“Let’s just say I’m ever-hopeful. R.J.” He had the grace to be embarrassed. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re direct?”
She gave him a mock look of innocence. “A Blackburn direct? Imagine.”
As outspoken as she was, she didn’t find undressing in front of Jared easy. She felt shy and inexperienced, but the prospect of leaving the job to him unnerved her, at least for the first time. It would just be too awkward.
And in spite of her five brothers and their notorious absence of modesty, she wasn’t sure about having Jared undress in front of her, either. He was tanned and muscled, but she didn’t know if she should stare, look away, make a comment, or, just for a change, keep her mouth shut.
Finally he came to her on the ridiculous bed and smoothed his palms over her bare shoulders, just looking at her. “If you want me to stop…if I hurt you…”
She shook her head. “You won’t.”
But she wished she felt as confident as she sounded and resisted the impulse to crack a joke to relieve the strange tension that was making her mouth tingle and her skin feel almost alive. A breeze from the opened window made her shiver. Then Jared stroked her upper arms and she was hot again. She lay back on the bed, bringing him with her, reveling in the erotic sensation of her bare skin against his. They would have to take their time, she thought. She wanted to take note of everything.
But Jared had other ideas, and he communicated his urgency—made her feel it, as well—when they kissed. He explored her mouth with his tongue, matched its probing rhythm with his hips, and all her self-consciousness and nervousness vanished. Yes, she thought, I want this….
He touched her everywhere, whispered how beautiful she was, how soft and perfect her breasts were, how strong her thighs were, and she quickly stopped taking her mental notes, surprised and consumed by the shuddering abandon of her own arousal. She was bursting with a longing that made her want to laugh and cry and just hold him forever. She kept her eyes open every minute, and when he eased into her gently, carefully, she realized there was little more than a pinching tightness. Then she pulled him deeper into her, urging him on. It was the only cue he needed. His thrusts grew harder, deeper, faster, and she responded to each one with a lust that only hours ago would have amazed her, until at last she was no longer thinking, only feeling.
He came first, she seconds later, exploding as he kept pace with her, whispering for her to enjoy, enjoy, enjoy. And she did, crying out with the joy of it, with the rawness and beauty of their pleasure.
Much later, when they were back in their jeans and sitting cross-legged on the narrow bed, Jared fastened his mesmerizing gaze on her. “Come with me to Saigon, R.J.”
“Saigon?” Assuming he was just kidding, she laughed. “Oh, sure, I’ ll just call up TWA and have them mail me a ticket.”
But he was serious. “It’s just a year. I’d pay your way—consider it a loan. When you got back you could pick up where you left off. R.J., you’re so smart, you’ll be drowning in money by the time you’re thirty. We’d have a whole year together, the two of us.”
“If the N.V.A. didn’t overrun us first. You should hear my grandfather on the subject. Anyway, what would I do while you were off being an architect? Keep house? Make you dinner? I’m not going to take a year off from college just to hang around in Southeast Asia.”
Jared eyed her a moment. “You could get a job. I don’t need you to wait on me. Look, I have connections—”
“That’s just my point. Jared, please try to understand. I can’t let you pay my way or find me a job.”
“You don’t have to agree to anything that makes you uncomfortable,” he said quietly. “But R.J., after all that’s happened to your family, don’t you want to see Vietnam?”
She swallowed, stifling a rush of tears, amazed that after eleven years she still missed her father as much as she did. Nineteen years old and the emptiness just didn’t go away. She could feel him hugging her fiercely before he left for Southeast Asia for the last time. But she couldn’t see his face. She didn’t know why. Since she was eight she’d tried to remember what he’d looked like that hot afternoon at the airport, and she just couldn’t.
“Yes, I want to see Vietnam,” she said. Then she looked at Jared and added, “But on my own nickel.”
