“Hmm.”
“Can we do it again?”
He opened his eyes halfway. “Mm-hmm. Soon as I catch my breath.”
She giggled. “I meant the parachute jump.”
“Oh.” Was that disappointment in his voice? “You bet. Anytime.”
Across the field, Rosemary saw Mac headed toward them on the ATV. Zane rolled his gaze that way, too, then lifted his head and kissed her long and hard until they could hear the whine of the engine close by. Finally he eased his head back and tucked a curl behind her ear.
“Meanwhile,” he said, “what do you say we take this free fall somewhere a little more private?”
Zane splashed some water on his face, then leaned on the bathroom sink and faced himself in the mirror.
What the hell are you doing?
“Exactly what you think I’m doing,” he grumbled almost silently.
You can’t. It isn’t right. It isn’t fair.
“Life isn’t fair.”
So it’s okay for you to hurt her because you don’t like the way your life is going.
“I’m perfectly happy with the way my life is going. It’s the way it’s going to end that I’m pissed off about.”
Will dragging her into your troubles change that? You have no future to offer her.
“I’ll break it off after the air show. Once she’s done her story. She never has to know.”
She’ll still be hurt.
“She’ll be hurt if I back out now.”
Not as badly.
“Dammit! What do you want from me?”
Keep your voice down.
Zane glanced nervously at the door, hoping she hadn’t heard anything. All he needed was questions about who he’d been talking to.
What are you going to do?
He scrubbed his hands over his face and shook his head. “Hell if I know.”
Indecision churning in his gut, he pasted on a grim smile and stepped out of the bathroom.
“Took you long enough. I was beginning to get worried about you in there.” Rosemary sat on the edge of his bed, biting her lower lip. Her legs were crossed and her hands were clenched in her lap. He’d never seen her look so nervous.
It was normal to be a little anxious the first time with someone, but she trusted him, he thought. And there was no doubt their attraction was genuine—
Realization hit him like a lightning bolt from heaven.
What were the chances that a woman who had never tasted chocolate or drunk a beer until this week had ever…?
Slim to none, he was afraid.
Damn, as if this wasn’t hard enough.
He sat next to her, close but not touching. She searched his face with her eyes, questioning.
“Look, Rosemary. I was thinking. Maybe this isn’t the best time—”
Her hands clamped together even tighter in her lap. “Did I do something wrong?”
“No. God, no. Hell, no.” Christ, if this didn’t kill him, nothing would.
She lurched off the bed, almost stumbling in her hurry to get away from him. “Sure, well. Yeah. I mean if it’s not a good time, then we should reschedule. How does a week from Tuesday sound? Maybe you need to get your calendar and check. Or maybe you were thinking of something a little further out. Like not in this lifetime.”
She scooped up her jacket and tried to jam her feet into the sneakers she’d kicked off like she was trying to kick the stuffing out of something. Or someone. Oh yeah, she was a virgin all right.
Zane had to bite back a grin. Her embarrassment had morphed to anger in record time, giving credence to the old saying that hell hath no fury…
Color flooded her cheeks and her hair lashed her cheeks as she whipped her head around. The angrier she got, the more beautiful she looked.
How the hell had a woman like her reached this point in her life without sleeping with anyone? She must have had men knocking at her door night and day.
Maybe someone had hurt her before she’d gotten to that point. The way he just had.
He sighed. “I’m sorry, Rosie. There’s just some stuff going on in my life right now—”
She turned on him, one shoe on, one shoe off and eyes like twin green flames. “Oh, stuff going on in your life. I’d love to say I understand, but I really can’t since I’ve never actually had a life, have I?”
He scrunched his face, confused. “What?”
“Never mind.” She bent down and picked up the sneaker she couldn’t get on. “You’re right. I’m sure it would never work out between us. I mean I’m—”
He grabbed her wrist as she straightened. Waited for her to raise her head and look at him. Damn, he hated seeing the hurt swimming in her green eyes just beneath the fury. Hated that he had put it there, and that he was going to make it worse.
