by Anne Stuart
Any or all of her three sisters might be there. Jilly was still in college, and she spent most of her summers back in California. Holly was busy with her career as a model, but she and Sybil had always gotten along the best. Vanity was one trait Sybil could identify with. And Kate was commuting between Chicago and L.A., working with a small regional movie company based in the Midwest. With luck, Sybil might have a full house. Not to mention whatever young man was currently enjoying her favors.
No, it would be hectic, exhausting, and wonderfully innocuous after the past few days of blood and bullets. And within a week Mack Pulaski would be as much a part of her past as Randall Carter, albeit a less painful part. But it didn’t look as if a trip to Laurel Canyon was anywhere in her near future.
She should never have bought him those damned Jockey shorts. It had been meant as a joke, and he’d taken it as such. But the sight of him in them had been unnerving to say the least. And if she was going to spend months, weeks, or even days hidden away with him, their involvement was going to change. And she didn’t know if she was ready for that change.
Her love life, such as it was, had never been spectacularly successful. Granted, it had gotten off to a hideous start when she was sixteen. And her involvement with Randall hadn’t been much of an improvement. Randall Carter had taken her trust, her ridiculous faith in human nature that even her stepfather hadn’t managed to shake, and destroyed them, tossing away her love with a casual disregard, unlike the usual care he reserved for rare and precious things. But then her love hadn’t been rare and precious to him, it had been a disposable commodity—useful for a time, but only temporary. It hadn’t been temporary for her.
Her marriage had been doomed from the start—a rebound alliance to a terminally nice guy who was as far from Randall as she could get. And then a discreet couple of affairs, just to prove she was healthy, ending with Peter Wallace.
He was typical of the men she’d chosen since her eight-month marriage. Charming, gentle, undemanding, he, like all the others, had ended up backing away. She couldn’t blame them. After her disastrous mistake with Randall, she kept all her passions carefully banked. She couldn’t afford to let them flame out of control ever again.
Control. A nasty word. Maggie sighed, peering out the greasy window. They were heading over the ocean now, the greeny-blue of the Gulf a dubious safety net beneath them. The acrid scent of Lonesome Fred’s marijuana cut through the gas and diesel fumes that filled the cabin, and she wrinkled her nose in distaste. She could swim, and swim well. She could only hope to God she wouldn’t have the chance. Not unless it was in a nice big chlorinated pool in a Honduran Holiday Inn, if such a thing existed.
“Hey, passengers.” Lonesome Fred had stopped his whistling, but his voice was still cheerfully stoned. “Where are we heading? Honduras is a small country, but I need to have some idea of the general area.”
“By the Nicaraguan border. If you can find an airfield …”
“Lady, I don’t need no airfield. Leave it to Lonesome Fred.” And he leaned back and began to whistle again.
“Leave it to Lonesome Fred,” Mack agreed behind her. “Why don’t you try to get some sleep, Maggie? You didn’t sleep well last night.”
“Maybe,” she said dubiously. “But I have the feeling that as long as I’m awake and paying attention, this thing will keep flying. Ridiculous, I know.”
“Ridiculous,” he agreed. She could feel his hand toying with the rough braid she’d fashioned. It felt suspiciously like a caress, but that was unlikely. He’d been paternal, calm, and almost businesslike that morning. No sexual tension whatsoever, all day long, and she was missing it.
Brooding on whether Mack wanted her or not was a good enough diversion. She needed to get her mind off the mess they were in, to stop going back and forth between possibilities and impossibilities. Sexual fantasies and frustrations could keep her mind off the pilot at least. With a sigh, she sank back down in the cracked leather seat and shut her eyes.
“Maybe not so ridiculous after all,” Mack’s voice rumbled in her ear. She opened her eyes with a start, looking up into his grim face. There was no laughing warmth in his hazel eyes. Something was wrong.
“What?” she murmured groggily, pulling herself up. The seat belt held her back, and she suddenly remembered where she was. “What’s happened?”
