The Honeymoon Assignment

by Cathryn Clare

  The problem was that he was badly knocked off course by what had just happened, badly shaken out of the pattern he’d worked so hard to make for himself.

  And now Kelley was trying to step straight back into that pattern.

  Sam felt an unexpected fear clutching at him, making his voice rough as he said, “You have to leave right now?”

  The look in her eyes shook him even further. She looked startled, uneasy, as though the whirlwind of passion they’d just come through together had landed her in a very different place from the one where Sam had ended up.

  He was grasping at hope, trying to reclaim lost dreams.

  And Kelley seemed to be looking for a way out.

  “I have to.” She turned her face away from him as she spoke. He could hear the urgency in her voice. “Damn it, Sam, this is still a case, isn’t it?”

  “Is it?” He grated the two words out.

  And sensed her impatience growing as he said them.

  “You know it is.”

  She pushed past his restraining arm, and this time Sam didn’t try to stop her. If she really wanted to leave—

  He tried not to let himself pursue it, but he couldn’t stop the thoughts that were crowding into his mind now. She doesn’t want you anymore, a faint, mocking voice was telling him. This was just a quick roll in the hay, nothing more. And now she’s on her way back to work.

  He stared up at Kelley as she got to her feet and started retrieving her scattered clothes. Was it possible? Had this been nothing but a momentary diversion for her? Had he completely misread the signals between them?

  He couldn’t believe it.

  But he couldn’t get around the fact that she was walking out on him, either.

  If it hadn’t hurt so damn much, Sam might have laughed.

  “I can’t afford to pass up a chance to talk to Wayland,” she said as she stepped back into her jeans. “He seemed very insistent about meeting me alone. He’s definitely got something on his mind.”

  “As long as it’s safe.”

  He said the words because he couldn’t think what else to say. His concern for Kelley’s safety had been a touchstone in the beginning of this case, something he could fasten his thoughts to when he needed to fend off the treacherous longings he still felt around her.

  “It’ll be safe.” She was zipping her jeans and hooking her bra with quick efficiency, as though being naked with Sam made her uncomfortable. The thought of it added to the pain that was stabbing him from the inside. “I’ll be armed. And we’re meeting in the bar. There’ll be other people around.”

  Sam suddenly couldn’t stand it anymore. Kelley was almost fully dressed, reaching for her shoes, and he was still sprawled across the bed buck naked like a trick rider who’d been tossed off the back of a particularly lively bronc.

  It wasn’t a bad image, he thought. He felt as stunned, as disoriented, as he ever had after a bad fall in his riding days.

  He tried to pick himself up now, but even though he managed to get to the edge of the bed, and then onto his feet, he was still off-balance inside, as bruised and exposed as he’d ever been.

  “How can you do this?” The words came out raw with the hurt he was feeling. “How can you just—walk away after something like this?”

  He was startled to find his fingers shaking as he pointed toward the rumpled bed.

  Kelley shook her head and ran her fingers through her hair. Apparently she felt she hadn’t sufficiently repaired the damage, because she walked with quick steps into the bathroom and picked up a comb from the counter.

  “I’m going back to work,” she told him. “It’s what we’re being paid to do, remember?”

  She sounded brisk, almost annoyed. She was lecturing him, Sam realized with a jolt. Reminding him what the limits to their partnership really were.

  Reminding him that their loving—the pure starburst of experience that still had all of Sam’s nerve endings singing—had been out of bounds.

  Sam sat down again. He couldn’t think what else to do.

  And Kelley wasn’t giving him time to come up with anything. She breezed out of the bathroom with her honey blond hair neatly back in order and pulled a teal raincoat out of the closet. The crinkling of its folds sounded loud in the room.

  And suddenly Sam was aware of other sounds, sounds he’d managed to block out since he’d taken Kelley in his arms. The weather, as she’d said, was still getting worse. The wind was howling around the edges of the roof, and he could hear rain coming in gusts now, pelting against the windowpanes.

  He shook his head. The sweet storm of their lovemaking had been enough to shut out the rest of the world for the past short while. But the world hadn’t gone away.

  That was what Kelley was trying to tell him now.

  And it was his own damn fault that he was still too stunned to get the message.

  He watched her check the ammunition in her pistol, then tuck it into her raincoat pocket. He heard the determined zip as she ran the zipper up to her chin, and he listened to her parting words without really hearing them.

  “I won’t do anything stupid, Sam. You don’t have to worry about me this time.”

  And then she was gone, sliding the glass door tightly closed behind her as she stepped out into the rain.

  You don’t have to worry about me this time…

  The words cut into him like needles, like cold rain slicing down out of an angry sky.

  She didn’t want his concern. She didn’t want anything from him, beyond the momentary pleasure they’d just shared.

  She didn’t want him. Period.

  “Oh, God…”

  Sam was shocked by the anguish in his own voice. There were other words pushing at him now, words he hadn’t thought of for years and years, words so unexpectedly potent and primal that they frightened the hell out of him.

  Please don’t go away. Don’t leave me alone.

