Twice in a Lifetime

by Merline Lovelace

  Jake had thrown out the comment more to make conversation than anything else, but Rachel’s glance strayed once more to the slowly darkening peaks.

  “He’s not real happy about it,” she admitted, “but Aunt Alice needed me and I needed some time to think things through.”

  Uh-oh. Trouble in paradise. He recognized the signs even as she swung her gaze back and gave him a rueful smile.

  “Strike that last comment, will you? I wouldn’t want it to get back to my aunt. She has enough on her plate right now without worrying about my love life…such as it is.”

  “Consider it struck.”

  A companionable silence drifted down between them. Once again, Jake was surprised at how easy it was to talk…and not talk…to Rachel Quinn. He sprawled with elbows planted on the table behind him, boots crossed at the ankle. Lazily, he watched the couples circling under the colored lights. Most of them danced western style, with the men’s arms either draped over their partners’ shoulders or clasped loosely around their waists.

  “That looks so uncomfortable,” Rachel commented idly. “All that weight on the woman’s shoulders.”

  “You’ve never tried it?”

  Her eyes twinkled. “Sam didn’t take me dancing on either of our two dates and we don’t have a lot of country-western bars in D.C.”

  “Well, you can’t go back East again without learning the two-step. Come on, I’ll show you.”

  Jake realized his mistake the moment he guided Rachel into the crowd of dancers. Sitting beside her on a picnic bench and talking was one thing. Sliding her hands up to lock around his neck while he looped his around her trim waist was something else again.

  She fit him as if they’d been measured and cut from the same cloth. With his six-feet-plus of lean muscle, he’d always towered over his elfin wife. Dancing with Ellen had required minor acts of contortion on his part and careful concentration so he didn’t run her legs off. Not that Jake had minded. He’d always believed that shielding and protecting Ellen was the primary reason the Good Lord had put him on this earth. Still, he had to admit it felt good to hold a woman who could lift her eyes to meet his without craning her neck and whose mouth was within easy kissing distance.

  And Rachel Quinn’s mouth was eminently kissable.

  Guilt slashed into Jake, lightning fast and razor sharp. What the hell was he doing, comparing Rachel to Ellen? Why was he staring down at the woman’s soft, ripe mouth? He had no business registering the swell of her hips beneath his palms. No business breathing in the soft, cottony scent of her cream-colored sweater. He would have grunted an apology and walked off the floor right then if she hadn’t looked up at him with a laughing challenge in her brown-flecked green eyes.

  “Okay, I’m ready as I’ll ever be. Just go easy on me. Washington-based safety analysts aren’t particularly noted for their two-stepping skills.”

  It was only a dance, Jake told himself savagely as he moved her into the music. A few turns around the open-air pavilion. Rachel was an old friend. Not even a friend, just an acquaintance. Teaching her a rudimentary two-step didn’t constitute an act of disloyalty to Ellen.

  None of which explained the shock that jolted through him when another couple bumped into his partner and threw her against him. He felt the impact at every point her body indented his. Despite his rigid determination not to react to the breasts pressed into his ribs or the hips canted against his, his muscles tightened. Locking his jaw, Jake dropped his arms and stepped back.

  “This was a mistake.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  She glanced up, obviously startled by his precipitate withdrawal. His shrug was intended to defuse the awkward situation.

  “The floor’s too crowded to show you the proper moves. Why don’t we get that beer I promised you?”

  Rachel said nothing as her partner led her off the floor. She had a good idea why he’d pulled back so unexpectedly. She’d felt it, too. The sudden sizzle. The burst of heat that snapped along her nerves.

  Her reaction to Jake Henderson took her by complete surprise. She hardly knew him. Until this moment she’d thought of him only as Sam’s brother. He was older than her, probably thirty-six or -seven. Not a vast difference when compared to her twenty-nine, but the age gap had seemed huge years ago when she’d first met him.

  He carried his maturity with a rugged attractiveness, she had to admit. She slanted him a glance, admiring the silvery glints in the black hair showing beneath his straw hat. She admired, too, the character lines carved into his tanned skin by sun and wind and years of hard-learned experience. Or maybe those lines had sprung from grief. He’d taken the loss of his wife hard. Rachel hadn’t missed the stark emptiness in Jake Henderson’s face before he closed it down.

