At Home in Stone Creek (Silhouette Special Edition) (10 page)

He grinned. He'd showered and shaved since leaving her bed, she noticed. And he was wearing fresh clothes—blue jeans and a white T-shirt. “I began to suspect you thought that while you were digging your
heels into the small of my back and howling like a she-wolf calling down the moon.”

Ashley laughed, but her cheeks burned. She
had
acted like a hussy, abandoning herself to Jack, body and soul, and she didn't regret a moment of it. “Pretty cocky, aren't you?” she said.

Jack swiveled the chair around. “Come here,” he said gruffly.

Her heart did a little jig, and her breath caught. “Why?”

“Because I want you,” he replied simply.

She stood up, crossed to him, allowed him to set her astraddle on his lap. Moaned as he opened her bathrobe, baring her breasts.

Jack nibbled at one of her nipples, then the other. “Ummm,” he murmured, shifting in the chair. He continued to arouse delicious feelings in her breasts with his lips and tongue.

Her eyes widened when she realized he'd opened his jeans. He drew his knees a little farther apart, and she gave a crooning gasp when she felt him between her legs, hot and hard, prodding.

Just as he entered her, he leaned forward again, took her right nipple into his mouth, tongued it and then began to suckle.

Ashley choked out an ecstatic sob and threw back her head, her hair falling loose down her back. “Oh, God,” she whimpered. “Oh, God, not yet—”

But her body seized, caught in a maelstrom of pleasure, spasmed wildly, and seized again. Taken over, possessed, she rode him relentlessly, recklessly, her very soul ablaze with a light that blinded her from the inside.

Jack waited until she'd gone still, the effort at restraint
visible in his features, and when he let himself go, the motions of his body were slow and graceful. Ashley watched his face, spellbound, until he'd stopped moving.

He sighed, his eyes closed.

And then they flew open.

“You
are
on the pill, aren't you?” he asked.

She had been, before he left. After he was gone, there had been no reason to practice birth control.

Ashley shook her head.

“What?”
Jack choked out.

Ashley closed her robe, moved to rise off his lap.

But he grasped her hips and held her firmly in place. “Ashley?” he rasped.

“No, Jack,” she said evenly. “I'm not on the pill.”

He swore under his breath.

“Don't worry,” she told him, hiding her hurt. “I'm not going to trap you.”

He was going hard inside her again—angry hard. His eyes smoldering, his hands still holding her by the hips, he began to raise and lower her, raise and lower her, along the growing length of his shaft.

She buckled with the first orgasm, bit back a cry of response.

Jack settled back in the chair, watching her face, already driving her toward another, stronger climax.

And then another, and still another.

When his own release came, much later, he didn't utter a sound.

I
n some ways, that last bout of lovemaking had been the most satisfying, but it left Ashley feeling peevish, just the same. When it was over, and she'd solidified her sex-weakened knees by an act of sheer will, she tugged her bathrobe closed and cinched the belt with a decisive motion.

“Good night,” she told Jack, her chin high, her face hot.

“'Night,” he replied. Having already refastened his jeans, he turned casually back to the computer monitor. To look at him, nobody would have guessed they'd been having soul-bending sex only a few minutes before.

“I'll need a credit card,” Ashley said.

Jack slanted a look at her. “I beg your pardon?” he drawled.

Ashley's blush deepened to crimson. “Not for the sex,” she said primly. “For the room.”

Jack's attention was fixed on the monitor again. “My wallet's in the bag with my other gear. Help yourself.”

As she stormed out, she thought she heard him chuckle.

Fury zinged through her, like a charge.

Since she was no snoop, she snatched up the leather bag, resting on the sewing room floor, and marched right back to the study. Set it down on the desk with a hard thump, two inches from Jack's elbow.

He sighed, flipped the brass catch on the bag, and rummaged inside until he found his wallet. Extracted a credit card.

“Here you go, Madam,” he said, holding it between two fingers.

Ashley snatched the card, unwilling to pursue the word
Madam
. “How long will you be staying?”

The question hung between them for several moments.

“Better put me down for two weeks,” Jack finally said. “The food's good here, and the sex is even better.”

Ashley glanced at the card. It was platinum, so it probably had a high limit, and the expiration date was three years in the future. The name, however, was wrong.

“‘Mark Ramsey'?” she read aloud.

“Oops. Sorry.” Jack took the card back.

“Is that your real name?”

“Of course not.” Frowning with concentration, Jack thumbed through a stack of cards, more than most people carried, certainly.

