At Home in Stone Creek (Silhouette Special Edition) (15 page)

Ashley closed her eyes.

Brakes squealed outside.

Tanner's voice seemed to recede, and then the call ended.

Brad nearly tore down the door in his hurry to get inside.

Jack looked around, his expression drawn but pleasant.

“Cherry crepes, anyone?” he asked mildly.

“I
know a place the woman and the little girl will be safe,” Brad said wearily, once the excitement had died down and Ashley, her brother, Jack and Tanner were calmly seated around her kitchen table, eating the middle-of-the-night breakfast she'd prepared to keep from going out of her mind with anxiety.

Vince, the man with the gun, was conspicuously absent, while Ardith and Rachel slept on upstairs. Remarkably, the uproar hadn't awakened them, probably because they were so worn-out.

Jack shifted in his chair, pushed back his plate. For a man who believed so strongly in bacon and eggs, he hadn't eaten much. “Where?” he asked.

“Nashville,” Brad replied. Then he threw out the name of one of the biggest stars in country music. “She's a friend,” he added, as casually as if just
anybody
could wake up a famous woman in the middle
of the night and ask her to shelter a pair of strangers for an indefinite length of time. “And she's got more high-tech security than the president. Bodyguards, the whole works.”

“She'd do that?” Jack asked, grimly impressed.

Brad raised one shoulder in a semblance of a shrug. “I'd do it for her, and she knows that,” he said easily. “We go way back.”

“Sounds good to me,” Tanner put in, relaxing a little. Everyone, naturally, was showing the strain.

“Me, too,” Jack admitted, and though he didn't sigh, Ashley sensed the depths of his relief. “How do we get them there?”

“Very carefully,” Brad said. “I'll take care of it.”

Jack seemed to weigh his response for a long time before giving it. “There's a woman's life at stake here,” he said. “And a little girl's future.”

“I get that,” Brad answered. His gaze slid to Ashley, then moved back to Jack's face, hardening again. “Of course, I want something in return.”

Ashley held her breath.

Jack maintained eye contact with Brad. “What?”

“You, gone,” Brad said. “For good.”

“Now,
wait just one minute
—” Ashley sputtered.

“He's right,” Jack said. “Lombard wants me, Ashley, not you. And I intend to keep it that way.”

“So when do we make the move?” Tanner asked.

“Now,” Brad responded evenly, a muscle bunching in his jawline. He could surely feel Ashley's glare boring into him. “I can have a jet at the airstrip within an hour or two, and I think we need to get them out of here before sunrise.”

“Can't you let Rachel and her mother rest, just for
this one night?” Ashley demanded. “They must be absolutely exhausted by all this—”

“It has to be tonight,” Brad insisted.

Jack nodded, sighed as he got to his feet. “Make the calls,” he told Brad. “I'll get them out of bed.”

Things were moving too fast. Ashley gripped the table edge, swaying with a sudden sensation of teetering on the brink of some bottomless abyss. “Wait,” she said.

She might as well have been invisible, inaudible. A ghost haunting her own house, for all the attention anyone paid her.

Brad was already reaching for his cell phone. “When I get back from Nashville,” he said, watching Jack, “I expect you to be history.”

Jack nodded, avoiding Ashley's desperate gaze. “It's a deal,” he said, and left the room.

Ashley immediately sprang out of her chair, without the faintest idea of what she would do next.

Tanner took a gentle hold on her wrist and eased her back down onto the cushioned seat.

Brad placed a call to his friend. Apologized for waking her up. Exchanged a few pleasantries—yes, Meg was fine and Mac was growing like a weed, and sure there would be other kids. Give him time.

Ashley listened in helpless sorrow as he went on to explain the Ardith-Rachel situation and ask for help.

The singer agreed immediately.

Brad called for a private jet. He might as well have been ordering a pizza, he was so casual about it. Only with a pizza, he would at least have had to give a credit card number.

When Brad said, “jump,” the response was invariably, “How high?”

Because she'd always known him as her big
brother, the broad scope of his power always came as a surprise to her.

Things accelerated after the phone calls.

Resigned, Ashley got to work preparing food for the trip, so Ardith and Rachel wouldn't starve, though the jet probably offered catered meals.

Her guests stumbled sleepily into the kitchen just as she was finishing, herded there by Jack, their clothes rumpled and hastily donned, their eyes glazed with confusion, weariness and fear.

The little girl favored Ashley with a wan, blinking smile. “Have you been taking care of Jack?” she asked.

Ashley's heart turned over. “I've been trying,” she said truthfully, studiously ignoring Brad, Tanner and Jack himself.

Vince had wandered in behind them. “Want me to go along for the ride?” he asked, meeting no one's eyes.

“No,” Jack said tersely. “You're done here.”

“For good?” Vince asked.

“For now,” Jack replied.

Vince turned to Brad. “Catch a ride to the airstrip with you?”

Jack gave the man a quick glance, his eyes ever so slightly narrowed. “I'll take you there myself,” he said, adding a brisk, “Later.”

“You stopped trusting me, boss?” Vince asked, with an odd grin.

“Maybe,” Jack said.

Some of the color drained from Vince's face. “Am I fired?”

“Don't push it,” Jack answered.

In the end, it was decided that Tanner would drive Vince back to his helicopter once Brad, Ardith and
Rachel were aboard the jet, ready for takeoff. Later, Tanner would see that Jack boarded a commercial airliner in Flagstaff, bound for Somewhere Else.

Holding back tears, Ashley handed her brother the food she'd packed, tucked into a basket with a cheery red-and-white-checkered napkin for a cover.

