Never Trust A Lady

Chapter 9

Jane was very tired but too keyed up to sleep. It had been a long time since she’d experienced so many emotions, a roller coaster of emotions, in such a short span of time. Right now she didn’t know what to feel. She didn’t know what to think.

And she didn’t want to think. The notion that had come to her was so…unthinkable. And so persistent. It kept tapping her on the shoulder, trying to get her attention, and she kept pushing it away, telling herself, No…it can’t be. It’s ridiculous. I won’t believe it.

But how else to explain everything? It all fit.

She supposed that what she felt more than anything, besides hungry, of course, was frightened. She actually had knots in her stomach-though that could have been hunger. But she didn’t think so. And she kept shivering, with a deep-down-inside cold that had nothing to do with the temperature of the van.

“Carlysle?” Again Tom Hawkins probed the blackness with what he probably imagined was a whisper. “Hey-you cold? You’re shivering.”

She didn’t want to answer, afraid that if she did she might have to give voice to her thoughts. Terrible thoughts. Impossible thoughts. She fought to control the trembling, tried to make fier breathing slow and deep and even.

She heard rustlings, felt Tom moving around next to her, felt the faintest brush of air against her cheeks. And then something warm came across her arms and chest, settled around her shoulders, enveloped her like a warm bath, seeped through her insides like a cup of cocoa on a cold morning, It smelled strongly of tobacco, and old leather and man. It was Tom’s jacket. He’d taken off his own jacket and put it over her.

A curious warmth crept over her, and again it had nothing to do with temperature. It was more like a sunrise, the warmth that comes from light, touched with wonder, a revelation of sorts. When had anyone ever done such a thing for her before? She tried hard to remember. Certainly David never had.

It’s the little things, she thought for the second time that day.

And then she wondered if she’d been wrong about that, and whether maybe those things, the thoughtful little gestures, like holding a cigarette so the smoke doesn’t blow in someone’s face, the caring touch of a jacket selflessly shared…maybe those were the biggest things of all.

She’d never been able to explain, to her own or anyone else’s satisfaction, just what it was that had driven her to tell David, on the eve of their twenty-first wedding anniversary, that she wanted a divorce. She remembered that David had asked her, still in shock and disbelief, “Why? What have I done? Have I ever abused you, been unfaithful to you? What?” So many of her friends, and even her mother, had suggested she was only suffering the normal discontent of middle age. How she’d come to loathe the term “midtife crisis.”

Oddly enough, it had been the two people closest to, and most affected by, the breakup who’d been the most supportive of her decision. As much as they loved their dad. Lynn and Tracy had always seemed to understand. Never once had they contributed to Jane’s already overwhelming burden of guilt She’d always wondered if it was perhaps because they’d been old enough to witness and judge from a woman’s perspective rather than a child’s. Because, already experimenting with relationships of their own, they’d sensed on an almost instinctive level the soulcrushing loneliness she’d suffered in hers.

Married. Jane had been the most “alone” person she knew, a single in a world of couples. She’d never even known what it felt like to be a couple. Other married people she knew always seemed to refer to themselves as “us,” or “we.” Jane had never thought of herself and David that way. How could she, when every decision, all the work and worry and responsibility involving the children and household had been hers and hers alone? David’s world and only concern had been his work, his business, and it had been a world he’d kept separate and secret from his wife, guarded as jealously as a miser hoards his riches.

After so many years, she’d stopped questioning the way things were between them, even made little jokes about it: “Oh, yes, David and I get along great, as long as we don’t do anything together!” And she’d known all along that something, something important, was missing.

But this is what I wanted, she thought as she lay awake in the swaying moving van, steeped in the warmth and wonder of Tom Hawkins’s old leather jacket. This is what I meant when I told David I wanted a chance before it was too late. A chance…to feel loved. A chance to feel cherished. Valued. This.

The “little” things? But that’s what makes it all work. Things like this. Now I know.

And she thought how ironic it was, and how damned unfair that she should have to learn this from a stranger, a man just passing through her life, this man from Interpol with eyes like broken promises and a face that looked as if it had been caught between a rock and a hard place.

The van had stopped again. It had done so before, briefly, but not under circumstances where it would have been advisable, or even possible, to attract someone’s attention by pounding on the doors. Twice they’d gone over scales, and once over what Hawk was almost certain was a very long bridge, or perhaps a causeway. Since then their progress had been slow, stop-and-go, which made him fairly sure they were no longer on the interstate, and therefore, logic told him, most likely nearing their destination.