“Rosie, I’m dying.”
Her lips pursed, her mouth slightly open. For a moment, neither of them breathed.
“What?” she finally asked, the word coming out on a rush of breath.
“That’s why I left the Army. Medical discharge.” He let go of her wrist and took a slow breath. “Three years ago I was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Radiation and chemotherapy didn’t work. I went into surgery three times, and they finally got it all, but by then the damage to the blood vessels in the area couldn’t be repaired. I have a hundred little aneurysms in my head just waiting to explode. And when one of them goes, they tell me, it will be like a string of firecrackers, only a little slower. Within a few hours, a day at most, they’ll all go.”
He didn’t think she even realized she was shaking her head, denying his words even as she heard them. “That can’t be—You can’t—”
“Last time I saw the doc, he said he didn’t think I’d make it another six months.” Zane managed a weak smile for her benefit. “That was five and a half months ago.”
Chapter 7
WHY didn’t you tell me?” Rosemary knew she was out of line—not just with the question, but with the tone of voice in which she’d asked it. No one talked to Saint Peter that way, but she wasn’t sorry. She felt like she’d just woken up from millennia of sleep. For the first time in her existence, she had begun to question what she did, and why.
Across the bar, Zane and his crew broke into a fit of laughter as Zane turned away from a swimsuit-model calendar they’d tacked to the wall and then threw a dart over his shoulder.
Rosemary smiled. At least there were no blindfolds involved tonight.
“That’s ten points!” Zane declared, studying his hit.
“No way!” Kyle called.
“I got her thumb!” Apparently certain body parts were worth higher scores than others.
A dark-haired man in black jeans and a leather jacket shouldered Zane out of the way. “Let me show you how it’s done, old man.”
The new guy looked familiar to Rosemary, but she couldn’t place him. “Who is that?” she asked Peter.
“Name’s Trey MacAllister. He’s a wheel man. Heard Zane is thinking about adding some ground work to his show, needs a stunt driver. The deal is, if he can beat Zane at backward darts, he’s hired. If not…” Peter shrugged.
Rosemary shook her head. Only Zane would substitute a game for an employment interview.
As if he knew she was thinking about him, Zane turned to her from across the room. The look he sent her was quickly shuttered, but not before she’d read the pain there. The longing. The same feelings echoed inside her.
He broke the eye contact suddenly, and stumbled into a chair as he reached to pour himself a beer from the pitcher on the table.
“I don’t think the wheel man’s going to have much trouble winning himself a job. Our boy’s been hitting the brew hard tonight.” Peter’s voice was heavy with resignation. “Guess I can’t blame him.”
Rosemary turned back to her mentor, fighting back the moisture in her eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me Zane thinks he’s going to die?”
“He is going to die.”
�
�He thinks he’s going to die of a brain aneurysm. That’s why he does the crazy things he does. He doesn’t think he has anything to lose.”
“Maybe he doesn’t.”
“What about time? No doctor can know for sure when it’s going to happen. He could have days, weeks, maybe even months left.”
Peter checked sideways up and down the bar, as if to be sure none of his other patrons were close enough to overhear, then leaned toward Rosemary across the bar. “I thought you were the one who didn’t understand why people fought so hard to stay here, to hang on when there was a better place waiting for them on the other side.”
Her shoulders sagged. “Maybe I did feel that way, once. But I hate to see him give up even a minute of what he has left. He just…lives more than any human I’ve ever seen.”
Every second. Full throttle. That’s what he’d told her. Now she knew why. He didn’t think he had many seconds left. And that belief was going to drive him into killing himself in some stupid stunt.
Peter peered at her over the rim of the glass he was wiping dry. “What about you? How are you finding mortal existence?”
“I want to go home,” she said. Life hurt sometimes, as she’d found out firsthand earlier today in Zane’s bedroom. Still, she didn’t blame him. “But not at his expense.”
Peter made a noncommittal noise. “It’s not our choice. You know that. When it’s time, it’s time.”