To his credit, he didn’t walk out on her, but leaned forward until she could see the flecks of white in his blue eyes. “Rebecca Blackburn, you are a giant pain in the ass sometimes. I’ll have you know I’ve been saving all year for this trip.” The break in tension was short-lived, and his expression grew serious again as he reached over and brushed his fingertips across the top of her hand, resting on her knee. “You might not get another chance, you know. You’re letting your pride get in the way of what could be the experience of a lifetime.”
“Maybe I am. But I haven’t badgered you to stay in Boston and watch me suffer through my second year of college.”
“I know. R.J.—” He broke off and looked away, tears glistening in his eyes. “I didn’t want this to happen. I’m going to miss you.”
She wanted to cry, but refused to. “Then what you’re saying is we’re finished.”
He pulled her to him, stroking her thick hair. “No, R.J., we’re just beginning.”
He drove back to Florida with her. They took the long way, stopping everywhere—and sharing everything. Driving, expenses, food, themselves. Rebecca discovered that Jared wanted to make his own way in the world, too. He didn’t feel sorry for himself or whine about having money, something Rebecca appreciated. He’d learned, he’d said, just to make his own decisions and not sweat the family’s reactions.
Rebecca saw him off at the Orlando airport. He’d say goodbye to his father in San Francisco, then start the long journey to Southeast Asia. For days after he left, she moped, walking in the citrus groves and trying to imagine that the sweat pouring down her back in the early summer heat was from long hours of lovemaking.
Jared called when he arrived in Saigon. She took no pleasure at the loneliness she heard in his voice. His apartment was small and hot, he told her, but he was selfish enough—loved her so much—that he wished she were with him. But they understood each other. He’d done what he had to do, and so had she.
They exchanged letters through the summer while she worked at Disney World and helped in the groves and went picnicking, fishing and frog-catching with her brothers, and through the fall when she resumed classes, her job at the library, and Sunday-night supper with Sofi and her grandfather on Beacon Hill. Thomas Blackburn continued to win at her and Sofi’s trivia game, and he refused to comment on the relationship between his granddaughter and Jared Sloan. Not, Rebecca was confident, that he didn’t have an opinion.
“You think we’re doomed, don’t you?” she asked him one night in February, almost a year since she’d met Jared.
He sniffed. “That’s hardly any of my business.”
“Since when’s that ever stopped you from stating your opinion? You told Sofi you thought her last boyfriend looked like a mushroom.”
“Well, he did—and she thought so, too.”
“So what about Jared?”
“I consider Jared Sloan a friend.”
“And?”
“And there’s a great deal of history between you and him.”
“That doesn’t tell me a thing.”
Sighing, he patted her hand. “Your life is for you to live.”
“Do you think I should have gone to Saigon with him?”
That one was easy; he didn’t even hesitate. “No.”
“Grandfather…”
“Vietnam,” he went on, cutting off her attempt to get at the deeper issues of his own years there, “isn’t a place for Blackburns.”
Maybe it was that comment, that night, more even than missing Jared that made her decision for her. It didn’t matter. Two weeks later she’d changed her mind.
She would go to Saigon.
Sixteen
; Jared was closing in on forty and as good-looking as he’d been at twenty-five when Rebecca had been in love with him. In the dim parlor light, she could make out the fine lines at the corners of his eyes and the first touches of gray in his dark hair. He’d kept in shape: his abdomen was tight, and the muscles in his shoulders and arms suggested he still liked to sail and jog. He wore good-quality jeans and a plain navy pullover.
He recovered quickly from the initial shock of seeing her again after so many years. “R.J., what’re you doing here?”
“I live here.”
“She’s renting her old room upstairs,” her grandfather amended.
Jared gave a small laugh. “I should have known a tightwad Blackburn like you would camp out with family. Sorry for the intrusion. I’ll leave—”
Thomas snorted. “Oh, please, let’s not start all that nonsense. Where would you stay?”
“The Ritz.”
“I have enough on my conscience,” Thomas said in his dry, understated way, “without adding the cost of an unnecessary night at the Ritz to it.” He turned to his granddaughter, still rooted to her spot in the doorway. “Rebecca, Jared is a guest in my house. I’d be most appreciative if you’d retire to your room and permit us to carry on our conversation in private.”
