* * * * *
Caitlin lay with her head on Chase’s chest. She was happy. She’d never been so sexually satisfied in her life, and she was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Chase had been with her for over a week. He’d not made any promises, and she hadn’t offered any either. So far, they hadn’t made any death threats toward each other either.
He ran his hands down her back, down her sides over her slightly ticklish ribs and cupped her bottom in his hands. He patted it several times.
“Don’t you dare!”
“Ummm… I’m considering my possibilities,” Chase said with a wicked grin. “I still owe you for that last drugging. Do you know how many days I had a killer headache, and other side effects that are too nasty to talk about?”
“There weren’t supposed to be that many side effects,” Caitlin admitted. “I’m sorry. Still, better a headache than dead. If you’d continued to be around me, it would have placed you in danger.”
Chase shifted and rolled over on her slightly. He didn’t pin her down with his weight as much as the width of his chest and shoulders. “Honey, I’m glad you’re smart enough to outwit the bad guys. Believe me on that. But your survival skills have skewed your ideas on male/female roles. I’m one of the good guys. I’m supposed to protect the lady in distress, not the other way around. It’s my job to protect you.”
“We’re way beyond the days of Simon Legree and the good guy in a white hat rescuing the damsel in distress. There’s absolutely no reason a woman can’t protect herself.” Caitlin said defiantly.
“That’s not the point,” Chase said firmly. “You shouldn’t have to.”
“Why? Because of some outdated man code that says we’re supposed to be the weaker sex?”
Chase rolled off her and laid back on the pillow his arm behind his head. “No, because women should be loved, cherished and protected.”
“I don’t see why women should be treated differently than men,” Caitlin said pointedly. “I did what I had to do. I feel safe now, and it’s been a long time since I felt safe.”
He pulled her over to him again, holding her tight. “I’m really sorry about that. You should have been protected. When I saw what was going down with the Rigoltees and then Stevens, I was pretty sure you were behind it and I didn’t dare contact you. As an ex-Marshal closely associated with your case, I might have been under surveillance. I didn’t want to take a chance of leading them straight to you. After that, I couldn’t come.”
“Why have you come?” Caitlin asked. “I’m no prize, Chase. I’m argumentative and stubborn, and I’ve learned to depend on myself. I’m not the delicate little flower that you want in a woman.”
“We don’t always have a choice about the person we fall in love with, and I already know you’re going to cause me trouble and aggravation. It’s not something I can’t handle. I love you Caitlin. It’s as simple as that. The problem is I can’t stay here with you. At least not now, and I need to ask a huge favor of you. I want you to come back to Henryville with me.”
“Damn it, Chase… Ow!” Caitlin swore and winced as his hand smacked her backside sharply.
“No, wait. Don’t turn me down flat until you know why,” he said, and rolled off the bed to pace across the room, realizing belatedly that his instinctive reaction may have cost him her cooperation.
“Cait, the last six months have been hell on my family. Four months ago Wayne’s wife Katrina died. She was twenty-four years old.”
She sat up. “I’m so sorry, was it related to the bulimia?”
“No, they’d worked through that and she’d stopped before she got pregnant. She had a brain aneurysm. She went out to lunch with some friends, picked up a fork and fell over dead. It’s hit the whole family hard. Wayne is only hanging onto his sanity by a thread, and he’s got two nine-month old baby boys to take care of without a momma. Everyone is pitching in, Marie and Shelley the most since they don’t work outside the home, but it’s been rough. There for a while, I was on baby-sitting duty quite a bit, but he has at last, hired a live-in nanny. There’s also something else,” Chase’s voice broke. “My mother was diagnosed with Stage Three breast cancer three years ago. She had a mastectomy, radiation, chemo; she did everything she was supposed to do. The treatments didn’t stop it. Eight months ago, she was diagnosed as Stage Four. The cancer has metastasized. It is spreading throughout her body.”
“Oh, Chase, I’m so sorry,” Caitlin crossed the room and put her arms around him.