“We’ve lost the engines, man,” Lonesome Fred called out from the cockpit, sounding completely unruffled. “Looks like you’re gonna get your chance to swim.” And he lit another joint.
With a shriek of rage, Maggie leapt for the front of the plane, but the seat belt jerked her back. She struggled with it, slapping away Mack’s restraining hands. “Leave me alone, Pulaski,” she snarled. “I know how to fly, better than that idiot at least. Maybe I can get them started again.”
“No time, Maggie. Grab this pillow and put your head down. Now, goddamn it!” he added at her mutinous expression.
She could feel the plane gather speed as it hurtled toward the ocean. “Take your own seat, too, then,” she snapped.
“It doesn’t have a seat belt.”
“Oh, my God,” she moaned. “Then hold on to me.”
“I think your chances would be better if—”
“I don’t give a damn what my chances are. Hold on to me or I’ll unfasten the seat belt and beat Lonesome Fred into a pulp as we drop into the ocean.”
He laughed, and if the sound was slightly forced, his hazel eyes warmed for a second. “You’re a hell of a woman, Maggie May,” he said.
“I know.” She smoothed the pillow in her lap. “Put your arms around me and your face on the pillow. Who knows, maybe we’ll survive.”
“Who knows?” He followed suit, kneeling beside her. His arms were strong and hard around her, and quickly she pressed her torso down on top of his, bracing herself for the impact.
“Geronimo!” Lonesome Fred shouted from the cockpit, and a second later they hit the water.
The force of their impact was tremendous, knocking Maggie back, ripping her arms away from Mack. She felt his body fall away from hers, and then everything blacked out, for minutes … for seconds. …
And then reality, unpleasant as it was, cropped up again. Mack was fumbling at her seat belt with desperate haste. Blood was pouring from a cut on his forehead, and cold water was lapping around her ankles. “Come on, Maggie,” he muttered under his breath. “We haven’t got much time.”
She slapped his hands away, unfastening the seat belt with only slightly more efficiency. “Where are the life preservers?”
“Gone.” He jerked his head toward the opposite side of the plane. The wing had broken off when they landed, and parts of the plane were floating rapidly away as the water poured in the side. “And this damn thing is going to sink momentarily. Let’s go.” He yanked her hand toward the raw opening in the body of the plane.
“But Lonesome Fred …”
“Dead. His neck broke when we hit,” Mack said shortly. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
She didn’t even hesitate. She gave Mack a shove out of the plane, grabbed their knapsack, and dived after him into the greeny blue Gulf waters, which were damned cold for a Caribbean summer.
They both sighted the piece of wing floating in the choppy current at the same time. Maggie struck out for it, still holding the knapsack, but Mack reached it first.
The cold water had slowed the bleeding to a mere trickle, and Mack held out a hand to her, pulling her the last few feet to the wing and taking the knapsack from her, looping it around his wrist. “Are you okay?”
Maggie shook her wet hair out of her face. “All in one piece. What about you? Anything besides that cut on your forehead?”
“I don’t think so.” He squinted his eyes against the bright sunlight toward the slowly sinking plane. “I guess Lonesome Fred died the way he wanted to. Fitting coffin too.”
“Pulaski, at this moment I really don’t give a damn about Lonesome Fred,” Maggie s
aid in a dangerous voice. “Do you have any idea how far from land we are?”
“Nope. But I think we stand a good chance. There are lots of birds around, not just gulls, and I don’t think they’d be too far out at sea. There’s a strong current, and with any luck it will pull us in to shore.”
“I wouldn’t trust our luck,” said Maggie. “The current could just as easily carry us out to sea. Do you suppose there are any great white sharks around?” She looked over her shoulder nervously.
“Afraid of sharks too?”
“No. Afraid of Hollywood movies,” she snapped back. “Do you think we should kick?”
“I doubt it. We’re being pulled along at a good rate. We’ll either end up safe or dead, and at this point I think it’s out of our hands.”
“As long as nothing comes along and nibbles my toes, I can survive for a while. What about you?”
