by Peggy Webb
“Not nearly hot enough,” she added as she ran her hands over his chest.
A shaft of moonlight caught the flames that sprang into his eyes as her hands moved downward. With her index finger she lightly traced across the front of this briefs.
His sharp intake of breath made her smile. “Do you like that?” she asked softly.
“Be careful how you play with fire. You might get burned.”
“I’m a big girl now, Jim. I know what I’m doing.”
“Do you, Hannah?”
Something in his voice made her hesitate. Her hands stilled as she looked into his face. It was tight with an emotion that looked almost like anger.
“Do you?” he repeated.
She tossed back her hair and jutted out her chin. “Yes. I know that you want me.”
His silence thundered around the room. Hannah’s breath caught in her throat as she looked at him.
“I’ve made you want me,” she whispered.
“Yes.”
That was all she had, that one word, but it was satisfaction enough. It was time to end the game while she still could.
“You said I’d come to you, and I did . . .” She took a step back. “What you didn’t know was that I would walk away—untouched.”
Willing herself not to run, she turned and walked slowly to the door. She expected some challenge from him, or at least mocking laughter, but there was nothing except a screaming silence.
Keep going, she told herself. Don’t turn around.
She made it to her bedroom before she looked back. And then all she could see was the darkness that separated them.
o0o
Jacob arrived with the morning.
Hannah was the first to see him. Unable to sleep, she’d risen with the sun, put on her jogging shorts, and started outside for a good, hard run. Just as she reached the front porch, Graves Johnson’s station wagon stopped in the driveway and out stepped her youngest brother.
She raced toward him, “Jacob!”
He grabbed her with one arm and waved goodbye to their longtime neighbor with the other. “Thanks for the lift, Johnson.”
“Glad to do it, Jacob.”
Hannah caught Jacob’s face between her hands. “Let me look at you.” Jacob was smaller than the rest of the Donovan men, but he managed to look every bit as big. He was compact and powerful, with the red hair of his mother’s Scottish ancestors, Hannah’s vivid blue eyes, and a rakish grin all his own.
Hannah tenderly brushed a lock of hair off his forehead. “You’ve no right to look so wonderful. It’s been almost a year.”
“There’s a big world out there to see.” Jacob turned his face toward the city and got a faraway look in his eyes. “How is she?”
“Rachel?” Hannah need not have asked. She knew Jacob was inquiring about the woman who had jilted him. “Happy, according to the Greenville grapevine. She and her husband are living in Seattle now, I believe.”
“Seattle. So far away.” The fleeting look that crossed his face might have been pain, but with Jacob, Hannah was never sure. He’d always been a great pretender. The family prankster, the vagabond, the one who made the rest of them laugh.
He made her laugh now. Affecting a frown, he lifted a strand of her hair. “Is that gray I see? Thirty and not married. What will Aunt Agnes say?”
“Plenty. Just wait until she gets hold of you. You’re not a spring chicken anymore, yourself, baby brother.”
“I can handle Aunt Agnes. I’ll just invite her to go hang gliding. She’ll be too scared to give advice.”
Hannah roared with laughter. “Remember that Christmas you took her up in your balloon? She gave Pop hell for months about raising such a daredevil.”
“It wasn’t half as bad as the tangent she went on when she caught you out behind the barn smoking a pipe.”
A brief image of Jim with his pipe came to her mind. She firmly pushed it aside. “I never did get the hang of that.” Hannah squeezed his hand. “Why didn’t you let us know you were coming? How did you come anyway? Your Cessna? Your balloon?”
“Learjet. Mine. Johnson’s flight came in right after I landed, and he gave me a lift. I didn’t want to wake anybody this early. Especially not Hallie. They say a bride needs her beauty sleep.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Neither would I.”
They looked at each other in the early dawn, a brother and sister whose special bond needed no words. Finally Jacob spoke.
“What does one do on his sister’s wedding day, Hannah?”
