Honey Moon (37 page)

He stared at her. "You'll do what?"

A pulse beat frantically in a thin blue vein near her temple. "There's an underground system that protects children when the law won't. It's illegal, but effective." Her gray eyes darkened with bitterness. "I knew you'd try to get to them, so I've learned a lot about it in the past few weeks. All I have to do is say the word, Eric, and the girls will disappear. Neither of us will have them then."

"You can't mean that. You wouldn't send them into hiding with strangers."

"The strangers won't molest them, and I'll do whatever I have to do to keep them safe." Her face sagged. He saw how tired she looked, but he felt no pity for her.

"Please," she whispered. "Don't make me send them away. They've already lost their father. Don't make them lose their mother, too."

Beneath her exhaustion he saw determination, and he knew with sickening certainty that she wasn't making an idle threat. Her conviction in his guilt was absolute.

The ball of pain spun inside him, growing larger with each revolution. "How can you believe I'd hurt my daughters?" he asked hoarsely. "What did I ever do to make you think I'm capable of something like this? Jesus, Lilly, you know how much I love them."

Tears rolled down her cheeks. "I don't know anything anymore except that I have to protect them. I'll do that, even if it means giving them up to strangers.

No little girls should have to suffer what they've suffered."

She turned to leave.

He took a quick step after them, his voice raw with desperation. "Just tell me how they're doing. Please, Lilly. At least do that for me."

She shook her head and walked away, leaving him more alone than he'd ever been in his life.

21

EXTERIOR. PASTURE FENCE NEAR THE RANCH HOUSE—DAY

Dash and Janie are standing by the fence. Dash holds a crumpled letter in his fist.

JANIE

Did Blake write you? When's he coming home on leave?

DASH

This letter isn't from Blake. It's from your grandmother.

JANIE

(excited)

My grandmother? I didn't even know I had one of those!

DASH

Do you remember all the stuff I told you about your ma?

JANIE

(cheerfully)

I remember. You said she was the sweetest thing you'd ever met and you couldn't figure out how she gave birth to a spawn of Satan like myself.

DASH

She was sweet, Janie. But I also told you she was an orphan, and that was a lie.

JANIE

A lie? Why'd you lie, Pop?

DASH

Your mama's parents kicked her out of the house when she was only seventeen years old. They were pretty strict people. She wasn't married.

And she was pregnant with you.

JANIE

(puzzled)

You mean you and Ma had to get married?

DASH

I married your ma because I wanted to. There wasn't any have to about it.

He gazes down at the letter.

DASH

Apparently your grandfather died lost year, and your grandmother's getting old. She wants to see you, so she hired some private detectives to track us down. According to this letter, she'll be here day after tomorrow.

JANIE

Wow! I can't believe this. Do you think she'll have one of those buns on top of her head and bake pies?

DASH

Janie, there's somethin' I got to tell you. Maybe I should have told you a long time ago, but—I

don't know—I couldn't seem to bring myself to do it. Now I guess I don't have any choice. Your grandmother knows the truth, and if I don't tell1

you, she will.

JANIE

You're starting to make me nervous. Pop.

DASH

I'm sorry, Janie. I don't know how else to say this but straight out. Your Ma was already pregnant with you when I met her for the first time.

JANIE

But that doesn't make sense. How could—Are you trying to tell me—Do you mean that you're not really my father?

DASH

I'm afraid that's about the size of it.

"Stupid, stupid, stupid." Honey slammed the covers holding the final script of
The Dash Coogan Show.

"I hope you're not talking about me." Dash came through the door of the motor home where Honey

was curled up on the couch. He wore jeans and cowboy boots with a tweed sports coat. A silver and turquoise thunderhead bolo glimmered at the collar of his denim shirt.

Although they'd been married for five years, her heart gave the funny jump-skip that still happened when he came up on her unexpectedly. She didn't think she'd ever get enough of looking at that legendary face—those rough-hewn features so elemental that they seemed to have been carved by the wind and then baked by the desert sun.

