Collision Course: A Romantic Thriller

by Susan Donovan

  One of the first things he’d have to ask Janey was why in the world El Cuento? He laughed to himself. He couldn’t wait to hear her answer. He couldn’t wait to hear her say anything. In fact, just the sound of her voice was all he needed.

  “Damn you, Ruby! No! Go away!”

  It was not the greeting Ruben had hoped for, and the sound of the slamming door reverberated in his skull. He waited quietly and looked around the wooden porch. It was a squat old place that faced out over a fast-running stream, hidden from the dirt road by a row of cedar and spruce. It was perfect for a hermit – or someone trying to disappear off the face of the earth.

  He waited a few minutes then tried again. “Janey?” He tapped on the thick, weathered wooden door. “Janey, sweetheart, please let me in.”

  The door opened a crack, and the first thing Ruben saw was her eyes—panicked, full of rage. He nearly fell backward.

  “Don’t ever call me sweetheart. Ever.” She reached out and pulled him through the door by his shirtsleeve. Inside it was nearly empty and very dim, and he could barely make out her expression.

  Ruben stood still, feeling the energy of her touch shoot through him. “Are you all right?”

  “No!” Her hand dropped from him and she looked at the door and the windows, desperate, worried. “How the hell did you find me? They could’ve followed you! How? How did you find me? Tell me!”

  This was borderline paranoia, Ruben thought. Of course no one followed him.

  “It’s okay. I saw my truck at a gas station and convinced the Apodacas to tell me where you were. No one else knows I’m here. Please don’t worry.”

  “Ughhh!” She stomped away from him to stand in front of a rough stone fireplace. She turned her face away from him. “You shouldn’t have come.”

  No, this was definitely not the reception he’d envisioned, and Ruby was suddenly overcome with weariness. At least she was safe. He’d found her, and that was a start.

  He leaned up against the wall next to the chimney and watched the firelight cast shadows across the plane of her cheek. In some ways, he’d grown accustomed to how lovely this woman was. At least her beauty and grace no longer startled him. He was merely charmed by it now, happy to bask in it.

  He found his voice. “Do you want me to leave?”

  She didn’t answer him, only turned her face a bit farther away. Ruben gazed at the long bone and muscle of her neck. He watched her chest rise and fall as she breathed, and realized she was wearing something he’d never seen before—a soft white sweater set and a pair of tailored slacks and loafers—an outfit completely preppy and completely out of place in the New Mexican mountains. Had she somehow managed to go shopping?

  She would not look at him.

  “Janey, if you want me to go, I’ll go. But we have to talk first.”

  She clenched her eyes shut as if she could make him disappear.

  Ruben walked over to stand behind her. “I’m not leaving until you talk to me.”

  She could feel his breath on her neck, and it forced her to recall what if felt like to make love in front of the mirror, how Ruben locked his eyes on hers and joined with her, body and soul.

  “Please, Janey…”

  “What?” She turned around suddenly, her cheeks flushed and her eyes burning. “What did you think, Ruby—that after I remembered everything I’d still feel the same way about you? Is that what you really thought?”

  He breathed in sharply, the words slicing through him. “I did,” he said.

  “You just don’t get it, do you?” Janey was trembling in front of him now. “I don’t have the luxury of loving someone! What happened between us was—it was an accident, Ruby! I was confused and lonely and lost! I didn’t even know who I was, for God’s sake!”

  He stared at her, his heart hammering in his chest.

  “My life is ruined! I’ve been betrayed! I’ve been set up! I have to be nobody and live nowhere or they’re going to find me!” She briefly brought a hand to her forehead and tried to calm her voice. She looked at him. “Listen to me. I can’t have you here with me. I can’t love you.”

  His eyes searched her face. It was the face he loved, but hardened by a grim resolve he’d never seen in her before. It must have reappeared last night, along with the rest of her life.

  She was real now, he realized. She knew who she was and what she wanted, and she’d just told him to get lost.

  “That’s it?” he asked. “I walk out and that’s it?”