And then the truck’s tires had rumbled across something holtow-sounding-another bridge perhaps? But no, too short to be a bridge. And now at last the van sat almost motionless, the floor vibrating with the idling purr of the tractor’s powerful diesel engine. Far off and very faintly, he heard a door slam.

“Carlysle,” he said hoarsely, nudging the part of her closest to him, which he suspected was, once again, her bottom. Thumbing on the flashlight, he confirmed that yes, she had scooted herself down and was sleeping curled on her side with her head pillowed on her tote bag, and that it was indeed her fanny tucked in cozily against his thighs.

He leaned across the swell of her hip and pulled the collar of his jacket away from her face. She stirred, and he said again, “Cartyste-hey, wake up. Rise and shine.”

And then, for some reason, he left the light there and watched her come awake, watched her features warm and liven and become magically, uniquely Jane, while thoughts and emotions flitted through his head like bats in the twilight. Thoughts that came and went too quickly to identify, emotions he wouldn’t have wanted to hold on to even if he could have managed to capture them. I want…I wish… No! I don’t. I don’t.

He realized that she was squinting, blinking in protest at the light, and moved it to one side. “Hate to wake you,” he said gruffly, “but it looks like we may be getting out of here soon. Thought you might want to, uh, make yourself presentable.”

“Mmm, thanks.” She hitched herself around and sat up, coming out of his jacket like a kitten out of its nest, first one arm, then the other. He watched each hand in turn perform the little touching, patting gestures women use to put themselves to rights as she murmured, “I really didn’t expect to sleep. Have we really stopped? What time is it, do you know?”

“About five, last time I looked.”

“Five-in the evening? My goodness, I must have slept several hours, at least. Did you sleep at all? You really should have woke me.”

He shook his head and said, “That’s okay, I probably wouldn’t have slept anyway.” He watched her fidget, locating her tote bag, tugging at her clothes. Watched her identify and recognize his jacket, pull it slowly down and across her lap, her hands straightening and shaping it, her fingers lingering in the buttery softness of it, almost caressing.

“It was very nice of you to give me this,” she said, and the husky burr of her voice rubbed against his nerves like fur. “Thank you. I hope you weren’t cold because of it.”

He coughed and said, “Nah…keep it if you want to. I’m warm enough.”

“Thanks, but…I really am fine now.” She was holding it out to him. “It’s a very nice jacket. Nice and warm.”

He took it from her, grunting a little as he shrugged it on. “It was my father’s,” he heard himself say. And surprised himself even more by continuing, “I’d always wanted one like it when I was a kid. I just sort of…confiscated it after he died. Sometimes I think I can almost still smell him.”

And now it was warm from her body, and if he closed his eyes he could catch just the barest hint of her elusive scent…

His stomach rumbled loudly.

“I’m hungry, too,” she instantly responded in that comfortable, unflappable way she had as she was rummaging around in her tote bag. Producing a brush, or anyway one of those things with plastic spikes instead of bristles that women seem to use nowadays, she began to rake it briskly through her hair. “And I could sure use a potty. Do you think anyone would hear us if we banged on the door?”

“Don’t know,” said Hawk. “I thought I heard the truck’s doors slam, but haven’t heard anything since.”

She’d finished with the brush and was poking it back into the depths of her bag, although as near as he could see in that light it hadn’t done much to change the way those curls of hers wanted to lie along her neck and around her ears and temples. He decided not to tell her about the endearing little flip that stubbornly persisted on the side she’d slept on, and which for some reason made his fingers itch with the urge to touch it.

“Well, I’m ready if you are,” she said, puffing slightly as she struggled to unwrap her feet and disentangle her legs from the mounds of packing blankets. That accomplished, she heaved herself upright, holding on to the piano for support. He heard her say with a laugh and a groan, “Mercy, I’m stiff!”

Hurriedly freeing himself from his own swaddlings, he joined her, still in his stocking feet. He was stiff, too, though his ego didn’t let him say so, and he tried to get in a few limbering-up stretches as best he could in that cramped space. The flashlight’s batteries were noticeably weakening; he turned it off and jammed it into his jacket pocket. “Okay, here goes,” he muttered.

An instant later he froze, his upraised fist suspended in darkness.

“What’s that?” gasped Jane.