A polite, stuffy way of telling her to get lost. Rebecca stood her ground. “I’m not going anywhere until I find out what Jared’s doing in Boston.”
“If he wants you to know his affairs,” Thomas replied, “he will tell you them.”
“Then you’d better give up, R.J.,” Jared told her, not nastily, but she got the point.
Rebecca made a face at him that would have done a twelve-year-old proud. She was still steamed from her earlier go-round with her grandfather over the Frenchman’s appearance that afternoon. Thomas had refused to discuss how one of the two-man team that had murdered Tam fourteen years ago could have known her father or even if Thomas himself recognized the detailed description she gave him. Nor would he speculate on what the Frenchman might be doing in Boston, what he might want—anything. His remedy for Rebecca’s heightened state of anxiety was to make her a pot of hot tea and encourage her to take a vacation. A long one. Preferably somewhere far from Boston, like Budapest.
She, in turn, hadn’t mentioned the Jupiter Stones and her afternoon with Sofi and David Rubin. There were too many uncertainties, and not a single guarantee that confiding in her grandfather would mean he’d return the favor. Likely enough, he’d clam up even more. And what David had told her was too fresh, too raw. It was one thing to believe Tam had gotten hold of a few sapphires and was smuggling them into the states as a nest egg—not that she’d have needed one with Jared. But maybe she’d wanted to make a life for herself and Mai without him. After all, what did Rebecca really know about their relationship and the terms they’d come to before Tam’s death? Jared certainly hadn’t told her.
Still, it was quite another thing for Tam to have gotten hold of Empress Elisabeth’s Jupiter Stones. Until she knew more, Rebecca would keep her mouth shut.
Not a gracious loser, she left the parlor and tried eavesdropping from the stairs. She couldn’t hear much. She was about to give up when her grandfather appeared in the parlor door and glared up at her. “I’m dismayed,” he said, “to see that the Blackburns’ sense of honor and decency has deteriorated to the point a granddaughter of mine would stoop to listening in on a private conversation.”
Rebecca jumped up and peered over the mahogany side-rail down at him. “Jared saw our man, didn’t he? He must have gone to San Francisco before coming here to Boston—”
“Rebecca, if you persist, Jared will leave and neither you or I will learn anything. So I suggest for once in your life you don’t cut off your nose to spite your face and please retire to your room. I’m perfectly capable of dealing with Jared on my own.”
Her grandfather always went into his haughty Bostonian act when he was on the verge of losing his temper. Rebecca didn’t respond and headed upstairs and stayed there.
She passed a near-sleepless night. There were haunting memories of Jared’s smile, echoes of the things he used to whisper to her when they’d made love, memories of the way he’d made her feel. She doubted he was ever tormented by similar memories of her. She hadn’t been his first lover.
And there were questions that kept her awake. What-ifs and fears. About the Frenchman and how his reappearance would affect their lives. About what had so unnerved Jared Sloan that he’d ventured back to Boston after so many years, back to the Eliza Blackburn house where he’d be accosted by enough uncomfortable memories of his own. About her grandfather and what he’d known for twenty-six years and had never told anyone, at least not her.
About the Jupiter Stones.
And about Mai, the hours-old infant she’d rescued from the chaos that was Saigon in April 1975. Sometime toward dawn, Rebecca flicked on her bed-stand lamp and examined the pretty, intelligent face of Jared Sloan’s daughter on the front page of The Score. If only Mai could have known Tam.
“My baby means everything to me,” Tam had told Rebecca not long before she had died.
Would the Frenchman hurt Mai?
When she still couldn’t sleep, Rebecca tried to accept her grandfather for being the taciturn, unsparing man he was. He was hardest on those he cared about most—and particularly on himself.
By five-thirty, she gave up, took a shower and got dressed, not bothering with anything remotely corporate, just a shirt, jeans and sneakers. She let her damp hair dry haphazardly. Downstairs she peeked in the front parlor: Jared was sacked out on the couch with an ancient afghan pulled up over him and his clothes lying in a heap on the floor. He wasn’t tossing and turning. It was all Rebecca could do not to march in there and wake him up.