“Well, personally I’d like to be the one to nibble your toes,” he said, “but I can wait till we reach shore.”
“Pulaski, now is not the time for sexual banter.”
“Maggie, I can’t think of a better time,” he shot back. “The sun is shining, the sky is blue, and it’s a beautiful day. Why don’t we enjoy it?”
She stared at him for a long moment. “You are absolutely demented,” she breathed. “You are certifiably insane and—”
“I’m a survivor, Maggie. And so are you. We’ve got a rough time ahead of us, and we may as well do what we can to make it more bearable. Why don’t you tell me what it was like growing up in Hollywood?” He reached out and put his cold, wet, strong hand on top of hers as she clung to the wing. The human warmth sank through her chilled skin, and Maggie relaxed.
He was right. The sun was shining overhead, the sky was blue, and the ocean, now that she was used to it, wasn’t as numbing as she’d been afraid it would be. And if she and Mack were going to die, she at least didn’t want it to be with a whine on her lips.
“Actually, it was pretty entertaining. Did you know that Deke Robinson was bisexual?”
“The heart throb of the fifties? Wasn’t he married to your mother?”
“Her third husband,” she said. “I was twelve when they got married. They had the strangest parties. …”
It kept them going for a long time. The sun moved through the skies as she kept him entertained with the most scurrilous gossip she could think of, most of it outdated but still fascinating. When she ran out of stories he told her of life on the road with a rock ’n’ roll band in the sixties and seventies, of the psychedelic and sexual excesses that sounded amusing now that it was all over.
When she grew sleepy he tickled her, when she grew snappish he made her laugh. And when she thought she couldn’t hold on any longer, when the sun was beginning to sink ahead of them, he gave her hope.
“I hope you’ve noticed which way the sun is moving,” he said.
“The sun isn’t moving, the earth is,” she mumbled.
“Now isn’t the time to be a pedant, Maggie. It’s setting directly in front of us. Which is the west, unless life has changed dramatically in the last four hours. Which means we’re moving in the right direction.”
“But for how long?” She knew her voice sounded querulous, but she couldn’t help it.
“Not too much longer now, I would think. Unless there are palm trees growing in the ocean.”
“What?” she shrieked, and let go of the wing. The ocean was cold and black as it closed over her head, and she shot back up, sputtering and clawing for the wing.
Mack’s hand caught her wrist and yanked her up. “No need to get so excited, Maggie. I told you we’d make it. There are palm trees over there.”
Not only could they see palm trees through the twilight, they could see land, and a beach, and tangled underbrush. And before long the blessed, unbelievable feel of sand beneath their feet rushed up to meet them.
With a cry of gladness, Maggie abandoned the wing, staggering in to shore and collapsing on the beach. Mack was beside her, the knapsack looped around his wrist, and together they lay there on the beach, panting in exhaustion and relief.
It was an odd feeling, she thought, lying on her back and looking at the darkening sky, to come so close to death and then leap back. When they were hurtling toward the sea she’d had no time to panic, during the long hours clinging to that icy piece of flotsam she’d been too busy trying to convince both Mack and herself that she wasn’t afraid to die. And the memory of Lonesome Fred, somewhere beneath the Caribbean Sea, feeding fishes, while they were safe and whole, came back to haunt her. She lay there in the gathering dusk and shivered, safe in the knowledge that Mack couldn’t see her reaction.
When she finally accustomed herself to the feel of solid ground beneath her, she rolled over in the sand, coating her soaking jumpsuit in a layer of the gritty stuff, and stared at Mack. He was lying on his back, his breath coming easily enough, staring up at the twilight sky.
“How long do you think we were in the water?” she asked, and was relieved to discover her voice was calm and steady.
He stopped looking at the sky long enough to turn to her. “I don’t know, Maggie. All I know is it’s getting dark, and we’re going to have to get moving before long if we want shelter for the night.”