The long, drawn-out, deep-throated bellow was a familiar sound to Hawk. As it died, he clutched her arm and hissed, “Shush!” although she hadn’t said another word. Because now he could hear what he’d missed before-beneath the gravelly growl of the truck’s diesel was another, deeper, rhythmic throbbing. A second and even more powerful engine.

“Hear that?” He said it with a note of triumph. Now he knew. or was fairly certain he knew, where they were and where they were going. “You know where we are? We’re on a ferryboat. That’s what this is-a damned ferryboat!”

“A…ferryboat?” Her voice sounded faint and worried.

“Yeah.” He chuckled exultantly, his hand traveling up her arm and along her shoulder to the back of her neck, to give her what he thought he meant to be a friendly and reassuring little squeeze. “Can you believe that? Now, the bad news is, everybody’s probably gone topside, so there’s not going to be anybody to hear us if we holler. The good news is, we’ve got to be pretty close to where we’re going.”

“How do you know?” It burst from her with a lot of breath, as if she’d been holding it.

It occurred to him just then, if he were to ease his hand across, say, to her opposite shoulder, and turn her a little bit, he’d have her neatly in his arms. It seemed so right, so easy, almost as if it was meant to happen just that way.

“Think about it,” he snapped, self-discipline making him testy. “Where do ferries go?”

“On water.” said Jane in a dismal voice.

“Across water,” he smugly corrected. “To islands, mostly. And the only reason this eighteen-wheeler is going to be sitting on a ferry is if that’s the only way to get there, right?” If memory served him, there was only one set of islands served by ferry that was about six hours or so driving time from Washington, D.C. “Mrs. Carlysle, I’ll bet you a fresh seafood dinner as soon as we get out of this box that we’re in North Carolina. The Outer Banks, to be exact.”

Jane’s response was utter silence. Then a tiny gulp-an audible swallow, and a whispered, “Oh.”

“So,” he expounded, feeling pleased with his powers of deduction, “way I figure it, we’ve got maybe forty-five minutes or so for the crossing, then no more than fifteen, twenty minutes, tops, to get wherever we’re going. These islands aren’t very big, and it’s the off-season, so there’s not going to be much traffic. We should be out of here in-”

And then she did turn, of her own accord. And she was in his arms, but not quite in the way he’d imagined. Trembling, but not the way he would have liked, which was in response to, or hunger for, his touch. Her arms were doubled up again, making a barrier between them, in fact, and her hands must have been pressed against her mouth, because her voice came small and muffled.

“I get seasick.”

Though they weren’t exactly words he wanted to hear, he found his arms going around her, and felt an indulgent, unfamiliar tenderness. Soothingly, he said, “The crossing shouldn’t be rough this time of-”

“I get seasick tied to the dock.”

All Hawk could think of to say was, “Uh… well…”

“It usually helps if I can watch the horizon, but in here…”

“Don’t panic.” That was for his benefit. To her, he said calmly, “The best thing to do is, don’t dwell on it. Think of something else.”

She was gripping his arms, shaking her head; he could feel the tickle of her hair across his lips. Her voice was hushed and breathy. “I’m sorry. I’m just not good with boats. I grew up in the Mojave Desert. I saw the beach for the first time when I was twelve. I’ve only been-”

“It’s okay…” Soothing words, comforting chuckles. But he found that his chest felt as bumpy inside as her voice sounded, as if something vital that held everything else together had broken loose. His hands were just lightly stroking her arms, her shoulders. But he wanted…needed…he knew that if he could only hold her close, hold her tightly, that the hollow, shaken feeling inside him would ease. His jaw ached with the effort it cost him to keep her that small, essential distance away.

“I guess you don’t, huh? Get seasick?”

Her arms had relaxed a little; he could feel her hands on his chest, her fingers playing with the textures of his cable-knit sweater. He snorted softly and said, “I live on a boat.”

And realized that with those five words he’d revealed more about his living arrangements than he ever did, even to casual friends and the people he worked with, much less to total strangers.

Although…he wasn’t sure Jane Carlysle would still fit that latter category, after the way they’d spent the past few hours. He was surprised to discover he didn’t want her to. He just didn’t know quite how to make that metamorphosis from stranger to…something else. It had been too long since he’d even tried.

Her response to his revelation was, “You’re kidding!” It was spoken not in the tone of flat dismay he might have expected, but with the interested quickening in her voice that went with that sudden brightening he knew would also be there, now, in her eyes. He cursed the darkness for making him miss it. He realized he’d come to watch for it the same way he watched for dolphins leaping in the sunlit sea.