“I’m going to lose my Mom, Cait,” His voice broke and he closed his eyes pulling her close and rocking her in grief.
Caitlin held onto him solidly until he could pull it together enough to speak again.
“Mom’s been great. She’s been Superwoman through all this. Dad has dragged her off to every specialist and every cancer center he could find, but four months ago, she said no more. Mom’s decided that she’s tired of fighting what can’t be cured. She doesn’t want to take medicines that make her sicker than she already is, or have doctors cutting her up into pieces trying to remove it. She said what she wanted most was to spend her remaining time with her family.” His voice broke again. “I’m actually stronger when I’m around her, because she’s so brave and courageous.”
“What I can do?” Caitlin asked.
Chase kissed her on the forehead, but his eyes looked haunted. “My mom has always worried about me. She had four sons and two daughters, and I’m the one that worried her the most. I was the one that joined the Marines, and if that wasn’t bad enough, I went into Special Operations - very dangerous work. I was the one who became a U.S. Marshal, and I was nearly taken out by that last incident. She’s worried more about me than any of the others because of my choices. Mom knows about us. I don’t know how because I never told her, but she knows there was a woman that I loved, and still love. She’s straight out asked me about it, and I don’t lie to my mother. I can’t because she’s got some kind of built-in Mom lie detector. She’s never been one to beat around the bush when she wants information. I probably got my interrogation skills from her.
I have to go back. I have to be there for her for whatever time she has left. I want you to come with me. I want her to get to know you because you’re a very special woman to me. I want you to know her for the same reasons. I want you to meet my Dad and my grandmother, and the rest of my family. I know it’s asking too much of you. For the first time in years, you’ve reached a place where you feel safe, but…
“No, it’s not asking too much,” Caitlin interrupted meeting his eyes and meaning it. “When do we go?”
Chapter 7
“I don’t believe this,” Chase threw up his arms in frustration. “You’re being irrational!”
“Fear of any kind is, by definition, irrational but it that doesn’t make it go away!” Caitlin snapped back. “If you want to fly, go ahead. I’ll meet up with you later.”
“Five or six days later, and that makes absolutely no sense. The plane will land in Cranbrook airport this afternoon. By the time the pilot gets it refueled and checked out, we can be there, take off for Salt Lake City and be there by tomorrow morning. You’ll get a decent night’s sleep, and you’ll be able to meet my partner Blake. Tomorrow evening we’ll re-board, and we’ll be in Austin, Texas five hours later. We can stay the night and drive to the ranch in the morning. That’s fifteen hours of flight time, versus forty or more hours of driving time spread out over nearly a week, and two countries.”
“I don’t fly!” Caitlin repeated for the umpteenth time.
“You can sleep on the plane,” Chase repeated.
“Not for all of it!” Caitlin exploded. “If I can’t drive, Chase, I’m not going!”
“You’re going,” Chase said, his voice suddenly going low and serious. “You promised and I’m holding you to that promise.”
“We never discussed how we were getting there. You didn’t say a fucking word about flying until you told me your uncle was lending you the us
e of his corporate jet,” Caitlin exclaimed.
“You’re up to eighteen now, and you’re pushing your luck!”
Caitlin threw up her hands this time. “Enough all ready with the threats. For someone that wants me to go with him, threats are not a good idea. I’m a grown up and I can swear if I want to! I despise flying! I hate airports! I hate the way the airlines jerk you around, changing flights and destinations and layovers! There’s nothing good about flying! Haven’t you read about the bad maintenance and metal fatigue? Engines are falling off airplanes and squashing houses!”
Chase shut his eyes and counted to ten, took a deep breath and counted again. He opened his eyes to empty space. She was gone. He looked out over the deck and saw her heading for a large barn. He picked up his phone and made a call and when he had the information he needed, he followed her. When he entered the barn, he looked around in the semi-darkness. He didn’t see her, but he could hear her. He found her in a stall sitting cross-legged in a pile of straw with four small puppies crawling over her.