“I don’t think I can do it.” She swept a stray lock of hair behind her ear and looked up at Peter through her lashes. “I can’t take him.”
“You have to.”
“What if I don’t?” She raised her head and met his gaze squarely. “What if this one time, I say no?”
Peter’s silvered eyebrows drew down even as his gaze lifted, traveled back to the pool tables, and Zane’s new wheel man. He wiped the glass in his hand hard enough to shatter it.
At first, she thought his anger was directed at her. Then she followed his gaze across the room, and a cold pool spread through her chest.
The new guy clapped Zane on the back and laughed at something one of them had said. He had the rakish dark hair and easy smile of a charmer, but when he turned his gaze back toward her and Peter, as if he felt their gazes on him, his dark eyes were empty, bottomless wells.
Rosemary’s skin prickled as she recognized him—not the mortal body he currently inhabited, but the evil inside him. His purpose on Earth was the same as hers—he was a shepherd of souls from this realm of existence to the next. Only when he gathered a person’s essence, he took it to a much darker place.
“If you don’t take Zane’s soul,” Peter said in a rough tone she rarely heard him use, “someone else will.”
Rosemary tried to stay away from the air show on Thursday—tried, and failed. Zane had made his choices, and they didn’t include her. Today’s stunt wasn’t a dangerous one, a formation skydive with a local team he’d worked with before, and it had gone off without a hitch. The airfield was closing down for the day. There was really no reason for her to be here.
Except that she couldn’t stay away.
She hadn’t slept well, knowing that one of the Fallen, a dark angel, had taken up residence so close to Zane, and this heavy-limbed, blurry-eyed feeling that came with exhaustion had her fighting to hold on to any semblance of objectivity about death—Zane’s death—even more than usual.
Zane’s hangar was cool compared to the evening heat outside. Kyle and Jimmie had the biplane’s cover opened and were standing with tools in hands over her, but seemed to be more focused on a discussion going on in the office than the engine. Through half-open mini-blinds, Rosemary saw two figures behind the glass. Since they were shouting, it wasn’t hard to identify them as Jasper and Zane.
“I didn’t ask for your opinion on this stunt, Jasper!”
“That’s the point, Zane. You didn’t ask because you know it’s crazy. I’m not letting you do this.”
Rosemary glanced at Kyle and Jimmie. “What’s going on?”
The boys shrugged as one. “Been at it like this all afternoon,” Kyle said. “I’ve never seen them so mad at each other.”
Jimmie shoved his greasy hands into the pockets of his coveralls. “It’s the new guy’s fault. Jasper don’t like the stunt him and Zane worked up. Says it’s too risky.”
Rosemary’s heart rolled over. It wasn’t beyond one of the Fallen to put ideas in a human’s head that would guarantee a soul to be available soon. Ideas like an impossible stunt.
A third figure moved out of the shadows in the office. Rosemary’s jaw tensed. Trey MacAllister. The dark angel spoke too quietly to be heard, but Rosemary knew how insidious the Fallen’s strategy could be. He would plant the seeds of distrust, drive the two long-term friends apart.
Clenching her fists until her fingernails dug into her palms, she marched toward the office.
“I’m not doing it, Z. I’m not flying this stunt.”
“Fine!” Zane dragged a hand through his hair as Rosemary opened the office door. “You think I can’t replace one washed-up pilot? I’ll have someone else on board before you make it out of the parking lot.”
Zane’s statement drew Rosemary up short just inside the office. Surely he realized how hurtful his words had been. Jasper rasped his hand over a day’s gray beard stubble. “You do that,” he said quietly, and shouldered his way out without looking back.
“Jasper, wait!” she called, but his footsteps echoed across the hangar without pause.
She turned back to Zane in disbelief. “What are you doing? He’s your best friend!”
The hard mask that was Zane’s face slipped for a moment, revealing a wash of emotion, but then snapped back in place when Trey spoke up.