She glanced upward toward Jim’s window, then turned back to her brother.
“Run like hell.”
“My sentiments exactly.”
Jacob tossed his duffel bag onto the porch, then the two of them sprinted down the driveway, turned east, and raced into the sun.
CHAPTER SIX
Hallie’s wedding was at two o’clock in the afternoon.
Jim sat in the back of the church, watching. The bride was beautiful, the groom was handsome, and everybody looked happy. It was an occasion of great joy, but he felt like hell. Standing at the front of the church was the reason—Hannah Donovan. With her madonna smile and her sedate lace and pearls, she almost made him believe she wasn’t the same sultry woman who’d come to his room the previous night and finished destroying every dream he’d ever had about a sweet old-fashioned girl.
“Do you take this woman . . .”
The minister’s voice penetrated Jim’s consciousness. Do you take this woman? His gaze burned over Hannah. Yes, he thought, he’d take that woman. He’d take her in the pasture behind her house, in the hayloft, in her bed, in his bed. He’d take her anywhere he could get her. He’d even take her to San Francisco if she’d come. But then what? She was as wedded to her career in that godforsaken wilderness as he was to his in the big city.
“Will you love her and cherish her, honor and keep her, till death do you part. . . .”
Who was he kidding? Jim mocked himself. He could no more have a future with that wildcat than he could stop breathing. With him and Hannah, it would be till the next assignment do us part or the next job in Sri Lanka. Hell, it might even be till the next boat out of the harbor. Who knew? He could turn out to be just like his old man. It was best to catch his four o’clock plane out of Greenville and never look back.
He managed not to cross paths with Hannah during the reception back at the Donovan home. He considered that he was getting pretty good at avoiding her. He’d managed it ever since the gut-ripping confrontation of the night before. Standing in the library with the celebrating Donovans milling about, he glanced down at his watch. Almost time to leave. He’d thank Anna and Matthew for the hospitality, then be on his way.
He made it all the way up to his bedroom. His hand was on his bag when he heard her voice.
“Leaving without saying goodbye, Jim?”
Joy surged through him, then panic, then a great sense of destiny. Turning slowly, he saw Hannah. She was standing in the doorway, still wearing lace and pearls.
“You look good enough to eat.” He crossed the room in three quick strides, pulled her into his arms, and shut the door. He could feel her heart hammering against his chest. “And I plan to.”
“Is that a challenge?” Her hands skimmed his face.
He tipped her chin up with a forefinger and looked deep into her eyes. He had to taste her one last time, even if it meant missing his plane. “No, it’s a promise.”
They came together with the wild hunger of two people who had lived too long with denial. He hauled her hips into his, seeking to ease his passion by fitting himself into her soft hollows. He could feel the heat of her through their clothes. He groaned as his lips took hers.
Theirs was no gentle joining. It was the thunder of a storm on the Pacific; it was the roar of a glacier splitting and plunging into the bay; it was the explosion of a million stars burning through the night.
They kissed until their lips felt b
ruised. Jim was the one to pull away.
“If only there were time enough,” he whispered.
“There will never be time for us.”
“No,” he agreed. “You’ll be going back to Glacier Bay?”
“Yes. In two weeks. And you to San Francisco.”
He nodded. “You’ll have your marine research.”
“And you’ll have your battles with crime.”
“Always.”
“It’s best. Men complicate my life.”
His smile was crooked. “Even fierce West Coast Warriors?”
“Especially warriors.”
“Then it’s good that I’m leaving.” Slowly he traced her face with his hand, memorizing every contour. “Independent women with smoky blue eyes and storm cloud hair complicate mine.”
“We would have been good together, Jim.”
“Thunder and lightning always are.” He longed for one last desperate kiss, but he knew if he tasted her lips once more, he might never leave. He released her. “Goodbye, Hannah.” From somewhere deep inside he summoned up indifference to combat his passion. “Come out to San Francisco to see me—any Thursday. That’s my day off.”