“Don’t scare the puppies,” she said her eyes still flashing with temper, but her tone was quiet.
Chase joined her and picked up one of the little brown pups. “Chocolate Labs?” he guessed.
“They look like it now, but Daddy was a one night stand, so we don’t know what was mixed in.”
“I didn’t know you were a dog person,” Chase said his eyes mellowing. “You’ve been keeping these guys a secret from me.”
“You don’t know a lot about me,” Caitlin said softly but seriously. “I’m really good with animals, dogs and horses especially. They like me, and we connect.”
“Do you have horses?” Chase looked around at the large barn.
“Yeah, but I haven’t brought them here yet,” Caitlin admitted. “The contractors haven’t finished putting in the heating and adjusting the ventilation system yet. With temperatures that get down to twenty below zero in the winter for weeks at a time, there’s a real science to keeping the barns warm enough for the horses and yet ventilated enough to clear the gases. I have four horses so far. Two Mustangs, they aren’t broken yet. I also have two Quarter Horses, a palomino and a silver bay. They’re being boarded at my neighbors place. He runs a stable/boarding operation. He’ll take Rennie and the pups when I go. He owes me, since he gave Rennie to me in the first place knowing she was pregnant, which was a minor detail he forgot to tell me.”
Chase smiled. “You’re not as tough as you think you are.”
“Don’t bet on it,” Caitlin said dryly. “I can be as tough as I need to be.”
Chase put his puppy back, took her hand, and led her out of the stall, closing the gate. “Does everything have to be a fight with us?”
She flushed. “I agreed to go, Chase. We didn’t agree on how we’d get there!”
“It’s not happening, Caitlin. Your issues with the airlines don’t apply. This is a privately owned plane. I know my uncle. He puts his family on this airplane, and he wouldn’t do that unless he trusted the maintenance and his pilots. The only issue we’ll have is getting through customs, and your documentation must be perfect or you wouldn’t be living here. I’m not going to ask how you got it. I don’t want to know. I called the pilot and he suggested you get your doctor to prescribe Valium for the trip. If your fear of flying is that bad, you’re one Valium away from not worrying about it.”
“I don’t want to be knocked out!” Caitlin grumbled. She was losing this argument and she knew it. “I have to be in control at all times.”
“No, you don’t,” Chase disagreed. “I’ll be there to protect you and there will only be four people on the plane, us and a pilot and a co-pilot. Call your doctor, Caitlin.”
“I have Valium,” Caitlin snapped.
“Is it legal or from the Internet?” Chase demanded.
She looked away. “Call your doctor!” Chase ordered looking furious. “I want to see this supply of drugs you’ve bought from the Internet. Now!”
Caitlin tried to dodge him and move away, but he caught her arm. “Now, Caitlin.”
“You can’t…”
“Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do,” Chase said his temper clearly on the edge of erupting. “I already owe you for drugging me with suspect illegal drugs! I owe you for not cleaning up your mouth when I’ve already warned you about it. In my mind, discipline is cumulative, it doesn’t get overlooked and it doesn’t go away. You’re on borrowed time, and you’re pushing me. I want to see the drugs, now!”
“I haven’t agreed to this crap you call domestic discipline,” Caitlin snapped.
“You don’t have to,” Chase growled. “You’re sleeping with me, you’re my woman. If you’re involved with me, it comes with the package!”
Chase marched her back to the house, and Caitlin was furious. She wanted to lash out at him, give him a good kick in a place that would really hurt, but she wasn’t stupid. Chase was practically daring her to cross some unknown line with him, and she knew who would be the one to regret it. She didn’t agree or understand his archaic ideas, but she didn’t know how to get around them or how to convince him otherwise. The bottom line for her was… she loved him. She had loved him practically from the moment they’d met and somewhere deep inside her she knew they were at a crossroads.
