by Peggy Webb
The timeless, ancient rhythms of love became a battle as each fought to hang on to separate dreams.
Just this once, Hannah thought. Then I’ll put him behind me.
One time, Jim told himself, then she’ll be out of my system.
As the wonder of their joining sang through them, both lowered their shields and gave up the battle. It was a subtle shifting, and neither knew when it had happened. They knew only when it was over that some miracle had taken place, a breathless magic that was completely beyond their control.
Jim lifted himself on his elbows and looked down at Hannah. Raising a strand of her tangled hair to his lips, he said, “A man could get addicted to you.”
Hannah reached up and traced his scar. “A woman could become used to having you around.”
Neon lights and skyscrapers and big city crime paled beside the reality of Hannah. And Jim knew that, in spite of his many avowals of what he wanted in a woman, he was in love with Hannah Donovan. On the heels of that disturbing thought came another equally as distressing. If ever there was a mismatch, it was the two of them.
“Hannah . . .”
“Shhh . . . don’t talk, Jim,” She reached for him.
And they were lost once more in the magic of the moment.
o0o
Hannah woke up smiling. “Jim.” She reached across the covers and touched empty space.
“So, the sleeping beauty is finally up.” Jim stood in the galley, wrapped in a big apron and wreathed in an even bigger smile.
“Oh, my gosh. What time is it?” She started to swing her legs off the bed, but Jim crossed the small space and put them back.
“We have hours before your plane leaves.”
“How do you know?”
“Your plane tickets were in your jacket pocket.” His apron hit the carpet with a soft thump.
“You looked?” Smiling, Hannah reached for his belt buckle.
“A good investigative reporter never lets scruples override common sense.” His shirt fell into the heap of clothes. He buried his face in her neck. “Mmmm, you smell better than a morning cup of coffee.”
“They say the proof is in the tasting.”
“I’m dying to find out.”
o0o
Much later, they went up on deck for breakfast.
“I planned to serve breakfast long ago. I hope you like cold omelets, Hannah.” Jim reached down to help her up the ladder.
“My favorite kind.” She gasped as she stepped on deck. There was nothing as far as the eye could see except water. “What happened to San Francisco?”
“Sometime in the night I left it behind.” He pulled out a canvas chair and seated her at his small table. “I wanted an appropriate setting.”
“For breakfast?”
“No. For a proposal. Will you marry me, Hannah?”
Her fork clanked onto her plate. Without any warning, without any fanfare, Jim Roman had proposed. As casually as he’d walked into her life, he’d asked her to become his wife, right between the coffee and the eggs.
“You’re joking, of course.” Hannah put her hands in her lap to control their shaking.
“I would never joke about anything as serious as marriage. I’m asking you to share my life, Hannah. Will you?”
He hadn’t said a word about love. Her mind spun backward to the night and the bed they’d shared. Every touch, every caress, had spoken love. She didn’t need words to know that Jim Roman was in love with her—and she with him. The sudden knowledge stunned her. All the while she’d sparred with him, run from him, run to him, she had been fooling herself. She was deeply in love with the man sitting across the table from her.
“I’m not what you would call a good catch,” he said into the silence. “I’m just a simple reporter who suddenly has found himself in a predicament. I didn’t mean to fall in love with you, Hannah, but I did it anyway. It just seemed to happen, and when it did, I took the next logical step. When you’re certain, why wait?”
“I love you, too.”
He was so busy planning his next step he almost missed what she’d said. “What did you say?”
“I said I love you, Jim Roman, and I think you’re a very romantic man.”
His excitement propelled him from the chair. “I’ll call a preacher. I’ll call Mom.”
“Jim . . .”
“I’ll call Colter.”
“Jim . . .”
“I’ll even call the National Guard.”
Hannah left her chair and hugged her arms around his chest. She buried her face against him so that her voice was muffled by his shirt. “I can’t marry you, Jim.”
“What did you say?” he pulled her back and tipped her face up with one finger. “Hannah. What did you say?”
“No,” she said softly. “The answer is no.”
“We won’t always live on a houseboat. I’m planning to build a little cottage.”
Her heart almost broke at the eagerness on his face. “And have children?”
“Yes. Lots of them. I never had brothers and sisters. I think a big family would be great.”
“And live happily ever after?” Each word he said was a big stone in her heart.
“I think that’s the general idea.”
“You’re forgetting my career, Jim.”
“Hannah, I don’t care if you want to watch whales. You can give lectures. You can do whatever your heart desires.”
“You make my career sound like a hobby. It’s not!”
It was a while before he spoke, and when he did, his voice was quiet. “I won’t stand in the way of your career.”
“My work is in Alaska.”
The expression on his face became fierce. The previous night when he’d planned this proposal, it had never occurred to him that she might say no. Her body already had said it all. She loved him. She’d even said so herself. To him it was simple. Love meant marriage. Dammit, he wanted it to be that simple. “We can work that out.”
“How? Are you going to move to Glacier Bay?”
He swung his head around and gazed across the Pacific. The waters looked calm and peaceful and so blue, a man could almost believe he was looking straight into heaven. Behind him was the city he loved and beside him was the woman he loved.