He pocketed the key he'd used to open the door, leaned down, and kissed her. "I know I haven't taken

all those fancy college classes like somebody I could mention, but I don't consider myself stupid."

She laughed and wrapped her arms around his neck to pull him closer. "You're sly as a fox, you old cowboy."

He kissed her again, sliding his hands beneath the baggy powder-blue knit sweater she was wearing with

a short white denim skirt. "I thought you were going to work on that paper you got due."

"I am. I just—" She released him. "Yesterday I was straightening up that mess you call a den, and I found the scripts from our final season. I decided to bring the last one along to reread. See if the Fatal Episode was as bad as I remembered."

He took off his sports coat and tossed it over a chair. "You could have asked me. I'd have told you it was even worse than you remembered."

She rose from the couch and walked a few steps to the coffeepot she kept going whenever she went on location with Dash. They were in a rough East Los Angeles neighborhood where he was shooting a low-budget television movie about a Texas cop on assignment with the LAPD. She handed him a mug and then poured another for herself. Leaning back against the small counter, she crossed her ankles, which were encased in the powder-blue socks she was wearing with her white Keds. When she had gotten dressed that morning, Dash had told her she looked all of thirteen and he would appreciate it very much if she didn't get him arrested for something unsavory like statutory rape.

She took a sip of coffee. "I don't know why the writers thought that kind of stupid explanation about Dash not really being Janie's father would make audiences forget they were watching a married couple pretend to be father and daughter."

He sat down on the couch and leaned back. When he stretched out his legs, his cowboy boots reached halfway down the center of the motor home. "By the time the Fatal Episode aired, we didn't have any viewers left anyway, so I guess it didn't matter."

"It mattered to me. I hated the idea that they tried to save the show by deciding that Dash and Janie weren't really father and daughter. That was even stupider than Bobby's dream on Dallas."

"It was Pam's dream, not Bobby's. And nothing could be that stupid."

A police siren from the street outside penetrated the thin shell of the motor home. Dash scowled. "Damn. I don't know why I let you talk me into bringing you along today. This neighborhood's too dangerous."

Honey rolled her eyes. "Here we go again. Papa Dash being overprotective."

"Overprotective! Do you have any idea how many drug murders and gang shootings have happened around here just in the last few months? And this two-bit production company didn't hire any security people. They probably don't even have a city permit to film."

"Dash, I've kept the door locked, and I'm not going out. You know I have to write my English lit paper, and this is a perfect place to do it because there aren't any distractions. If I were home, I'd be out riding, or digging in the flower bed, or baking you a chocolate cake."

He sputtered some more, and she gave him a sympathetic smile. She tried not to tease him too much about his overprotectiveness because she understood that he couldn't help himself. No matter how certain he was of her love, he could never completely set aside the little boy buried inside him who was afraid the person he loved most was going to be snatched away.

"It's my fault," he grumbled. "I like having you around so much I lose my common sense. Rub my neck, will you? That fight scene yesterday got me all stiff."

He turned sideways, and she went over to the couch, where she knelt in back of him. She pushed her

hair behind one ear. As she cocked her head, it tumbled forward on the opposite side and fell in a honey-colored waterfall over his shoulder. He leaned against her and she began massaging the muscles of his shoulders, closing her eyes for a moment to absorb the solid, familiar feel of him. Their marriage had brought her more happiness than she had ever believed possible, and even all the professional and financial difficulties that had followed had never made her regret what they had done.

"I'm too old for these cops and robbers pictures," he grumbled.

"You won't be fifty till summer. That's hardly ancient."

"Right now I feel like it is. Maybe trying to keep up with the sexual excesses of my twenty-five-year-old child bride has something to do with it."

She buried her lips in the side of his neck while her hands trailed down along the front of his shirt to the waistband of his jeans. "Want to knock off a quickie?"

"Didn't we do that early this morning?"

"Anything that happens before six o'clock counts for the day before."