Without giving her time to reply, he picked up his bag and hurried from the room. He never looked back.
o0o
Hannah caught the doorknob for support as she watched him walk out of her life.
It’s best.
She’d known that when she came up the stairs. The night before she’d gone to him to prove her independence, and now she’d come to him to prove . . . Her mind groped for the right answer. Independence again? Not likely. She was too honest to accept that lie, even from herself. The plain and simple truth was that she’d gotten exactly what she’d come for—a mind-shattering, resolve-shaking, heart-thundering kiss.
It was over, and she was walking away untouched. She’d keep telling herself that until she believed it.
Hannah squared her shoulders, jutted out her chin, and walked downstairs to join her family.
o0o
“I’ve never seen you so restless.”
For a moment Jim didn’t reply. He stood at the window of John Searles’s Pacific Heights home, which overlooked the panorama of San Francisco. Everything was clean and beautiful, shaded with the perpetual mist that hung over the city, from the opulent homes that nestled into the hills all the way down to the sleek boats in the bay. He was glad to be back.
“It’s this damned inactivity,” he finally said, turning from the window to face his publisher. “When are you going to turn me loose on the bastards that are turning our kids into junkies and our streets into a jungle?”
“It’s too soon.”
“Too soon! It’s been six weeks.” He crammed his hands into his pockets and paced the polished marble floor. “I feel like some damned hothouse flower. Covering the doings of the jet set all over the country is not my idea of investigative reporting.”
“Take a look at this, Jim. It came this morning.”
Jim glanced from John to the flat brown envelope that lay on the chrome and glass table. He recognized the scrawl, done in red ink, that snaked boldly across the envelope.
“The same people?”
“Yes. Same type stationery, same phrasing. No outright threats, but pointing clearly enough to you this time that we can go to the police.”
“No police. If I have to have cops wet-nurse me every time I step on somebody’s toes, I might as well turn in my typewriter.”
John picked the envelope up and handed it to him. “I think you should read it before you make that decision.”
Jim ripped the letter out of the envelope. It was the same as all the others he’d received, a crude poem handwritten on unlined dime-store paper.
The mighty warrior drew his bow and shot into the night. The arrow turned, came back to him, and gave him quite a fright. It ripped into his floating house, trailing streams of fire. It ripped into his blackguard heart, branding him a liar.
Jim wadded the paper into a ball and tossed it back onto the table. John’s suntanned face was unreadable as he smoothed the paper and stuffed it back into the envelope.
“This one is worse than the other two, Jim.”
“I’ll concede that, but I’ll be damned if I’ll request protection.”
“From a very practical standpoint, I think we can ask the police to beef up the patrol along the waterfront.” John pulled off his glasses and tapped the frames against the brown envelope. “This floating house is obviously your houseboat. It sounds like they mean to torch it.”
“Most cowardly deeds are done at night. I’ll ask Colter to help me keep a lookout. His boat is in the slip next to mine.”
“Hmmm.” John closed his eyes and leaned back.
Jim was familiar with that non-answer. It always meant that John Searles was thinking, and that when he had finished, he’d do exactly as he pleased, no matter what anyone else thought about the matter. Their clashes had been titanic and legendary around the publishing office, for John’s stubbornness matched his own. That was the first thing Jim had noticed when he’d come to work for him eight years before, that and his age. He was barely three years older than Jim, but he looked ten years younger. Wealth does that, Jim mused. It cushions the shocks of real life.
Jim waited. Only one thing was certain: Whatever was decided today would not affect their relationship. The respect they held for each other more than balanced their tempers.
“This is what we’ll do.” John flashed his pleased, boyish smile as he looked up. “I’ll arrange for extra security around the waterfront—a private company— and you’ll go to Texas.”
“So . . . you’re going to send me into hiding again?”