“I know a couple of pilots. I could check if they’re available tomorrow,” he said.
Never taking his eyes off Rosemary, Zane said “I’d appreciate that.”
After Trey stepped past her with a triumphant look, Zane closed the door behind him.
“I didn’t expect to see you back here,” he said quietly, as if all the fight in him had been used up.
“I didn’t expect to be back here.”
He wandered across the room to his desk, looking lost. “So why are you?”
Because she really wasn’t sure why she’d come herself, she ignored the question. “What are you doing, Zane?”
“Doing about what?”
“Hiring a guy because he was able to beat you at darts—when you were drunk and he wasn’t, I might add.”
“Hey, his resume is great and his references all checked out.” The cocky grin he flashed didn’t fool her. “The darts were just a formality.”
“So you’re going to throw away a friend who has stood by you for years for a good resume and references?”
Zane’s grin fell. “Jasper will come back when he cools off. He always does.”
She shook her head. “Whatever you’re planning, don’t do it, Zane.”
“It’s just a gag. It’ll come off, no problem.”
“Are you sure you want it to?”
A muscle ticked in his jaw. “I’m not trying to kill myself, Rosemary.”
She wasn’t so sure, but she held her tongue until he finally quit picking at his desk blotter and raised his hazel gaze to hers, the fake grin back in place.
“Besides, if anything goes wrong, my guardian angel will be there to protect me, right?”
“No.” Rosemary shook her head slowly, sadly. “No, she won’t be.”
She left before she gave in, before she told him too much, before she begged. Kyle and Jimmie called to her as she passed, but she hurried on by, wiping her eyes before anyone could see her tears.
Outside, a hand grabbed her arm and swung her around. Trey MacAllister twiddled a straw in his mouth, the dark voids of his eyes boring into her.
“The more you try to talk him out of it, the more determined he’ll be to do it,” the dark angel said.
“I know.”
“Good. Just so we’re clear. He’s mine.”
Rosemary yanked her arm free. “Go to hell.”
Trey smiled. “Plan to. Saturday, as soon as I’m done here.”
He strolled away, and Rosemary had to lean against the corrugated tin hangar for support.
Oh, God. On Saturday, Zane was going to die.
Chapter 8
GIVE me some more altitude!”
What the hell was he doing?
Zane stood just inside the door to his jump plane, and wondered if the multiple aneurysms in his brain had somehow robbed him of common sense. Or maybe the part of his brain responsible for self-preservation had been removed with the tumor.
He had a pilot whose name he didn’t even know at the controls of his plane and a wheel man he had never worked with in the cab of a semi below. A semi that would squash Zane like a bug on a windshield if it weren’t perfectly controlled.
He also had several thousand people on the ground below, looking up and waiting to be thrilled on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. Too late to back out now. He’d been paid, and he’d damned well deliver, even if the only two that really mattered to him—Rosemary and Jasper—weren’t among the spectators.
He’d expected either or both of them to show up in the hangar before he taxied out, but it didn’t happen. He might have expected it to take a bit longer with Jasper, the stubborn old man, but Rosemary…he’d really needed to see her. To know he wasn’t alone.
Silly superstitious idea, he knew, but he really had come to think of her as his guardian angel. She made him feel safe.
He’d find both of them afterward, he promised himself. He’d make things right.
Taking a deep breath, he stepped out of the airplane, and tumbled into position for the free fall. He couldn’t see Trey’s truck yet, but when he reached one thousand feet, he would key his radio, and the semi would begin a lumbering trek down the airfield’s west runway. By the time Zane lined up on it, it would be traveling fifty miles per hour.
He would have to maintain a fast descent himself to keep up. But the real trick would be releasing his chute at exactly the right moment—the moment before his feet touched the padded deck of the truck’s flatbed trailer. A fraction of a second too soon, and he’d fall like a rock, missing the padding and going splat on the concrete instead. Too late, and the wind resistance on the chute would tumble him off the back of the truck, which would be about as fun as leaping off a speeding train.
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