“Maybe there’s a village nearby? Maybe even a town, with a Holiday Inn and a comfortable bed …”
“Dream on, Maggie. I think we’re going to be spending the night on the beach. And if I don’t do something about it right now, we’ll be spending the night in the dark.” He pulled himself upright, and Maggie could see the weariness in his big, strong body.
Reluctantly, she followed suit, staggering slightly as she tried to stand on the motionless sand. “I’ll find some kindling.”
“I don’t suppose moonlight will do?” He asked it gently enough, but a chill ran across her.
“I’ll take care of the fire. Why don’t you see if there’s something to eat? A banana tree or something.”
“I bet we’ll have to make do with salty chocolate bars and Jack Daniel’s, if they’re still in the knapsack. Don’t worry, Maggie. We’ll keep a light going.” His concern was soft and gentle in his raspy voice, and Maggie wanted to tell him it didn’t matter. A fire might draw unwanted attention—it would be a warm enough night and they’d be much better off without it. She opened her mouth to tell him so, then closed it again, hating her weakness.
Mack must have read her mind. He crossed the few feet of beach that separated them and brushed some of the sand off her pensive face. “Don’t worry, Maggie May,” he said again. “I don’t like the dark much, either.”
nine
Mack was right, of course. There wasn’t even a run-down village or an abandoned shack anywhere near their beach, much less a Holiday Inn. Fortunately, before the darkness closed around them, Maggie had a decent fire going, keeping the night at bay.
Solemnly they divided and shared the soggy candy bars and the remnants of the bourbon, making the meager feast last. Maggie sat cross-legged on the sand, listening to the steady rush of the outgoing tide, trying vainly to dry out their dwindling supply of cash. She should have felt grateful. If the tide hadn’t been coming in that afternoon, they would have been pulled out to sea, ending up as shark bait or something equally unpleasant.
But even so, given the solid ground beneath her, the warmth of the night, and the salt-laden candy bar that had at least taken the edge off her hunger, she was feeling disturbed and angry over God only knew what.
She was unable to make light conversation, and Mack didn’t push her. He lay back in the sand, apparently at ease, his attention half on the fire in front of them, half on the night around them, and thankfully not at all on her. Or so she thought.
“What’s on tap for tomorrow?” he inquired lazily, his voice cutting through her unhappy self-absorption.
“What?” She roused herself to stare at him across the firelight.
“I said what have you got planned
for tomorrow,” he said patiently. “How are you going to get us out of this mess?”
Slowly she pulled herself together, her battered pride and unhappiness pushed out of the way. “First I find us some transportation,” she said, her voice firm in the night air. “And at the same time find out what country we’re in.”
“That might be a good idea,” he said idly, leaning back in the sand.
“You … uh … don’t have any idea where we are, do you?”
“Not a clue. I expect we’re somewhere in Central America—Lonesome Fred was going to keep parallel to the coastline.” He crossed his long legs, peering at the horizon. “Think you’ll have any trouble finding where Van Zandt’s holed up?”
“Maybe. But I’ll find him sooner or later.” She stared at his averted profile for a long, suspicious moment. She’d been sitting there, feeling useless and sorry for herself, and suddenly Mack had given her back her pride. Had he done it on purpose?
She had relied on him too much in the last twenty-four hours. First, to keep the night terrors from destroying her, then to keep her afloat during that interminable afternoon. It had been different when it came to stealing the car. She was perfectly comfortable having Mack rescue them. As long as she asked him to in the first place. She hated like hell having to accept his aid when it was presented unasked.
She had been prepared for him to try to take over the expedition, and in expectation she launched an attack. “That was a great pilot you picked,” she said.
Mack shrugged, unmoved. “So I got a little overzealous,” he drawled. “I didn’t want to leave all the burden on you, Superwoman. I wouldn’t want you to think I couldn’t pull my weight.”
Did he know what she’d been going through? Quite possibly. She had yet to meet a man who’d give up control so easily and yet still remain calm and strong. Apparently Mack was a man who could do it. Maybe. Maggie searched about in her own mind for the right words, gratitude without encouragement, comradeship without losing the upper hand. If she really had the upper hand at all.