“Yes. You did quite well with that Donovan wedding assignment in Greenville. And those pieces you did in Charleston and Savannah were superb. I thought I’d send you out to Houston to cover the opening of a new multimillion-dollar spa. It’s called The Magic Touch, and it will be crawling with celebrities. The story will make a nice addition to America’s Elite.”
“That Donovan assignment was more dangerous than a firing squad. I would have been safer in San Francisco.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Just reminiscing.” Cramming his hand into his pockets, Jim turned toward the window that looked out over his beloved city.
Hannah’s image filled his mind. He saw her as clearly as he had six weeks earlier, her red dress billowing, her dark hair tumbled. Fire and smoke. And he’d been burned. The only cure would be to step into the fire again.
Resolutely he turned to face his publisher. “I have a counterproposal.”
“I’m listening.”
o0o
The commuter plane began its descent toward Glacier Bay.
Jim, who’d always thought San Francisco was God’s gift to mankind, found himself holding his breath over the grandeur of the scene below him. Enormous mountains capped with snow and shrouded with mists presided with ancient majesty over the lush forest of spruce and hemlock. Gleaming pinnacles of ice rose up from the water, tips of the glaciers that guarded the ends of the fjords. As the small plane dipped lower, he could see bright ribbons of color, patches of yellow dryas and strips of scarlet fireweed, wildflowers he’d read about in the guidebook to Alaska.
A saying of the Hoonah Indians, Glacier Bay’s ancestral people, came to his mind: God dwells here. Jim thought that surely must be so, for the land was like a benediction.
Almost reluctantly he leaned toward the man in the seat next to him, a crusty old-timer who had boarded in Juneau for the twenty-minute flight to Gustavus.
“Did you say you know Dr. Hannah Donovan?”
The man, who called himself Sleddog, shifted his wad of chewing tobacco from one side of his mouth to the other. “Yep.”
He didn’t talk much—except about himself. After he’d boarded the plane and introduced himself, he’d talked for three minutes nonstop about how he’d gotten his na
me. It seemed he knew more about sledding than any old dog in Alaska. Jim resigned himself to a conversation that was equivalent to extracting teeth.
“Can you give me directions to her house?”
The old man cackled. “It ain’t much of a house.”
“But you know where it is?”
“Everybody does. She’s famous in these parts.”
“For her research?”
His high-pitched cackling laughter sounded again. “You done tickled my fancy, young feller. Ain’t nobody around here understands all that whale mumbo jumbo. Whales’ve been here since God created Alaska, and they’ll be here when you and me’s turning up daisies. Naah, Hannah Donovan is famous because every year she beats the socks off the men in the Yukon Quest.”
Jim felt the jolt as the plane touched tarmac. He decided the old man would be useless as a guide. Briefly he regretted not phoning ahead and letting Hannah know he was coming. He grinned as he thought of her reaction to that news. She probably would have met him with her .300 Magnum, if she’d met him at all.
No, he thought as he picked up his gear and started to the small terminal, it was best to surprise her.
“Hey, wait up, young feller.” The old man touched his elbow. A stiff breeze had caused his sparse hair to stand up like white cream puffs around his head. “You wanting to go to Hannah Donovan’s or not?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Then you’d best load your gear into my pickup truck. Ain’t many folks around here who’ll venture over them rough back roads all the way up to where she lives.”
“How far?”
“Oh, up past Bartlett Cove, ‘bout thirty, forty miles, give or take a few.”
Jim tossed his duffel bag into the back end of a 1955 Chevrolet pickup that didn’t look as though it would get to the next corner on greased wheels, let alone forty miles on rough back roads. He thought briefly of his fool’s errand and decided the shakeup would do him good. Maybe it would jar his brain back into place.
Carefully he stowed the carton containing his typewriter and other writing essentials in the back, then climbed into the pickup.
Conversation was limited by the jarring drive. That was all right with Jim. It gave him time to decide what in the hell he was going to say when he saw Dr. Hannah Donovan.