  The man intrigued her…and stirred her intensely, both of which surprised the heck out of Rachel. She’d intended to use these weeks in Arizona to sort through her feelings for the smart, ambitious congressional staffer she’d dated on and off for almost a year now. The realization that Dale had never struck sparks in her blood so fast or so furiously didn’t exactly settle her nerves.

  They jumped even more at her first glimpse of the fifty-dollar bill Jake dug out of his wallet and tossed down on the counter of the refreshment booth to pay for her beer and his soft drink. When the concessionaire held the crisp new note up to the light to check it, her heart almost careened out of her chest.

  “Just can’t get used to these new bills,” he grumbled. “The durned pictures are off center. Drives me crazy, the way they printed these things.”

  Rachel couldn’t breathe, didn’t dare move. Her eyes locked on the serial number, clearly visible in the light spilling from the booth. She identified the first few digits in the sequence instantly.

  They were from a run of newly printed banknotes that were lost when a DC-10 went down in a blinding snowstorm almost a year ago. The cargo plane had been ferrying, among other things, a shipment of newly printed bills from the Bureau of Engraving plant in Fort Worth to the Federal Reserve Bank in Denver.

  Rachel had been one of the NTSB representatives on the task force the government and various private concerns convened to determine the cause of the accident. Her analyses of the damage to the composite materials comprising the underbelly of the DC-10 had helped corroborate the fact that a cargo hatch had blown and created unexpected drag. Moments later, the pilots had lost control of their aircraft and flown it into a mountain.

  None of the forty million dollars in new bills aboard the plane when it took off from Fort Worth had ever been found or put into circulation…until sixty seconds ago, when Jake Henderson plunked down that fifty.

  Chapter 2

  Rachel’s first instinct was to snatch the banknote away from the concessionaire and wave it under Jake’s nose with a fierce demand to know where in blue blazes he’d gotten hold of it.

  Her second was to clamp her mouth shut.

  She’d spent months on the task force investigating last year’s crash. A whole vegetable soup of government organizations had contributed both personnel and expertise to the effort. The NTSB, the FAA, the Departments of Treasury and Transportation, the FBI, the Secret Service and dozens of other agencies had participated in the exhaustive investigation. If Rachel hadn’t learned anything else from the short, stocky FBI agent who’d assumed control of the investigation when they began to suspect foul play, it was to report any and all leads and keep everything absolutely confidential.

  Even the press hadn’t been alerted to the fact the commercial cargo plane was carrying a shipment of newly printed bills, or that the sealed Bureau of Engraving container had been dropped from the plane some time before it crashed. After exhaustive on-site investigations and reconstruction, the evidence indicated one of the four crew members killed in the crash had deliberately blown the cargo hatch and ejected the container. The assumption was that he’d intended to follow the container through the hatch and parachute to safety.

  If so, he had
n’t made it. All four crew members were still aboard when the DC-10 plowed into that snow-shrouded mountain. To this day, the investigators hadn’t been able to determine whether the dead crew member had worked alone or had accomplices positioned in the vicinity of the drop. Rachel and Russ Taggart, the lead FBI agent on the task force, had argued over that one, as they’d argued over several of the initial findings. Russ had finally conceded that her analyses had thoroughly substantiated the theory of an accomplice. The idea that Jake Henderson’s fifty-dollar bill might finally lead the authorities to that accomplice sent Rachel’s blood racing through her veins.

  With a last glance at the bank note the concessionaire tucked into his cash drawer, she accepted a plastic cup filled to the brim with foaming beer. Her thoughts tumbled fast and furious as she and Jake wove their way back through the crowd. Others had claimed their table, so they stood at the edge of the pavilion. Jake nursed his soft drink and watched the dancers. Rachel barely noticed the cold brew sliding down her throat or the couples whirling around the floor.

  “Sam and the rest of the gang are coming home to help with the fall roundup.”