Maybe that was why, when she asked him where his boat was, he told her. In fact, he told her about many of the places he’d tied up, never for too long at a time. And he told her, with a touch of undeniable pride, about his ’46 Grand Banks classic with the teakwood trim, two staterooms and galley down, twin CAT 3208TA’s, and all the options, including a big generator and full electronics.

“What’s her name?” she asked.

“No name,” he told her. He’d never found one that suited.

“Like Cat,” she murmured, and he could feel her nodding. “In Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”

He wondered if she knew they were under way. If she didn’t, he sure wasn’t going to be the one to tell her.

“How wonderful it must be, to live on a boat,” she said. “So…adventurous.” It may have been the darkness, or he may have imagined it, but he thought she sounded wistful.

Well, it did have its moments. He wanted to tell her about the dolphins, and about seeing double rainbows after a summer squall, and about a little cove he knew of on an island off the coast of Maine where the pines came right down to the water’s edge and the smell of the woods and the sea on an autumn morning was like the finest champagne. But he didn’t.

He cleared his throat and said, “Well, to tell you the truth. I’m not at home all that much.”

“So,” she said, “I guess you must not be married.”

“No.”

“But you were.” She said it softly, and with such certainty.

He didn’t ask her how she knew, just replied, “Yes.”

It was then he discovered that his left hand had not stayed in its safe, friendly berth on her shoulder, that while he’d been busy navigating perilous conversational shoals it had gone wandering off on an even more hazardous quest of its own. That his palm now curved around the side of her neck, his fingertips flirted with the curls on her nape and his thumb was beginning an exploration of the ridge of her jaw and the velvety curve of her cheek. From out of nowhere a pulse began to pound in his belly, like an impromptu solo from a surprised but eager drummer.

He couldn’t for the life of him figure which would be more dangerous, the turn the conversation had taken, or the direction his wandering hand was leading him. He did know that if she asked one more question, the next obvious question, he was going to find himself churning through some emotional rapids he wasn’t at all sure he was ready to handle yet. On the other hand, he’d kissed plenty of women before, and never had a problem handling the consequences.

Then again, he’d never kissed Jane Carlysle.

He would have liked to think that he’d reasoned it all out like that ahead of time, and that what happened next was a carefully planned tactical maneuver on his part, a diversion and nothing more. He certainly tried his best to justify it that way afterward. But, there was that delighted little drummer in his belly, the pounding of it a thunder in his ears that completely drowned all thought. And there was her lip, full and vibrant against the sensitive pad of his thumb. So in the end, when he felt her lips part and the moist warmth of her breath bathe his skin, he put his mouth there simply because, like taking his next breath, it seemed impossible not to.

A second or two later, Hawk knew he was in big trouble. If he’d thought that by substituting physical intimacy he could avoid the emotional, he’d miscalculated-badly. And if he’d thought that just because it was dark he could forget that crinkly fan of lines at the corners of her eyes, or the compassion, or the warmth of her smile, well, that was another mistake.

There was the “nice” smell of her, the earthy, womanly feel of her body against him, so familiar and yet so long denied it seemed utterly and completely new. He knew then that kissing this woman could never be just a physical thing. That with her, the physical and emotional were inextricably tangled, and that, far from steering himself a safe course around the maelstrom, he’d suddenly found himself capsized, in up to his neck and swimming for his life.

Odd, though, that with so much going on inside him, the kiss was such a gentle thing.

It seemed almost as if she’d expected it. There was no gasp of surprise, no initial resistance, but no overwhelming response, either. Neither advancing nor retreating, she simply accepted, with a faint, almost inaudible sigh, asking of him no more than he wanted to give her. Her lips were warm and compliant, denying him nothing, and yet he sensed she held most of her self, her passions and feelings, in reserve. He drew away from her, finally, feeling vaguely frustrated and emotionally battered.

She whispered, “Did you do that to distract me?”

His first reaction was to mutter epithets under his breath, and he remembered how she’d laughed at him the last time he’d tried to put a move on her. He also remembered the elbow to the solar plexis that had dropped that Campbell guy in his tracks, and he thought that she sure did have a way of catching a man off guard and with his defenses down.

Then he realized, belatedly, that she’d thrown him a lifeline.

He reached for it with a grateful laugh and asked, “Is it working?”