“We’ll make it work.”
“No, Jim. I won’t ask you to leave your work behind, and I won’t leave mine. I risked my career once. I won’t do it again.”
“Did you love him?”
She turned her face away and gazed into the distance. Jim cupped her chin and turned her back around.
“Hannah, did you love him?”
“I—” His compelling gaze demanded the truth. “I don’t know, Jim. It was lust, affection: it might even have been love.”
“It wasn’t.”
“How do you know? You can’t know that.”
“If it had been true love, you would have worked things out.” His hands gripped her face as she tried to turn away again. “Hannah, look at me. You didn’t love him. You love me. It makes all the difference in the world.”
“None. It makes none.”
“You’re stubborn.”
“So are you—a stubborn romantic.”
They stared at each other. Then they were in each other’s arms, kissing as if the world would end before they got enough.
“Don’t do this to us, Hannah.”
“I’m not . . . I can’t . . . oh, Jim. Just love me. Please, just love me.”
With nothing surrounding them except the blue waters and the tranquility of the morning, Jim lowered Hannah to the deck and loved her.
And when it was over, she left him.
Bidding him not to come, she went below and quietly dressed. She was doing the right thing, she told herself, the only thing. There could be no compromise between the two of them—the wildcat, as he had dubbed her, and the West Coast Warrior. Each of them belonged in a separate world, and never the twain would meet.
Her footsteps sou
nded like approaching doom as she climbed up to where he was waiting.
“Take me back.”
“There’s still time—”
“Please. I want to go back now.”
“Tempting as it might be, I don’t plan to shanghai you.” His face was grim as he turned the boat toward San Francisco.
CHAPTER TEN
Hannah had insisted on coming to the airport alone, and now she was glad she had. She didn’t want Jim to see her cry. Being right shouldn’t hurt so much.
o0o
Once she was back in Glacier Bay, she immersed herself in her work. To her surprise, she found that the primal longing of her body didn’t interfere with her work; rather, it gave her a sharp edge of awareness she hadn’t had before. She seemed to see old problems with a clearer perspective; she seemed to find answers that had eluded her.
The days passed with no word from Jim, and she came to believe he had accepted her decision. From time to time she looked up at the imagined sound of footsteps on her front porch. He’d come back, she’d think, and half start from her chair. But it would only be Pete, moving around to get a better sleeping position.
She’d been wise; she’d been sensible. And she’d been very, very foolish.
As the empty days passed, she realized that she should have countered his offer of marriage with the offer of an affair. They could have flown to see each other on occasion. But she’d closed the door to everything. She’d said no while her body had been screaming yes.
She almost rose from bed and went to the telephone. Then another thought struck her. If she made her offer, Jim would be insulted—and hurt. A man with marriage on his mind would never settle for an affair. Why did she think he had been silent since she’d left San Francisco? He’d offered himself to her, and she’d turned him down.
It was over. All of it.
As she lay in bed, staring at the strange half light of summer that filtered in through her skylight, she mourned her loss.
o0o
She was distracted the next day. Bopeep didn’t show, and the few whales that did cavorted only briefly around her research vessel before sounding. By noon she was feeling so cantankerous that she was glad nobody was around to see her. Her irritation was heightened by the approaching speedboat. Didn’t that fool know she was trying to work? Whoever he was, he was scaring away all the whales.
As the boat pulled alongside, she leaned over to yell her frustration. The red-haired man at the helm gave her a bright salute.
“Jacob!” Thinking she’d been tricked by the glare on the water, she shaded her eyes. “Jacob? Is that you?”
“Yes. Heave to, Hannah, so I can come aboard.”
“Where in the world did you come from?” she asked after he had secured his small boat and boarded her vessel. Holding his face between her hands, she rained kisses on his face. “Why didn’t you let me know you were coming? Oh, Lord, Jacob, I’m so glad to see you, I could cry.”
“Hey, sis . . . hey.” Jacob pulled her into a teddy bear hug. “You are crying. Tell big brother all about it.”
Hannah made a valiant effort to hide her tears. “Big, my eye. You’ll always be the baby in the Donovan family—besides being the runt.”
“Runt!” Jacob roared. “I’ll show you runt!” He picked her up and waltzed around the deck, holding her feet six inches off the floor. “Waaaltz-zzing Maatiil-daaa, waaalt-ziiing Matil-daaaa,” he sang.
“Put me down, you crazy man.”
“Not until you laugh.” He continued his crazy waltz and off-key singing, his blue eyes twinkling like twin comets in his sunbronzed face. “Come on, Hannah. Laugh. Thaaat’s a girl.”
He set her back on her feet. “Now, tell me who has made you cry so I can beat the hell out of him.”
“It’s nothing. It’s me. . . .” She pushed her heavy hair back from her face. “I don’t want to talk about it right now. I want to talk about you. Where have you been this time?”
Jacob gave her one last assessing look, then assumed his eternal devil-may-care posture. “In South America. They had an oil-field fire that outdid the one in Saudi last Christmas.”
“Jacob.” Hannah reached for his face again. “I worry about you. Your work is so dangerous.”
He grinned. “Nothing can happen to me. I’m the best trouble-shooting firefighter in the world.”
