Shooting Starr (19 page)

“Ridiculous isn't what I'd call it,” C.J. said in a distant and disgruntled tone. “
Stupid
is more like it. No tellin' what coulda happened to you out there. What did you think you were doing, anyway?”

What
had
she been thinking? It was hard, now, to remember the depths of her grief just a few short hours ago. It had been such a roller-coaster day.

She heaved a sigh and sat up. This wasn't going the way she wanted it to. She wiped her face with her hands, then left them to cover her eyes while she tried to think what to say next, wondered what she could say or do to make him know how much she wanted him to come closer. It wouldn't have been easy for her under the best of circumstances; she'd spent most of her life discouraging men's attentions and she didn't know how to seduce.

If I could just look at him. If only I could see his face.
She'd never realized before what a vital tool eyes were in the art of seduction. Without them she was hopelessly handicapped. How could she speak to him with her eyes or read the response in his? How was it possible to flirt without fluttering lashes and come-hither looks? What about all those references to eyes in language and literature, poetry and song? Like: “Drink to me only with thine eyes and I will pledge with mine.”

Overfilled with emotions she couldn't express, she smiled and shook her head in wordless apology. “What happened to my wildflowers?” she asked through her spread fingers.

He made a breathy sound she couldn't interpret, the kind that went with a gesture she couldn't see. “I think they're on the porch. They were looking pretty sad. Wildflowers don't hold up all that well after you pick 'em, you know.”

“Well,” she said, lowering her hands to her drawn-up knee and tilting her face away from him, “I guess I'll have to pick some more.” She closed her eyes and remembered the feel of his body behind her…of his arms stretched alongside hers…the sun's heat and the dusty smell of pollen. The smell of
him.
The room around her seemed to fill with his clean, masculine essence.

“Yeah, I guess you will.” His voice was low and growly. She felt the mattress sag with his weight, and her heart soared. “How's your ankle?”

She braced her hands behind her and clutched at the
bedspread for support as he lifted her ankle into his lap. “Stiff.” She couldn't feel her lips move. Her heart hammered; she trembled inside. I wonder, she thought, if he can feel it, all the way down
there.

She hadn't known how much she wanted him to touch her. Touch her other places. Everywhere. Her skin broke out in shivery prickles in anticipation of his touch. And her mind called up all the touch memories of him stored in its meager archives to compensate her for the touch she knew in her heart was not going to happen. At least…not today. Would it ever?

The surprising wiry strength of his body pressing down on hers as she lay across the center console of his truck. The unexpected silkiness of the hair on his forearms, folded in implacable barrier against her pleas.

Those same strong arms across her back and under her thighs, carrying her, and his chest and hard, masculine belly against her side. The steady thump of his heartbeat just out of step with hers.

The brush of his silky-soft hair and beard-prickly cheek against hers as he picked her up after the dogs had knocked her on her fanny. Her hand nested in the crook of his elbow.

The cold, hard press of his lips stunning hers to silence. His arm holding her tightly against him as they walked together, bodies chilled and wet on the outside, furnace-hot underneath.

The unexpected gentleness of his hands as they cradled her injured foot, and then…and then. The terrible tenderness…the devastating sensuality, the deliberate eroticism of that kiss.

She couldn't help it; she shuddered.

“Still hurtin' you, I guess,” C.J. said in a strangled voice as he shifted her foot off of his lap. Caitlyn held her breath, and the bed creaked a small protest as he left it. “I'm gonna go get some ice to put on that.”

She heard his footsteps cross the room and the door whisper open…then softly close.

Alone, she turned toward the window, took a deep breath…and fearfully opened her eyes. The breath left her body in a long, shivering sigh. Yes—it was still there. The miracle. A window-shaped rectangle of light in her darkness.

 

C.J. was standing in front of the open refrigerator door when his mother came back from church. He had a plastic zipper bag of ice cubes in his hand and was regarding it sourly, trying to decide which part of his anatomy was in need of it most.