She considered in silence for a moment. “Hmm. Apparently. I’m not upchucking all down your front, anyway.”

“Don’t know when I’ve had a more enthusiastic testimonial,” said Hawk cheerfully. And after a pause, “Want to do it again?”

She gave the smallest of shrugs and said, “Sure.”

So it was on that basis that he was able to put aside the emotional baggage, finally, and just enjoy her on a purely physical level. By deluding himself, and her, too, into believing, for the moment, at least, that it was only an exercise in psychology, a recreational diversion. The thing he was best at-a game.

As games went, it was engrossing, to say the least. One hell of a diversion, recreational or otherwise. Having given himself permission to indulge in lust he made the most of it, and was gratified to discover that she was no slouch at this particular game herself. In fact, when he finally did come up for air, he figured he’d pretty much have to call it a draw.

“How’re we doin’?” he inquired in a thick mumble. leaning his forehead against hers and stroking her shoulders in a solicitous sort of way. For his part, the answer to that would be, not great; his tongue was something fat and furry, and his heart was beating way too fast.

“Still okay, I think.” But her voice wasn’t steady.

She tilted her face up and he ducked his head to meet her mouth once more, this time like a thirsty man going for his cup. She gave a little sigh and her arms came around him. His slipped into place around her, and her body eased in against him like a perfect, sweet meshing of well-oiled gears.

He felt a tremor run through her…the right kind of tremor. And before he could do a thing to stop it or control it, a violent shudder caught him and rocked him to his toes. He felt a rolling shock wave of heat and pressure, heard the thunder of his own blood in his ears. Nothing to do then but go with it…

A low growl vibrated through his chest as he shifted his arms and caught her hard against him, making her feel all the heat and strength and power in his body, making her know, on the most primitive of levels, his maleness and her own femininity.

She gave a strange little cry; her head fell back and her mouth opened still more under his, both a surrender and an invitation. He took advantage of it with a single, fierce thrust, found the deepest and most perfect melding, the mating of mouths that is unmistakably symbolic of, and almost always a prelude to, the joining of bodies.

Of course, that kind of kiss has only two possible conclusions: complete satisfaction, or total frustration. Hawk knew that going in. He also knew, given the circumstances, that there wasn’t much doubt which way this one was going to wind up. So all he could do, finally, was peel himself away from her, feeling tense and creaky as an overwound watch, mentally kicking himself and swearing under his breath.

He listened to the sounds of their breathing, like storm surf lashing against rock. and waited for her to say something. He could have bet money it wouldn’t be anything expected. And it wasn’t.

“Well,” she said after a careful clearing of her throat, “I suppose this is private enough. But I don’t imagine it’s quite what you had in mind, is it?”

He was still so jangled he wasn’t sure he’d heard her right. He even laughed a little before he realized he didn’t have any idea what she was talking about. Still chuckling uncertainly, he staid. “I beg your pardon?”

“This morning. You said. when you kissed me, you wanted it to be private enough…I think you said. for what comes after. But I don’t think this is what you meant.”

He had no idea how to answer her.

“Of course,” she went on, her voice shaken and raspy, but gentle in the darkness, a reminder to him both of the kind of woman she was and of the shameful way he’d just used her, “I know you didn’t mean it, then-about kissing me. I know you were just trying to find a way to stay close to me-or to the painting, rather. Funny, isn’t it, how things work out sometimes?”

His stomach was roiling and coiling-the watch spring coming unwound. He snapped, “For God’s sake, Jen.” And stopped, shock freezing his insides.

He couldn’t have done that. Couldn’t have said what he thought he’d said. Could he? Even with the echoes reverberating through his entire being, he didn’t believe it. Had she noticed? What would she think? He waited, paralyzed by a wholly uncharacteristic panic, for her to say something. Anything. It seemed like forever.

In fact, it was only a second or two. And it had just entered his head that he’d never mentioned Jen’s name to her at all, and that she’d probably only think, at worst, that he’d gotten hers wrong, when there was a loud, echoing clang outside the truck, only a foot or two from where they were standing. Hawk’s favorite all-purpose epithet was drowned out by an ear-shredding screech, and then the door of the van was rolled violently back, letting in the cold fresh smell of the sea and the rosy pink light of sunset.

And a voice belonging to a large man wearing dark green coveralls and carrying a crowbar, a cracking, high-pitched Southern voice, tense with fear, suspicion and surprise: “Hey! What the hell’s goin’ on here?”