The threat from the Rigoltees’ was gone, and the threat from Clifford Stevens had been neutralized. It was now or never for them. They had to decide if their relationship was going to move forward or end. Chase needed her now. He wanted and needed her support, and in her heart she yearned to be both. She’d never had a serious relationship. She’d barely had any interest in boys or men before. After those two days and three hours with Chase, she’d been a changed woman. She’d known what love was for the first time in her life, and it had been snatched from her. At the time, there had been no hope of having it again. She’d worked, planned and schemed to take back control of her life. Now, he wanted her to relinquish that control over to him, and she didn’t think she could do it.
Chase watched the emotions play over Caitlin’s face - anger, confusion, frustration, maybe a bit of panic. He smiled. She was brilliant and experienced at working the angles and manipulating situations from behind a computer keyboard. In face-to-face relationships, she was a novice. He’d like to play strip poker with her, because she’d never have a poker face. She’d done what she needed to do to survive, and surprising had thrown a little revenge into the mix. He didn’t fault her for that, but he wasn’t going to let her retreat from him now.
Caitlin opened up a cabinet and pulled out a small safe, the kind that was sold in every discount box store and could be jimmied open with a screwdriver. She dug the key out of a drawer and handed it to him. Ten minutes later, after reading the labels and the warnings, the safe was empty. The plastic bottles were in the trash, and the illegal drugs flushed down the toilet.
Chase picked up the phone and handed it to her. “Call your doctor. We’ll pick up a legal prescription on the way to the airport.”
Caitlin spent the better part of the day going over checklists of what she needed to take with her. She contacted her neighbor where she boarded her horses and insisted he pick up her dogs before she left. She seemed to be obsessively compulsive about the details, not wanting to let anything go unattended. Caitlin hadn’t spent much time on her personal packing. She was a jeans and T-shirt or flannel shirt kind of girl. Locking up her computer equipment was another matter. She checked and double- checked every single item of her computer equipment before it was locked in a room that resembled a bank vault. She took the time to set up a laptop computer with her hi-tech arsenal of programs and detachable hard drives. This one she would take with her.
Chase thought he’d seen panic before on Caitlin’s face before, but it was nothing like what flashed in her eyes when they approached the private plane that evening. When she looked up and saw the plane, he’d literally had to haul her off her feet to keep her from running.
> He took her back into the terminal and gave her one of the pills they’d picked up from the pharmacy. She gulped it down, and fifteen minutes later was mellow enough to board the plane. Once she was buckled in, Chase spoke to the pilots, and then returned and took the seat beside her. Her fear was real, even medicated, her fingers dug into the armrests at takeoff. A few minutes later, she drifted off to sleep. Chase repositioned her seat back into a reclining position and covered her up with a blanket. He pulled a book out of his bag. It was going to be a very long flight.
Caitlin woke up and realized two things instantly. She was still on an airplane, and she was in a bed. She sat up and as the sheet fell, she also realized she was naked.
“Welcome back,” Chase said turning on a light.
“We’re still in the airplane,” Caitlin said trying to clear her head.
“I know. That Valium you took really knocks you out. You’ve been out for eight solid hours.”
“We’re still in the airplane,” she repeated. “And we’re in bed.”
Chase sat up with a grin. “My Uncle flies back and forth across the U.S., Canada, and South America for his export business. He finds it easier to fly at night, so he refitted the airplane to include a bedchamber. In the long run, it means he has more time with his family, and he’s not wiped out from jet lag all the time. The bathroom is through that door there.”
“Thanks,” Caitlin ran across the space and shut the door quickly but she was back a few minutes later. “This is a really strange airplane.”
Chase laughed and captured her lips. “This is how the really rich live, and it’s a perk to be his nephew. How are you doing?”
“Okay, I guess,” Caitlin said hesitantly. “I don’t want to think about it too much. How many more hours do we have left? Should I take another pill?”
“Approximately three and if you do take a pill you might be out for a good portion of the day,” Chase warned. “How about we try something else?”
Caitlin's Conspiracies Page 8