  “Yes. That’s it.” She fought back the panic that made her feel shaky and weak. She wanted to scream for him to stay, to love her forever, to never let her go—but she kept her eyes empty.

  It was for his own good.

  Ruben was dumbfounded. His fingers twitched at his sides. How many times in his life had a woman sent him packing? Exactly zero. How many times had Ruben Jaramillo been the dumpee and not the dumper? Exactly never.

  “I’m sorry, too.” He turned to go.

  “Wait!” She ran behind a set of French doors leading to a small sunroom. Ruben watched her bend down and sort through a box of papers to pull out an envelope. His heart flipped from his chest into his mouth -- God, she was beautiful, the long line of her body, sweet shape of her, the grace of her movements…

  Suddenly he noticed the whole place was full of opened boxes—clothes, shoes, dance gear, books, a Bluetooth speaker, sheets and towels—she’d sent all these things in advance. She was walking toward him now. Just how far in advance had she planned this?

  “Here.” She shoved a roll of cash in his hand. “That should cover the clothes, the dance gear, the meals – and the damage I did when I left last night. I’m very sorry about that.”

  She forced his stiff fingers to curl around the bundle, and he winced in pain.

  “I don’t want your money, Janey.”

  “Take it.”

  Ruben let out a bitter laugh. “So now all your debts are paid? Nothing to keep you up at night?”

  “Stop it, Ruben.”

  “Sure. Fine. Just let me just count it to make sure it covers everything, you know, utilities, love, sex, mileage.”

  He took out the bills and fanned through them, gasping when he saw the mix of hundreds and five hundreds. “What the…?” He gawked at her. “Was I that good in bed?”

  The smallest flicker of a smile twitched at the corner of her mouth. “Actually, you were,” she said

  He laughed. “Great. Then here.” Ruben shoved the cash at her. “Because whatever you think I was worth, baby, multiply that by a million and that’s what I owe you. We can call it even.”

  “This is sick,” she said, scowling.

  “My point exactly.” Ruben dropped the wad of bills to the floor with a flourish. “Whatever I did, I did because I wanted to, Janey, at first because I cared about you, and then, well, you know why. Because I love you.”

  She walked past him to the front door. Her shaking hand reached for the brass knob and she pulled it open, letting a low patch of sun shoot inside. “You have to go.”

  He walked past her without saying a word, and was gone.

  Ruben drove up the hill to the old Grange Hall, doubled back to the house, and parked under a tree. He ate his sandwich. And as Ruben watched over Janey, Bradley Rowe remained parked behind a utility shed across the road where he watched Ruben. The detectives and special agents were behind a clump of trees to the north of the house watching Rowe, and the two men in suits were behind the Grange Hall, watching over them all.

  Janey spent the evening unpacking. She stacked the boxes of documents at the bottom of the front closet and started rice and beans for dinner. She put clean sheets on the futon in the living room. She folded clothes away in the built-in shelves. She took a hot shower.

  Ruben stared at her every time she passed in front of the windows or stopped to peak out at him. He kept his ears keen in case she called for him. Eventually, the sun disappeared beyond the western mesas, and he began to get sleepy.


  Janey looked out the window again. He was still there! Unbelievable!

  “Auugghh!” She flung open the door and marched down the steps and to the truck, where she popped her head inside the open window. Ruben leaned back against the seat and smiled lazily at her, intrigued by the way the red sky illuminated her hair and deepened the pink of her skin and mouth.

  Her soft blue eyes glared at him. He kept smiling. And then, finally, her warm, soft lips touched his cheek, and Ruben’s eyes closed in relief and happiness.

  “You win, Ruby.” She opened the door and took his hand as they walked together to the front porch. They sat next to each other on the steps and she pulled the sweater tightly around her. Ruby let his arm curl around her waist.

  She shot him a sideways glance. “Are you always this bullheaded?”

  He chuckled. “My editors call it determined. It’s actually a highly prized commodity in my line of work.”

  Janey looked over at him and sighed. “Okay, so where do you want me to start?”