  “Please…” He hadn’t meant to say it out loud. But it came out anyway, tossed uselessly into the space that Kelley had just left. “Please don’t go.”

  Where were these words coming from? Sam never pleaded, never complained when things hurt. Life kicked you sometimes—that was the long and the short of it. You dusted yourself off and got back on your feet, if you wanted to survive.

  But this was a hurt that went too far back to ignore.

  Please, don’t leave…

  It had been a long time since he’d said those words out loud. But he still remembered the way they felt in his mouth: hollow, and flat. And useless.

  Don’t leave me! He remembered shouting the words at his father’s retreating form, struggling against the adult hands that were holding him into a house where he didn’t want to be, where he already knew he didn’t belong.

  Partners did that to you. They walked away, just when you grew to trust them.

  The lesson had been perfectly clear, and Sam had learned it well. It was better to stay on your own, trusting nobody but yourself.

  And the only time he’d broken that rule—

  He leaned forward now, rocked by the hurt inside him. His eyes stung, and he covered them with the heels of his hands, pressing hard against the ache of memory and desire.

  He and Kelley had been partners once. He’d broken his own rules, and they’d both paid a high price for it.

  And now—

  He couldn’t stand the thought of it. He’d let himself want her again. Let himself love her again.

  And she’d walked away.

  The way partners always did.

  Sam tried to clamp down on the wave of self-pity that rolled through him. But it was too strong—everything was too strong. The euphoria of loving Kelley again, the vivid memories of his father’s desertion, the thought of everything he’d lost that night at the warehouse three years ago.

  He felt as though he was losing it—everything, all of it— again right now.

  His eyes still burned behind his flattened palms. It took a moment to
recognize the sensation as tears.

  “Damn it…” He fought against it, but the misery in his own voice told him he was losing.

  He hadn’t cried since he was a small boy, and he sure as hell didn’t want to catch himself doing it now.

  But the more he struggled against the pain racking him from the inside, the closer he came to the shameful admission that this time he’d somehow managed to get himself into a fight he might not be strong enough to win.

  “Quieter than usual around here for a Friday night.” The bartender refilled Kelley’s glass with soda and moved back to the tray of glasses he was polishing. “Must be the storm that’s keeping people in the city.”

  It felt like weeks since Kelley had listened to a weather forecast, read a newspaper, done any of the things that were part of her usual routine. She looked around the restaurant now, taking note of the few couples who’d come down to their vacation homes in spite of the storm warning, and then turned back to the bartender.

  “I was supposed to meet Wayland Price here,” she said. “You haven’t seen him around, have you?”

  The man shook his head. “Not this evening.”

  Kelley went back to watching the rain lashing against the windows. Anything—even letting her mind wander, distracted by the patterns of water against glass—was better than letting herself think about Sam.

  The bartender’s friendliness reminded her of Rae-Anne Blackburn. And that made her think about Rae-Anne’s comment.

  You’re still in love with him, aren’t you?

  Wayland’s absence—he’d told her he would meet her nearly forty minutes ago—made her wonder whether she should have stuck with him earlier, when he’d seemed in the mood to talk. Had she lost an important lead by going back to the cottage, taking the time to grab her gun and her raincoat and to fill Sam in?

  Had she lost more than that by making love with him?

  Stick to business, Kelley, she told herself. She’d been telling herself the same thing ever since she’d come back to her senses in Sam’s arms an hour ago.

  She wished she was having more success at following her own good advice.

  “Thanks,” she said to the bartender, suddenly fed up with waiting for Wayland and with the way her own thoughts kept circling back to Sam despite her best efforts. Surely there had to be a way to stop picturing the lost look on his face when she’d pulled away from him on the bed.

  It’s for the best, she’d told herself then. She repeated it now, and knew, deep down, that her own insistence on getting back to work was nothing more than a mask for her fears—fears about loving Sam again, about losing him again, about losing more than her heart could stand to lose.

  She put a couple of bills down on the bar and left a message with the bartender in case Wayland finally came in. She had a feeling he’d stood her up, though. And that meant something was happening, something that Kelley wanted to get to the bottom of if she could. If nothing else, it was a welcome way to keep busy while she tried to get her thoughts about Sam back under some kind of control.

  She zipped her raincoat as she headed back into the night. The wind was driving the rain harder now. There was a salt taste to it, as though the rising storm was picking up the big waves from the Gulf and hurling them onto the shore.

  Wayland’s cottage was at the far end of the curve, facing the new boat slip Harold Price had had built. Even behind the shelter of the hill at the center of the Windspray Community, the wind was strong enough that Kelley found herself hunching over as she walked, working hard to stay upright.

  She’d pulled the hood of her jacket up, but her hair had already been tugged loose by the wind, and she could feel damp tendrils sticking to her cheeks and forehead. There was something ominous about the strength and anger of the storm coming in off the open sea, and she couldn’t help connecting it in her mind with the way everything about this case seemed to have darkened in the past twenty-four hours.

  There were no lights on in Wayland’s cottage. But Kelley could see the beacon of the pier light shining in the distance. Against its beam, she thought she saw a figure moving, crouched over against the wind as she was.