She laughed. “If self-confidence counts, you are. Have you eaten? You look kind of gaunt.”
“I lost my appetite In Seattle.”
Hannah’s head snapped up. ‘You’ve been to Seattle?”
“Yes. I headed straight there after I left South America. My Learjet’s still there. I bummed around the city a few days, then decided to rent a Cessna and head on up to see you.”
“Did you see Rachel?”
Jacob turned away from her and gazed out over the water. She saw the pain that flitted briefly across his face.
“No. I didn’t go to see Rachel. I went to visit the city.”
She thought he might be covering up, but she couldn’t tell. With Jacob she was never sure of anything except his love for his family and his love for flight. Since he was three years old, he’d been fascinated with anything that could get off the ground. He’d suffered more broken bones than any of his brothers or sisters because he’d always been trying to rig a set of wings or a flying machine for himself— and he’d been intrepid about trying out all his inventions.
Hannah decided not to press about Rachel. After all, she didn’t want to talk about Jim. She and Jacob were alike in that respect: They liked to keep their counsel.
“Come inside.” She took his hand and led him toward the galley. “I’ll fix us a sandwich, and you can tell me about Seattle.”
They talked until midnight. Then they headed toward shore. After they had docked and walked to Hannah’s cabin, they prepared a salmon for dinner and continued their marathon of talking.
At three a.m. Jacob popped some corn.
“Just to keep us awake,” he said.
“It’s because you’re a bottomless pit. I don’t know how you can eat so much and still keep from having a pot belly.”
“I’m saving my pot belly for later. It’s one of the decadent pleasures I plan to enjoy in my old age.” He added lots of salt and plenty of butter to the popcorn, just the way he knew his sister liked it. “Actually,” he said as he placed the bowl of popcorn on the table between them, “I’m hoping to soften you up and wear you down so you’ll come clean with me.”
She delved into the popcorn and stuffed a generous handful into her mouth. “What do you mean, come clean?” she asked after she’d swallowed.
“For a woman with a Ph.D., you can be mighty dense. Don’t you get lonesome up here in this wilderness, Hannah? Don’t you ever need a shoulder to cry on?”
“Not often enough to change my ways.” She reached for more popcorn. “Of course, I usually talk to Hallie on the phone, but I’m not going to be the one to throw a wet blanket over her honeymoon.”
“She’s still on a honeymoon? Where in the devil are they?”
Hannah chuckled. “Back in Florence, Alabama. They’ve been back for weeks now. I’ll show you the card.” She got up and rummaged in her desk drawer until she came up with the bright postcard. We’re back home, it said. What a wonderful, marvelous, fabulous marriage we’re having.
Jacob laughed. “That sounds just like Hallie.”
“See what I mean. She’ll always be on her honeymoon.”
Jacob laid the card on the table and looked at his sister. “Throw that wet blanket on me. I’m sure as heck not having a fabulous marriage—and I don’t plan to.”
“Neither do I.”
“You say that as if you’ve been giving it some thought.”
“I have—lately. Since I met Jim Roman.”
“Ahh, that big man who came down to cover Hallie’s wedding. I liked him.”
“I did, too. But I have no plans to mess up his life—or mine— with marriage
.”
“I applaud your wisdom, Sis. But I’m not so sure you’d mess up.”
“Hallie did her first time around. And look how long it took Tanner and Amanda to get it right. Eleven years.”
“But look at them now. Boy, if I thought—” Jacob abruptly cut off what he’d been about to say. He reached over and wiped a smear of butter off Hannah’s chin. “I’m not qualified to give advice on anybody’s love life, but I do know this: You’re the smartest, most determined woman I know, and if you decide to give marriage a try, I believe you can make it work.”
“Thanks, Jacob.”
“You’re welcome,” he said around a huge yawn. “I think I’ll hit the sack, Hannah. You’ve talked me out.”
“I’ve talked you out. I ought to make you take your sleeping bag out to the kennels.”
Jacob got up from the table and went to his bedroll, singing Hard-hearted Hannah in his flat baritone. The last thing he heard before his head hit the pillow was the sound of Hannah’s laughter.
o0o
Jacob stayed three days. They were glorious, laughter-filled days, days when Hannah thought of nothing more pressing than how to beat him at poker.
But when he was gone, he took the brightness with him. Even a long training run with her sled dogs didn’t lift Hannah’s spirits. When she went to bed that night, she vowed that tomorrow would be a new day.
She’d put Jim Roman out of her life once and for all. She didn’t know how she would do it, but she was Dr. Hannah Donovan, educated and independent. She’d find a way.
o0o
Hannah was alert the instant she heard Pete growl. She reached for her .300 Magnum and her robe at the same time. Her feet barely made a sound as she crept down the stairs.
“Hold him, Pete,” she called softly.
Pete’s response was two sharp barks—his joyful greetings. Still clutching the gun, she opened her front door.
Jim and Sleddog were toiling over the top of the ridge, carrying a large, unwieldy object. Hannah froze. Her emotions raged through her with gale force, and she clutched the front of her robe to still her shaking. His name formed on her lips, but she was speechless.