“What
is
your name, then?”
Since I just had about fourteen orgasms straddling your lap, I think I have a right to know.

“Jack McCall,” he said sweetly, handing her a gold card. “Try this one.”

“What name did you use when you rescued Rachel?”

“Not this one, believe me. But if a man calls here or, worse yet, comes to the door, asking for Neal Mercer, you've never heard of me.”

Ashley's palms were sweaty. She sank disconsolately into the same chair she'd occupied earlier, before the lap dance. “Just how many aliases do you have, anyway?”

Jack was focused on the keyboard again. “Maybe a dozen. Are you going to run that card or not?”

Ashley leaned a little, peered at the screen. A picture of her house, in full summer regalia, filled it. Trees leafed out. Flowers blooming. Lawn greener than green and neatly mowed. She could almost smell sprinkler-dampened grass.

“Where did you get that?” she asked.

“The picture?” Jack didn't look at her. “Downloaded it from the Chamber of Commerce Web site. I'm setting you up to take credit cards next—the usual?”

She sighed. “Yes.”

“Why the sigh?” He was watching her now.

“I have so much to learn about computers,” Ashley said, after biting her lip. That was only part of what was bothering her, of course. She loved this man, and he claimed to love her in return, and she didn't even know who he was.

How crazy was that?

“It's not so hard,” he told her, switching to another page on the screen, one filled with credit card logos. “I'll show you how.”

“What's your name?”

He chuckled. “Rumpelstiltskin?”

“Hilarious. Do you even
remember
who you really are?”

He turned in the swivel chair, gazing directly into
her eyes. “Jack McKenzie,” he said solemnly. “As if it mattered.”

“Why wouldn't it matter?” Ashley asked in a whisper.

“Because Jacob ‘Jack' McKenzie is dead. Buried at Arlington, with full military honors.”

She stared at him, confounded.

“Get some sleep, Ashley,” Jack said, and now he sounded weary.

She was too proud to ask if he planned on sharing her bed—wasn't even sure she wanted him there. Yes, she loved him, with her whole being, there was no escaping that. But they might as well have lived in separate universes; she wasn't an international spy. She was a small-town girl, the operator of a modest B&B. Intrigue wasn't in her repertoire.

Slowly, she rose from the chair. She walked into the darkened living room, flipped on a lamp and proceeded to the check-in desk. There, she ran Jack's credit card.

It went through just fine.

She returned the card to him. “There'll be a slip to sign,” she said flatly, “but that can wait until morning.”

Jack merely nodded.

Ashley left the study again, scooped up a mewing Mrs. Wiggins as she passed and climbed the stairs.

 

Jack waited until he'd heard Ashley's bedroom door close in the distance, then set up yet another hotmail account, and brought up the message page. Typed in his mother's e-mail address at the library.

Hi, Mom
, he typed.
Just a note to say I'm not really dead
…

Delete.

He clicked to the search engine, entered the URL of the Web site for his dad's dental office.

There was Dr. McKenzie, in a white coat, looking like a man you'd trust your teeth to without hesitation. The old man was broad in the shoulders, with a full head of silver hair and a confident smile—Jack supposed he'd look a lot like his dad someday, if he managed to live long enough.

The average Web surfer probably wouldn't have noticed the pain in Doc's eyes, but Jack did. He looked deep.

“I'm sorry, Dad,” he murmured.

His cell phone, buried in the depths of his gear bag, played the opening notes of “Folsom Prison Blues.”

Startled, Jack scrabbled through T-shirts and underwear until he found the cell. He didn't answer it, but squinted at the caller ID panel instead. It read, “Blocked.”

A chill trickled down Jack's spine as he waited to see if the caller would leave a voice mail. This particular phone, a throwaway, was registered to Neal Mercer, and only a few people had the number.

Ardith.

Rachel.

An FBI agent or two.

Chad Lombard? There was no way he could have it, unless Rachel or Ardith had told him. Under duress.

A cold sweat broke out between Jack's aching shoulder blades.

A little envelope flashed on the phone screen.

After sucking in a breath, Jack accessed his voice mail.

“Jack? It's Ardith.” She sounded scared. She'd changed her name, changed Rachel's, bought a condo on a shady street in a city far from Phoenix and started a new life, hoping to stay under Lombard's radar.

Jack waited for her to go on.

“I think he knows where we are,” she said, at long last. “Rachel—I mean, Charlotte—is sure she saw him
drive by the playground this afternoon—oh, God, I hope you get this—” Another pause, then Ardith recited a number. “Call me.”