  He rubbed her shoulder. “I only need the parts I’m not clear about—from the day you were born to the day we smashed into each other.”

  She leaned against him and closed her eyes for a moment, laughing. This man could always make her laugh. And it felt good to laugh. He was right, of course. No one had followed him here. It was going to be all right. Maybe he could help her, after all.

  Ruben leaned down and buried his nose in her hair and breathed deep. “I missed you today,” he whispered. “I missed being with you.”

  “Me too, Ruby. Let’s go in by the fire. Are you hungry?”

  Seven pairs of eyes watched them walk together into the house, as Ruben’s hand nonchalantly slipped from her waist to her hip, and gave her bottom a friendly pat.

  From across the road, where he crouched behind the shed, Bradley Rowe stared in disbelief. Janey had betrayed him. She was not the sweet, loyal, young woman she’d pretended to be. She was a Jezebel. A liar. She was a race-traitor, mixing with that greasy foreigner! It made him physically ill to think he’d nearly married a woman capable of such abomination.

  Perhaps she hadn’t seen him kill Lawrence at all. Perhaps she was here only for this… this violation of all that was holy. Brad trembled. It didn’t really matter now, did it? The result would be the same.

  From their post behind the trees, Sheridan sighed with relief as he put down the binoculars. It appeared Chisolm was right. Ruben Jaramillo wasn’t interested in an expose’ on Liberty Path. He was interested in Janey.

  From their position farther up the road, the two young men were disgusted.

  “This is about Brad Rowe’s girl?” One man pulled the binoculars from his eyes. “Please don’t tell me we just drove off the edge of the earth because Rowe’s girlfriend is cheating on him.”

  The other man shrugged. “Kind of looks that way. We should probably call Philadelphia again, but I can’t get any service up here.”

  He stared at the cellular phone, dead in his hand.

  They sat together in front of the fire and listened to the cold night noises of this house in the mountains—the low murmur of the stream, the occasional whisper of wind on the pines, the crackle and hiss of burning wood.

  Ruben smiled to himself and pulled Janey closer to him on the couch. It was strange to hear the life story of a woman you’d already decided to love. It was like getting all the background facts he needed for an article that he’d already written and published.

  Ruben ran his fingers through her hair and felt her voice vibrate against him as she talked. Nothing she said disappointed him. It all made sense. This was who she was, and he felt relieved that he could finally know all of her.

  She described her father, Kevin O’Connor, as a Harley-riding teddy bear, a man who loved her with everything in him, even when he admitted that he didn’t know what he was doing. Her mother, Maura, died of cancer when Janey was four. During the rough times, her father used to tell Janey, “Don’t worry. Between the two of us, we’ll figure it out.”

  Her dad decided to enroll Janey in ballet school when she was six, just for a “taste of something feminine,” he reasoned. It concerned him that Janey’s life centered around her father’s world of motorcycles, hockey and football, and without a mother, he thought she needed something soft and delicate in her life.

  Janey found herself in the right place, at the right time, with the right teachers. And her talent was anything but soft and delicate.

  Janey’s natural ability astounded everyone from the beginning. She excelled. She found joy and purpose. She pushed herself harder than any teacher could or would and her father stood back in awe as she met each goal and went for more.

  Janey started earning summer study scholarships in her early teen years, and her goals focused like a laser on the only thing she wanted: she would become a principal dancer in a major ballet company.

  By the age of 25, she’d reached that goal with the Philadelphia Ballet. That was also the year Kevin O’Connor died in a motorcycle accident, and the year she met Bradley Rowe.

  Janey snuggled closer to Ruben and watched the flames shoot and dart against the darkness. “Dance has always been my center, the place I go when nothing else makes sense. It kept me going when Daddy died. It kept me alive after I found out about Brad.”

  Her voice was very soft. “And right now, right this minute, I’m finally where I always wanted to be, right at the peak of my career. Right now, I’ve got that perfect balance of skill, maturity and strength—and here I am, stuck in a cabin in the middle of nowhere, with nowhere to dance.”