“You trying to cool off the whole house?” his mother asked, as she had no doubt asked each of her children, countless times before.

He closed the door and turned to her, hefting the ice bag in his hand. “This is for Caitlyn. She turned her ankle.”

His mother's brows rose. “Oh? How did that happen?”

“Stepped in a hole. Out in Parker's woods.”

“Out in the—” She set her pocketbook down on the table with a thump. “You didn't let her go there alone, did you? Calvin—”

“Momma, it's not like it was my—”

“Calvin James, don't you make excuses to me. You were sitting on the front porch nursing your pride, is what you were doing. You
know
you had no business letting her run off, not with those evil men still out there looking for her.”

“I know,” C.J. said with a gusty sigh. He juggled the ice bag from one hand to the other as he added dryly, “For what it's worth, I think she's learned her lesson. I don't believe she's going to be doing that again anytime soon.”

“Well, I should hope not,” said his mother. And with a nod toward the ice bag in his hand, “You planning to take that up to her before it melts?”

“I was sort of hoping you'd do it, since you're here,”
he muttered, and added in a darkening tone, “I think she's had 'bout enough of me for a while.”

“What, have you two been quarreling?”

C.J. shot a fired-up look at his mother before he realized she was teasing him. He swallowed his retort with a gulp and said, “Naw, it's nothing like that, I just think I'm gettin' on her nerves, is all. She's doing so well by herself, you know, it's not like she needs me baby-sittin' her all the time.”

“Well now, that's true.”

“That's why I was thinking…” He set the ice bag down on the countertop and looked at it for a moment, then turned around and leaned his spine on the edge of the counter and folded his arms over the pulse that was tapping away in his belly. Trying to look casual about what seemed to him the momentous announcement he was about to make. “I was thinking, if you and Jess are gonna be around the next few days, I might call up Jimmy Joe and see if he's got a load for me.”

“Well,” said his mother, picking up her pocketbook and the bag of ice, “I think you should.”

“I can't sit around and do nothing forever,” he argued, trailing after her into the hallway. “I've got bills to pay.”

“Son, you are absolutely right,” his mother said cheerfully as she started up the stairs. “After all, as you said, Caitlyn's a grown woman, she doesn't need a baby-sitter, and you're a grown man with responsibilities, you
should
get back to work. Go right on—and don't you worry about Miss Caty. Jessie and I'll look after her. She'll be just fine.”

“Well…okay, then,” C.J. breathed to his mother's back as she reached the top of the stairs and disappeared from sight.

He hesitated, then shook his head and turned around and walked back into the kitchen where he spent another minute or two frowning at the place on the countertop where the
ice bag had been. He had the disoriented, slightly foolish feeling he remembered getting when he'd swung with everything he had at a pitch and missed it by a mile. He knew he must have missed
something
by a mile; he just didn't have any idea what it was.

Since the answer didn't appear to be jumping up at him from out of the Formica, he muttered, “Okay then,” under his breath and wandered on outside.

It's the best thing, he told himself, shifting his shoulders and trying to make himself believe he was happy with the decision he'd made. After today's revelations it was going to be pure hell being around Caitlyn and constantly having to remind himself he wasn't the kind of man to take advantage of a woman in her state of vulnerability. At least, he hoped he wasn't. When he thought about kissing her back there in the woods, and realizing how long he'd been wanting to do that, and that he wanted to keep on doing it for a long time to come, and everything else that just naturally came after it, he broke out in chills and his stomach turned upside down. He hadn't brought her here for that…had he?

No, dammit.

Angrily he checked his wristwatch and broke into a run. But he discovered that his legs were weak and his heart rate was already way up there, and after a couple hundred yards he stopped and walked home instead.

 

“Caty, honey, Jake wants to know if you're sure you're ready to do this. Are you sure it's not too soon?” Eve's voice on the telephone was full of concern.