Jack shuddered as he hit the call back button. Cell calls were notoriously easy to listen in on, if you had the right equipment and the skill, and given the clandestine nature of his life's work, Lombard surely did. If Rachel
had
seen her father drive past the playground, and not just someone who resembled him, the bastard was already closing in for the kill.

“H-hello?” Ardith answered.

“It's Jack. This has to be quick, Ardith. You need to get
Charlotte
and leave. Right now.”

“And go where?” Ardith asked, her voice shaking. “For all I know, he's waiting right outside my door!”

“I'll send an escort. Just be ready, okay?”

“But where—?”

“You'll know when you get here. My people will use the password we agreed on. Don't go with them unless they do.”

“Okay,” Ardith said, near tears now.

They hung up without good-byes.

Jack immediately contacted Vince Griffin, using Ashley's landline, and gave the order, along with the password.

“Call me after you pick them up,” he finished.

“Will do,” Vince responded. “I take it she and the kid are right where we left them?”

“Yes,” Jack said. It was beyond unlikely that Ashley's phone was bugged, but Vince's could be. He had to take the chance, hope to God nobody was listening in, that his longtime friend and employee wouldn't be followed. “Be careful.”

“Always,” Vince said cheerfully, and hung up.

Jack heard a sound behind him, regretted that the Glock was hidden behind a pile of quilts in the sewing room.

Ashley stood, pale-faced, in the study doorway.

“They're coming here? Rachel and her mother?”

“Yes,” Jack said, letting out his breath.
You could have shot Ashley
, he heard Tanner say. A chill burned through him. “They won't be here long—just until I can find them a safe place to start over.”

“They can stay as long as they need to,” Ashley said, but she looked terrified. “There's no safer place than Stone Creek.”

It wouldn't be a safe place for long if Lombard tracked his ex-girlfriend and his daughter to the small Arizona town, but Jack didn't point that out. There was no need to say it aloud.

 

Jack shut down the computer and retired to the sewing room.

Knowing she wouldn't sleep, Ashley showered, put on blue jeans and an old T-shirt, and returned to the kitchen, where she methodically assembled the ingredients for the most complicated recipe in her collection—her great-grandmother's rum-pecan cake.

The fourth batch was cooling when dawn broke, and Ashley was sitting at the table, a cup of coffee untouched in front of her.

Jack stepped out of the sewing room, a shaving kit under one arm. His smile was wan, and a little guilty. “Smells like Christmas in here,” he said, very quietly. “Did you sleep?”

Ashley shook her head, vaguely aware that she was covered in cake flour, the fallout of frenzied baking. “Did you?”

“No,” Jack said, and she knew by the hollow look in his eyes that he was telling the truth. “Ashley, I'm sorry—”

“Please,” Ashley interrupted, “stop saying that.”

She couldn't help comparing that morning to the one before, when she'd virtually seduced Jack right there in the kitchen. Was it only yesterday that she'd visited Olivia and the babies at the clinic in Indian Rock, had that disturbing conversation with Melissa outside the nursery? Dear God, it seemed as though a hundred years had passed since then.

The wall phone rang.

Jack tensed.

Ashley got up to answer. “It's only Melissa,” she said.

She always knew when Melissa was calling.

“I'm picking up twin-vibes,” her sister announced. “What's going on?”

“Nothing,” Ashley said, glancing at the clock on the fireplace mantel. “It's only six in the morning, Melissa. What are you doing up so early?”

“I told you, I've got vibes,” Melissa answered, sounding impatient.

Jack left the kitchen.

“Nothing's wrong,” Ashley said, winding the telephone cord around her finger.

“You're lying,” Melissa insisted flatly. “Do I have to come over there?”

Ashley smiled at the prospect. “Only if you want a home-cooked breakfast. Blueberry pancakes? Cherry crepes?”

“You,” Melissa accused, “are deliberately torturing me. Your own sister. You
know
I'm on a diet.”

“You're five foot three and you weigh 110 pounds.
If you're on a diet, I'm having you committed.” Remembering that their mother had died in the psychiatric ward of a Flagstaff hospital, Ashley instantly regretted her choice of words. This was a subject she wanted to avoid, at least until she regained her emotional equilibrium. Melissa, like Brad and Olivia, had had a no-love-lost relationship with Delia.

“Cherry crepes,” Melissa mused. “Ashley O'Ballivan, you are an evil woman.” A pause. “Furthermore, you have some nerve, grilling me about Alex Ewing, when Jack McCall is back.”