  She shoved her hands deeper into her pockets, feeling the reassuring weight of her gun there. She picked up her pace. Was it Wayland? There was something familiar about that outline.

  She lost track of the figure as one of the cottages came between her and the light. But then she saw another light, a smaller one, and realized that it was Wayland, and that he’d just opened the driver’s door of his car, which was parked next to his building.

  Where was he going? Kelley called his name, but the wind hurled it in the wrong direction, and he didn’t hear her.

  He looked upset, she thought. It was more than just the way the wind had torn apart his sleek hairstyle. Wayland usually moved as though he was fully aware at all times of his muscled physique and well-groomed exterior. But now his motions were jerky, distracted, and Kelley thought she saw him nearly lose his balance as he got into the car.

  He seemed to be in a big hurry to get to wherever he was going.

  “Wayland!” She shouted his name again, hating to let him get away on her. But she was still out of range, and she saw the car’s headlights flare on as she started to run. By the time she’d gotten close enough to be heard over the wind, Wayland had put the car in gear and it was heading away from her, gravel spurting from under its tires.

  “Damn.” She shook her head in frustration.

  And nearly jumped right out of her skin when a powerful set of fingers closed around her arm.

  At first the driving rain kept her from seeing who it was. She felt herself being spun around and pulled away from Wayland’s cottage.

  Kelley had practiced self-defense techniques until she’d been able to trounce the people who’d taught her. But her shoes slipped on the wet grass as she struggled to get her balance now, and it was all she could do to stay upright as she was propelled back in the direction she’d come from.

  By the time she got her feet under her again, she’d recognized her attacker.

  “Come on.” Sam’s gravelly voice cut through the whine of the wind. “If we’re fast, we can tail him.”

  Kelley didn’t argue. She knew he was right. And after all, she’d been the one insisting that they keep their minds focused on the task at hand. Right now the task was figuring out where Wayland had taken off to in such a hurry, and why.

  But there were a lot of other whys lashing at her now, too. Sam had shifted his grip to her hand, and his grasp was rough and hard, as though he was angry about something.

  Why?

  He must have been following her, or else he’d been watching Wayland’s cottage while she’d been waiting in the bar.

  Why?

  And why was she having such a hard time hanging on to her thoughts as she climbed quickly into the cab of Sam’s truck and watched him jam the key into the ignition?

  Why did the look in his eyes—that wild, rogue-stallion gleam—tear her up inside? Was it because she’d caught a glimpse of some other expression behind it? There was something more than just anger making his eyes so savage and his voice so harsh as he spoke over the growl of the truck engine and the spatter of the rain against the windshield.

  “Did you talk to him?”

  “No. He didn’t show up at the bar. I was on my way to his cottage when I saw him getting into the car.”

  Kelley was used to strong language. But the string of profanities Sam let loose now startled her.

  “Tell me what he said earlier that made you think he wanted to unload something,” he said at last as he veered onto the road toward Cairo without even pausing at the flashing light.

  It was hard to rally her thoughts, hard to draw her eyes from the way Sam was favoring his injured shoulder as he muscled the steering wheel into a turn, or the way his long legs seemed too big for the dark truck cab.

  He reached his right hand toward her suddenly, wincing as he
moved, and Kelley felt her breath quicken. But it was the crumpled cigarette package on the seat between them that he was after. He tossed it back after discovering it was empty and glared at Kelley as though it was her fault. His eyes were dark and unreadable in the slight glow from the dashboard.

  Wayland. He’d asked about Wayland. Kelley tried to push past her own awareness of Sam’s big body and forced herself to recall her conversation with Wayland earlier this evening.

  “He said he was afraid I’d gotten the wrong impression when he asked me about Steve Cormier this morning,” she said. “He seemed to have been thinking it over, and worrying—”

  “Hold on.” Sam’s voice grated across her words. “When exactly did Wayland ask you about Steve Cormier?”

  Oh, hell, Kelley thought. That was it—the loose fact she hadn’t been able to come up with this afternoon. There’d been so much else going on—

  “It was this morning, after we’d gotten you out of the Gustaffsons’ place,” she said. “Wayland seemed to think we knew Steve Cormier somehow. He seemed concerned about where Cormier had gone, and why.”

  “And were you planning to tell me about this eventually, or was it your own private clue?”

  His voice was caustic now, and Kelley didn’t blame him. She’d had plenty of reasons to forget, but excuses didn’t count in this business, not when you had a partner who was counting on you. Sam’s tone was making that abundantly clear.

  “How the hell are we supposed to work together if you aren’t putting everything on the table?” he asked.

  “I know.” Her own words were soft. “I slipped up. I’m sorry.”

  That simple admission could have encapsulated their whole relationship, Kelley thought miserably.

  I slipped up. I’m sorry…

  And all the apologies in the world couldn’t bring back the trust they’d lost. They’d been starting to recover it as they’d worked together this past week, but she could see in Sam’s expression now that this most recent slip had cost her a lot of the ground she’d gained back.

  He shook his wet, dark head as he stared out into the pelting rain. If the steering wheel had been a living thing, it would have been gasping for breath under his grip by now.