In the alcove between the kitchen and dining room where Betty Starr kept her household business clutter—and the household's only telephone—Caitlyn hitched the chair closer to the desk and said with determined brightness, “I'm okay, really. The headaches are much better. I'm feeling really strong.”

She wasn't; she'd never felt more fragile. She, who'd always been so confident, so self-assured, now couldn't trust her own feelings…her own judgment. Ground she'd thought solid under her feet had shifted. She'd never experienced an earthquake, but she thought she now understood why they made people panic and animals stampede.

“The swelling's almost gone. I look fairly normal—so they tell me. I can't see any kind of detail yet, just light and dark shapes…silhouettes, sort of. It just started today, after all. But the doctors told me once it started to come back it might happen pretty quickly. That's why I thought—”

“Caitlyn, that's such incredible news,” Eve breathed. “You must be six feet off the floor. I'm so happy for you—Jake is, too. And I'll bet C.J.'s about the happiest man in Georgia.”

Caitlyn planted an elbow amidst the litter of grocery lists and junk mail, receipts, bills and correspondence that covered the desktop and rested her forehead in her hand. The house was empty—Jess working late and Betty gone to a Sunday evening potluck supper at her church—and its quietness seemed a growing pressure in her ears. Like the way it feels to dive into the deep end of the pool, she thought.
And that's what I'm doing—going off the deep end.

But it was too late to turn back now; she'd made her decision for better or worse. Tomorrow Eve would put the first part of the FBI's plan in motion. In two or three days it should all be over. For better or worse.

“He doesn't know,” she mumbled, carefully massaging the tender places around healing scar tissue. “I haven't told him.” Eyes closed, she waited out the shocked silence on the other end of the line.

Finally, in the careful tone of voice usually employed with the mentally deranged, Eve inquired, “Why in the world not? You know he's taken what happened to you awfully personally—”

She let out an exasperated breath. “Eve, that's why I can't tell him. He has this idea that he's responsible for everything that's happened—for Mary Kelly getting killed, for me being blind—even though I've told him and told him he's not. And I know—I
know
—that if he knew what I'm planning to do, he'd do everything in his power to keep me…” She stopped, her voice choked with helpless fury and other emotions less easy to name.

“Maybe he's right,” Eve said softly. “I know Jake's not all that comfortable with it, either. There are other ways—”

“No. There aren't. I know Vasily—you don't. He's not stupid, he's not going to be lured into the open by a decoy. It has to be me. And look—the plan has all sorts of safeguards, they're not going to let anything happen to me.
Don't worry.
”

“I'm not worried,” Eve said with an unconvincing huff of breath. “Okay, then. So, I'll pick you up tomorrow for the interview. What time?”

“Late morning should be fine. Jess'll be at work and Betty drives on Monday for seniors' meals, so there won't be anybody around to make a fuss.”

“And C.J.? How are you going to keep him in the dark?”

“It's okay, I don't think that'll be a problem.” With an effort Caitlyn kept her voice neutral, her emotions ruthlessly suppressed. “He probably won't even be here. I heard him tell his mom he's going back to work. He should be off on a long haul with his truck by then, but if he's not…”

“If he's not,” said Eve, “you'll let me know and we'll go to plan B. All right, then—if I don't hear from you otherwise, I guess I'll see you tomorrow morning.”

“Right,” said Caitlyn.

She said her goodbyes and cradled the phone, then sat for a moment while tremors rippled through her stomach. Butterflies, she thought. Nervous anticipation.

She nudged back the chair, rose and pushed through the swinging door to the kitchen. There she halted while the door whapped back and forth behind her in time with her thumping heart.

The kitchen was awash with light. She was certain she hadn't turned any on—why would she? She was blind.

Silhouetted against the light, someone was sitting at the kitchen table, holding something—a newspaper. She could hear it rustling. The Sunday paper, of course.

She stood frozen to the spot.
Oh, God—C.J.!