Athena was already studying anatomy at the kitchen table. Rebecca helped herself to a cup of coffee and joined her, averting her eyes from the grim photographs. A sturdy, brilliant woman, Athena was of the unshakable conviction that into each woman’s life must come at least one bona fide rake of a man. Rebecca couldn’t resist telling her that her rake was conked out in the front parlor.
“Him?” Athena was thrilled. “Yes, he’s perfect! So handsome, no? He’s broken many hearts, I’m sure. What did he do to you?”
Rebecca poured milk from a carton into her coffee. She usually had her coffee black, but one needed some protection from Athena’s notoriously strong brew. “He had a baby by another woman while professing to be in love with me.”
That ignited Athena, and Rebecca was pleased to see she wasn’t the only hard case when it came to two-timing men. Athena ranted and commiserated and loudly suggested that Jared Sloan would make a fine specimen for her anatomy class, but she restricted herself to snorting at his sleeping figure when she headed off to med school.
A few minutes later Jared staggered into the kitchen in his undershirt and jeans, and Rebecca had to catch her breath at the memories of sleepy mornings on their trip to Florida after her freshman year at B.U. She’d dumped men and had been dumped since, but she’d never loved anyone with such abandon and trust—such naiveté—as Jared Sloan. Maybe it was because he was her first lover, maybe it was because he’d been her friend. What difference did it make? Whatever they’d had together was over.
He poured himself a cup of coffee. “Did I hear you and that firebrand med student planning to carve me up?”
Rebecca grinned. “Just a little.”
“Pleasant conversation to wake up to. Bad enough I had to fight off that damn cat all night. I thought your grandfather hated cats.”
“He’s not fond of them, but he tolerates Sweatshirt.”
“Sweatshirt?”
“He’s mine.”
“I should have known.” He sat across from her at the table, and he did look tired and restless. “Still hate me, R.J.?”
His expression was serious all at once, but Rebecca smiled over the rim of her steaming mug. “Only when I think about you.”
>
“Ouch—the infamous Blackburn honesty. It serves me right for asking.” Suddenly he set down his mug and ran one finger along the inside of the handle, watching what he was doing as if it were the most important thing he had on his mind. Finally he said, “R.J., I’m sorry about that business with The Score. If I’d known—”
“You’d still have punched that guy.”
He laughed unexpectedly. “Maybe.”
“No maybe about it, Sloan. You haven’t changed since you were ten years old and nailed that snotty little rich kid who picked on my brothers for wearing hand-me-downs. I don’t remember his name—he used to have birthday parties in the park in Louisburg Square with the maids in uniforms, silver platters, clowns.”
“Which you crashed,” he pointed out, his eyes dancing.
She shrugged, unrepentant. “Have squirt gun will travel.”
“He’s an attorney now, I hear—very upstanding. Throws parties for his kids in the park, I’m sure.”
“What do you suppose he thought of our pictures in The Score?”
Jared looked at her. “Do you care?”
“No.”
He smiled at her total absence of hesitation. “Have you had any fallout from all this?”
Twisting her mouth to one side in thought, Rebecca leaned back and gave him a long look. “Just what’s sitting in front of me.”
Jared picked up his coffee and gave her a teasing look. “No men calling up for dates with the rich, beautiful, famous R. J. Blackburn?”
“A few,” Rebecca said, and she had to smile. He was so much the old Jared who’d never been intimidated by anything about her—her looks, her intelligence, her heritage, her high standards.
His eyes darkened for a moment. “The Score said you’re not married.”
“I’m not. Never have been—and not because of you, either. The prospect of not being married at thirty-five doesn’t keep me awake nights, you know. What about you?”
He gave her a deliberate smile. “The prospect of not being married at forty doesn’t keep me awake nights.” Then he changed the subject. “Your grandfather’s not up, I take it?”
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