  Lost in her thoughts, she only half heard Jake’s comment. “Excuse me?”

  “Sam’s coming back to the Bar-H next week to help bring the spring calf crop down from the high pastures. If you want to see him in action, you should drive out for a visit.”

  “I’ve seen him in action, remember?”

  He smothered a grin at the tart response. “I meant with his girls. You said you couldn’t picture him in harness. It’s a sight worth seeing.”

  “Oh. Right. I’ll, uh, have to make it out to the Bar-H.”

  Sam Henderson didn’t hold an iota of interest for Rachel right now. Her one thought was to get to a phone. Russ Taggart worked out of the FBI’s Denver office. He’d probably jump the first plane to Flagstaff in the morning.

  Tipping back her head, she downed the rest of her drink in a few healthy swallows, then tossed the cup in a trash container. “It was good seeing you again, Jake. Thanks for the beer. Maybe we can finish the dancing lesson some other time.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I’ve got to go,” she said with a breezy smile. “See you around.”

  Jake tipped two fingers to his hat brim and said nothing as she walked away. He didn’t blame her for tossing down her beer and lighting out like a mare who’d just smelled snake. He’d all but shoved her out of his arms a while ago, and had barely pushed two words through his mouth since. No doubt she was as anxious to get shed of him as he was to see her gone. He didn’t like the prickly heat she’d raised on his skin…or the way his eyes followed her as she cut a path through the crowd.

  She moved with the easy, long-legged grace of a woman content with herself and her lot in life. Her pulled-back hair swayed with each step. The seductive movement drew more than one admiring male glance, as did her curvy, jean-covered rear. She looked as good from the back as she did from the front.

  Too damned good.

  Cursing under his breath, Jake wrenched his gaze away. He wasn’t a fool. Nor was he dead from the waist down. The fact that he’d buried his heart with Ellen didn’t necessarily keep his testosterone from spiking occasionally. It was a normal reaction, a healthy male’s response to an attractive female. Nothing he couldn’t shrug off.

  To his annoyance, the shrugging took more effort than he anticipated. Rachel Quinn lingered in his mind long after he took a last stroll through the livestock barn, quit the fair, and climbed into his pickup for the ride out to the Bar-H. The more he thought about the way she’d fit into his arms, the more guilt pricked at him, needling his skin like the hairy spikes of the cholla cactus that grew in the canyons to the south. Locking his jaw, he turned Rachel out of his head and filled the empty void with the woman he’d loved all his life.

  He’d probably fallen for Ellen the same day he’d given six-year-old Danny Westerhaze a bloody nose for picking on the tiny, shy blonde who sat in the third row of their second-grade class. From that time on, Ellen Newhope had always considered Jake Henderson her protector. They’d started dating in junior high, got serious in high school, tried to put things on hold while Jake finished college and pulled a stint in the marines.

  His father had wanted him to see something of the world, his mother to gain a little sophistication and hone off a few of his rough edges, but Jake couldn’t wait to shed his uniform and return home to Ellen. They’d married a week after his discharge and moved into the ranch house with Big John and Jessie and those of his brothers who were still at home.

  Big John had signed over five thousand acres and a hundred head of cattle to give them their start, which Jake had managed while working with his father and younger brothers on the family spread. He’d taken on more and more responsibility as his brothers left to pursue various careers, then became majority stockholder and general manager of the Bar-H after his father’s death.

  Two years later his mother moved to Sedona. Jake hadn’t understood her abrupt decision at the time. The Bar-H was Jesse Henderson’s home. She’d lived there all her married life, raised five sons in the sprawling adobe ranch house, ridden the high mountain and deep valley range lands with her husband and their hands. Jake and Ellen had pleaded with her to stay, but she’d insisted that she’d take all her memories with her, and it was time for her to make new ones.

  With his arm wrapped around Ellen’s shoulders, Jake had watched his mother drive off. For the first time, he and Ellen had the house all to themselves. Jake had marked the occasion by spreading a Navajo blanket on the floor in front of the living room fireplace, peeling off his wife’s clothes, and making slow, delicious love to her in the middle of the sunny afternoon.

