal Elf and tucking her in at night.”
&nbs
p; That was the sign-off—Royal Elf tucked in and safe for the night.
Jaz had purposely requested a female tail for Chantal. Getting Sally had been a bonus. She was one of the best, but Jaz had known Chantal would pick up on anyone following her, and he hadn’t wanted her to be frightened. Sally might have made her uneasy, as some of the reports suggested, but his lady had good instincts. He’d counted on her knowing there wasn’t a threat of danger in the young woman.
What Jaz hadn’t expected was the depth of Sally’s intuition. After the first week, the private reports had gotten a lot more personal, and he’d hung on every word.
The Royal Elf is early to bed and early to rise, alone, every night. Methinks, the fairy princess has a broken heart. Sandhurst keeping his distance. ’Fess up, Peterson. What am I doing here, having a vacation on the Air Force?
Breakfast at O.B.’s again. If Aspen ain’t heaven, I ain’t going. I owe you, Peterson. The investigation team is moving in on Sandhurst and I’m moving in on the Royal Elf. Tucked her in last night. She’s hip to me, but staying cool. Sharp lady.
“Where are you going next?” Jaz asked. “Back to D.C.?”
“For a while. Then who knows? There are plenty of hot spots out in the world. General Moore might think I need a dose of reality after two months with the jet set. What about you? How’s the private sector treating you?”
“I closed up in Mexico and cashed out better than I expected, and General Moore came through with a nice bonus.” Jaz hadn’t asked for double. Two nights in Aspen had meant more than any amount of money.
Sally rocked back in her chair, a reflective look softening her eyes. “She’s a lonely lady, Jaz. Lots of gorgeous men hanging all over her, and she doesn’t see any of them. I know it’s none of my business, but I’m guessing a couple of free-lancers forgot to keep their professional distance. Maybe you should take in a little skiing while you’re here in Colorado. I still have a season pass, compliments of the American taxpayer.”