  Ruben stroked the soft knit of her sleeve.

  “The worst part is there’s not much time left. Dancers only last until their mid-thirties at the latest. All my life has been for this moment, right now, and I’m… I’m not allowed… to have it.”

  Her shoulders began to shake softly, and Ruben held her tighter. “Don’t give up, Janey.”

  Her words came through the tears. “I traded dance for my life, but there’s no point to my life without it.”

  Ruben let her cry until she seemed ready to say more. He kept his voice was calm and soothing. “You can tell me the rest. Between the two of us, we’ll figure it out.”

  She looked up into his face and managed a grin. He kissed her softly and brushed away the tears.

  “I don’t want to tell you the rest,” she whispered. “There’s something I have to do first.”

  She turned her body toward him and climbed up on his lap to straddle him. Ruben was surprised, then allowed himself to enjoy the feel of her on his thighs, and to see the tenderness and need in her expression.

  “Did you have something in mind?” Ruben asked, as her hands came to his shirt collar and her fingers fluttered down the buttons. When her palms lay flat against the plane of his chest, Ruben exhaled in relief.

  “An apology.” She kissed him delicately, letting her moist lips brush the sensitive skin around his mouth.

  Janey sat up and looked into his eyes. “Ruby, I lied. I do feel the same about you. Please forgive me for hurting you like that.”

  She brushed her lips under the ledge of his jaw, down the muscles of his neck and onto the fine dusting of hair on his chest. “Will you forgive me?”

  “I’ll try,” he said, half a moan and half a sigh.

  Janey’s fire-warmed skin felt like hot silk in his hands. They had folded down the futon couch and now stretched out in the firelight together, naked, touching from lips to toes in one unbroken, all-body kiss.

  She wanted him to take it slow and easy, which Ruben seemed to instinctively understand. As his fingertips glided across her back, along her throat, across her belly, she concentrated on the hot streaks of sensation his touch left behind. She would remember this. She would let the knowledge of him burn into her skin, commit him to physical memory, like the flow of a well-learned dance.

  She would push all the questions away, just for tonight.

/>   “I love the way you feel to me, Ruby.” Janey’s voice was very soft. She slid the full length of her leg from his hip to his toes. “I want to disappear inside you, melt into you.”

  Ruben caressed the side of her face. “It’s the same for me. Please know that.”

  She smiled at him and got pulled into the dark flame of his eyes. “I do know it. I just don’t understand it.”

  He grinned. “We’re not supposed to understand love – what would poets and songwriters do if everybody had it all figured out?”

  She ran a fingertip down his cheek. “But how can it happen so fast?”

  “It wasn’t so fast for me,” he said, very serious now. “I’ve been waiting all my life for it.”

  He brought his mouth to hers and she wrapped her leg loosely around his waist, stroking and sliding it along his body.

  “I’ve waited all my life for you. For this,” Ruben whispered. His mouth and tongue explored the hollow of her throat, the rise of her collarbone, the valley between her breasts. She arched her back and moaned as his tongue drew lazy circles around the erect little nipples and then over the splendid rise her soft flesh. She shivered when he raked his teeth across her skin, then pulled and nipped at her.

  He brought his mouth back up to hers for another kiss, deep and soft and sure. Then another, one of gentle bites and withdrawals. And another, one that made demands.

  Ruben knew there was no way he could ever kiss her enough, know her enough, or take enough of her.

  “I love you, Janey,” he breathed. “I’ve loved you from the second I saw you.”

  Janey pressed hard against him then, rolling, bringing the full length of her body on top of his. With both hands, she slid her fingers through his hair and left kisses over his eyelids, along the side of his strong cheek, all along his generous lips.

  “You have the sexiest mouth I’ve ever seen,” she said. “It was your smile and your eyes, Ruby – and the way you make me laugh. I didn’t stand a chance.”

  He grinned and lay back against the bed, feeling the graze of her fingertips along his face. He decided there could be nothing more heavenly than to have the beautiful woman he loved lay naked on top of him, stroke his face and whisper that she loved him.