"Now why's that?"

"It's all a matter of relativity. I learned about it in that philosophy class I took last year." She slipped her fingertips inside his waistband. "It's far too complex for me to explain to an ignorant cowpoke, so I'm afraid you'll have to take my word for it."

"Is that so?" He leaned forward so abruptly that she upended over his shoulder.

"Hey!"

He caught her in his lap before she could sprawl to the floor. "It seems to me somebody's getting a little too smarty-pants to fit into her britches."

She squirmed into a more comfortable position in his arms and gazed up into that wonderful face.

"Are you ever sorry you married me?"

He cupped her breast and gently kneaded it. "About a hundred times a day."

And then the teasing light faded from his green eyes and he drew her against him with a muffled groan. "My sweet little girl. Sometimes I think my life didn't start until the day I married you."

She lay contented against him. Maybe their marriage was even more precious to her because it wasn't perfect. They'd had so many problems right from the beginning: their guilt over the demise of the TV series, the humiliation they had suffered from the press, the fact that his daughter hated her guts.

Most of their problems hadn't gone away. They'd only recently emerged from their financial troubles. Instead of sheltering the money she'd brought into their marriage, she'd used most of it to put a big dent

in his IRS debt. He'd been furious when he'd found out, but she didn't regret a single penny. The debt was finally paid off, and they had begun to set aside money for the future.

A worse problem was the beating his professional career had taken as a result of their marriage. It saddened her to see him forced to accept roles in second-rate television movies such as the one he was shooting now. He shrugged off her concern by saying he'd never been much of an actor anyway, and any work was good work.

Maybe he wasn't a versatile actor, but to her mind, he was something even better. He was a legend, the last of the solitary individualists who wore a white hat and stood for decency. No matter how much they had needed the money, she wouldn't let him accept any parts that tarnished that image.

As her nose brushed against his shirt collar, she knew that the biggest conflict between them—the one

that never went away—was Dash's refusal to let her have a child. The issue lurked like an unwelcome visitor in all the invisible corners of their existence together. She yearned for his baby, dreamed of bassinets and snap-legged sleepers and a sweet little down-covered head. But he said he was too old for a baby and that he'd already proven he didn't know how to be a father.

She no longer believed his excuses. She knew he was afraid something would happen to her in childbirth, and he needed her too much to take the risk. What she didn't know was how she could fight a fear that was rooted in love.

He poked his finger through one of her curls. "I almost forgot to tell you.

Apparently there was a news report about Eric Dillon on television a couple of hours ago."

"That arrogant little bastard."

"Dillon's at least six feet tall. I don't know why you call him little."

"Six feet is still four inches shorter than you. That makes him little in my book."

"That's a pretty narrow definition of short, especially coming from somebody who can't even reach the top shelf of her kitchen cupboards."

"I notice that you're not debating the fact that I called him a bastard. Since he won his Oscar last month, he's probably even more insufferable than I remember."

"He wasn't that bad, Honey. You shouldn't blame him for the fact that you fell in love with him and he had to spend all his spare time hiding out from you."

"I did not fall in love with him, Dash Coogan. I just had a crush. You were the one I fell in love with."

He grinned. "I've been thinking. How do you feel about going up to Alaska this summer and doing some backpacking along the Chilkoot Trail?"

"That's a wonderful idea. I've always wanted to go to Alaska."

"We don't have to. I may not be a multimillionaire, but I can afford something better for you than a tent. If you want to go to Paris or something—"

"I do. But not with you. I can just hear you complaining about the traffic and the fact that everybody's speaking French. Maybe the next time Liz goes to Europe, I'll go with her."

"That sounds like a good idea."

They smiled at each other, both of them knowing she wouldn't go anywhere without him. She'd lived through an entire childhood without anyone to love her, and now that she had Dash, she didn't want to be with anyone else. She was dependent on him in a way that she had never permitted herself to be dependent on anyone, even when she was a child. He was both her greatest strength and her greatest weakness.