  The years that followed had been good, Jake recalled, his hands gripping the steering wheel. Even the hard times, when drought dried up the grazing lands and late summer hailstorms had destroyed the hay crop. With his other brothers returning home as often as they could to help, Jake and Ellen had ridden out the lows and coasted through the highs.

  Then she’d driven down to Phoenix to visit her old college roommate and come home in a coffin.

  Jake’s knuckles went white. The empty stretch of asphalt ahead disappeared into darkness. After three long years, the memory of his wife’s funeral still ripped him apart. And the thought of the ranch house she’d filled with her presence, now waiting dark and quiet, started a tremor snaking its way down his back. With everything in him, Jake ached to slam on the brakes, turn the pickup around, head back into town, and hit the nearest bar.

  He’d gone down that road once, though. Came close to never finding his way back. He wouldn’t do that to himself…or to Ellen’s memory…again. Gritting his teeth, Jake hit the window button and let the night air slap at his face and chest.

  The September chill had raised goose bumps on his skin by the time the pickup’s headlights found the gravel track leading to the Bar-H. A tin sign with cutouts of rambling cattle surrounding an oversized “H” hung from the wooden crossbar over the road.

  After rattling over the cattle guard, the truck wove through the scruffy live oak and piñon to the cluster of buildings nestled in the swell of the foothills. The Bar-H had started small and grown considerably over the years. Stables, tractor barns, tool sheds, two bunkhouses and a guest casita all framed the two-story main house.

  The house was constructed in the tiered pueblo style of the Anasazi who’d settled in the region, then disappeared without a trace some five hundred years ago. Massive lodgepole pine beams supported the upper floors. A low-walled adobe fence curved around to a tiled patio that caught the sun in the morning and cool shadows in the afternoon. The sight of a dusty Jeep Cherokee SUV parked in the front drive considerably loosened the knot in Jake’s gut. He was grinning as he walked through the front door into the red-tiled hall.

  “Unkl Jake!”

  His two-year-old nephew barreled out of the great room and raced down the hall as fast as hi
s chubby legs would propel him. Growling like a hungry bear, Jake swung the boy up and tossed him high into the air. The child’s shrieks brought his parents ambling out to observe the ritual uncle and nephew had firmly established when Matt was just a few months old.

  “Better watch out,” Reece drawled. “The little devil stuffed down the better part of the chocolate cake Martina left on the kitchen counter. A few more tosses like that and he’s liable to puke all over you.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been puked on,” Jake tossed back. “By him or his father.”

  “Oh, really?” Sydney Scott Henderson dodged her airborne son to plant a kiss on Jake’s cheek. “Is this one of the family stories, or something best left between brothers?”

  Tucking the giggling Matthew under his arm like a sack of potatoes, Jake hooked his hat on the antlered rack above the hall console and filled his sister-in-law in on the details.

  “Reece was about eight, Sam only five when they discovered a box of Cuban cigars Big John had hoarded for years. Of course the idiots decided to help themselves. I found them that night in the toolshed, green as new grass. I managed to get them outside just in time, but it took me an hour to clean my boots the next morning.”

  “Oh, Lord,” Sydney groaned, eyeing her squealing offspring. “Is that the kind of thing I have to look forward to when this one grows up?”

  “If you’re lucky,” Jake replied, tossing Matt ceiling-ward once more. “I could tell you a dozen other stories about his father that would curl your hair.”

  “I like her hair just the way it is, thanks,” his brother drawled.

  When the small troop made their way back to the living room, Reece tugged his wife down beside him on the sorrel leather sofa that wore a patchwork of spur scars and heel marks. Stretching out his size twelves on the scarred oak-plank coffee table, he curled Sydney into his curve of his shoulder.

  Satisfaction hummed through Reece as the familiar sights and scents embraced him. The huge square table had squatted right where it was for as long as he could remember, a handy platform for boots, books, cattlemen’s magazines, half-whittled tree roots, unfinished science projects and whatever else the family happened to drop there. The crossed branding irons had hung over the fireplace since the day the then ten-year-old Evan had mounted them.