Something softened in Brad's eyes as he accepted the offering, but he didn't say anything.

And neither did Ashley.

A gulf had opened between Ashley and the big brother she had always loved and admired, far wider than the one created by their mother's death. Even knowing he was doing what he thought was right—what probably
was
right—Ashley felt steamrolled, and she resented it.

Soon, Brad was gone, along with Ardith and Rachel.

Approximately an hour later, Tanner and the chastened Vince left, too.

Jack and Ashley sat on opposite sides of the kitchen table, unable to look at each other.

After a long, long time, Jack said, “My mother died three years ago. And I didn't have a clue.”

Startled, Ashley sat up straighter in her chair. “I'm sorry,” she said.

“Breast cancer,” Jack explained gruffly, his eyes moist.

“Oh, Jack. That's terrible.”

He nodded. Sighed heavily.

“I guess this is our last night together,” Ashley said, at some length.

“I guess so,” Jack agreed miserably.

Purpose flowed through Ashley. “Then let's make it count,” she said. She locked the back door. She flipped off the lights. And then she took Jack's hand, there in the darkness, and led him upstairs to her bed.

Every moment, every gesture, was precious, and very nearly sacred.

Jack undressed Ashley the way an archeologist might uncover a fragile treasure, with a cherishing tenderness that stirred not only her body, but her soul. Head back, she surrendered her naked breasts to him, reveled in the sensations wrought by his lips and tongue.

A low, crooning sound escaped her, and she found just enough control to open his shirt, her fingers fumbling with the buttons. She needed to feel his flesh, bare and hard, yet warm against her palms and splayed fingers.

They kissed, long and deep, with a sweet urgency all the better for the smallest delay.

In time, Jack eased her onto the bed, sideways, and spread her legs to nuzzle and then suckle her until she was gasping with need and exaltation.

She whispered his name, a ragged sound, and tears burned in her eyes. How would she live without him, without this? How colorless her days would be, when he was gone, and how empty her nights. He'd taught her body to crave these singular pleasures, to need them as much as she needed air and water and the light of the sun.

But, no, she thought sorrowfully. She mustn't spoil what was probably their last night together by leaving the moment, journeying into a lonely and uncertain future. It was
now
that mattered, and only now. Jack's hands on her inner thighs, Jack's mouth on the very center of her femininity.

Dear God, it felt so good, the way he was loving her, almost too good to be borne.

The first climax came softly, seizing her, making her buckle and moan in release.

“Don't stop,” she pleaded, entangling her fingers in his hair.

She hoped he would
never
cut his hair short again.

He chuckled against her moist, straining flesh, nipped at her ever so lightly with his teeth and brought her to another orgasm, this one sharp and brief, a sudden and wild flexing deep within her. “Oh, I'm a long way from finished,” he assured her gruffly, before falling to her again.

Ashley could never have said afterward how many times she rose and fell on the hot tide of primitive satisfaction, flailing and writhing and crying out with each new abandoning of her ordinary self.

When he finally took her, she gloried in the heat and length and hardness of him, in the pulsing and the renewed wanting. Her body became greedier than before, demanding, reaching, shuddering. And Jack drove deep, eventually losing control, but only after a long, delicious period of restraint.

They made love time and again that night, holding each other in silence while they recovered between bouts of fevered passion.

“I'll come back if I can,” Jack told her, at one point, barely able to breathe, he was so spent. “Give me a year before you fall in love with somebody else, okay?”

A year. It seemed like an eternity to Ashley, she was so aware of every passing moment, every tick of the celestial clock. At the same time, though, she knew it was safe to promise. She'd wait a lifetime, a dozen lifetimes, because for her, there
was
no man but Jack.

She nodded, dampening his bare shoulder with her tears, and finally slept.

 

Jack eased himself out of Ashley's arms, and her bed, around eight o'clock the next morning. It was one of those heartrendingly beautiful winter days, with
sunlight glaring on pristine snow. Everything seemed to be draped in purity.

He dressed in his own room, gathered the few belongings he'd brought with him, and tucked them into his bag.

Given his druthers, he would have sat quietly in a chair, watching Ashley sleep, memorizing every line and curve of her, so he could hold her image in his mind and his heart until he died.

But Jack was the sort of man who rarely got his druthers.

He had things to do.

First, he'd meet with Chad Lombard.

If he survived that—and it was a crapshoot, whether he or Lombard or neither of them would walk away—he'd check himself into a hospital.

Feeling more alone than he ever had—and given some of the things he'd been through that was saying a lot—Jack gravitated to the computer in Ashley's study. He called up his dad's Web site, clicked to the Contact Us link, wrote an e-mail he never intended to send.

Hello, Dad. I'm alive, but not for long, probably…

He went on to explain why he'd never come home from military school, why he'd let everyone in his family believe he was dead. He apologized for any pain they must have suffered because of his actions, and resisted the temptation to lay any of the blame on the Navy.

The mission had been a tough one, with a high price, but no one had held a gun to his head. He'd made the decision himself and, in most ways, he had never regretted it.

He went on to say that he hoped his mother hadn't had to endure too much pain, and asked for forgiveness.
In sketchy terms, he described the toxin that was probably killing him.

In closing, he wrote,
You should know that I met a woman. If things were different, I'd love to settle down with her right here in this little Western town, raise a flock of kids with her. But some things aren't meant to be, and it's beginning to look as if this is one of them
.

No matter how it may seem, I love you, Dad
.

I'm sorry.

Jack.