by Susan Wiggs
In the café next to the computer shop, she spotted Dusty Matlock. He was seated in a booth, nursing a cup of coffee while Amber sat across from him in a booster seat, using a French fry to draw swirls in her ketchup. Jessie’s reaction to him was instantaneous—a jumble of apprehension and anticipation unlike anything she’d ever experienced. It was more than a response to a sexy guy who displayed a healthy interest in her. It was an untimely attraction that mocked her with its undeniable strength. Complicating that was a flood of tender ness as she listened to the baby chortling mindlessly.
She was tempted to flee before he noticed her. Her protective instincts warned her to get out now before she did anything stupid like fall in love. She and Dusty Matlock were the last thing each other needed. He was dealing with single parenthood, while she was facing the fight of her life, and neither was in a position to do the other any good.
Yet she couldn’t resist. Particularly when Amber looked up and yelled out an incomprehensible greeting.
“That’s toddler for ‘Have a seat, ma’am,’” said Dusty, getting to his feet.
“How could I resist?” She slid into the booth next to Amber, who offered her a limp French fry. “Thank you,” she said, and made a show of savoring it. The baby watched her with total absorption, then chuckled with good-natured humor. When Jessie studied her face, she felt intensely curious. Who would this little person be years from now? What would be important to her? Who would she love? What did the world hold for her?
An unbidden fantasy crept through Jessie. She pictured herself watching Lila’s first smile, her first tooth, her first step. She wondered what Lila’s first day of school had been like, how her first date had gone. She felt a flash of unholy envy for Luz, who had not missed a moment of Lila’s life. But then she focused on Amber. All those experiences were still waiting for this little soul. Jessie wondered who would be there to live through them with her.
Amber offered her another French fry, and Jessie accepted with a smile. “So I was working with some of the digital pictures I made for the Texas Life piece,” she said, indicating her bag. “Would you like to see them?”
“I’ll pass.” His voice was low, suppressing emotion.
“Your story was incredible. Blair will do a good job. You’ll see.” Ah, she wished she could take his pain away, but she sensed that wasn’t what he wanted from her. “I hope you don’t have any regrets about doing it.”
“Of course I have regrets. But you made it worthwhile,” he added.
“I did?”
“If not for LaBorde’s article, we never would have met. I want to get to know you, Jessie. I really want that.”
“No, you don’t.” She tried to shore up every defense she had. “I’m too footloose for a responsible dad and man of business.”
“That’s one of the things I like about you.”
“Dusty—”
“No, let me finish. There’s something going on here. We both know that.” He gestured at Amber, whose head lolled onto Jessie’s shoulder. “Between all of us.”
“That can’t be,” Jessie said swiftly. “I’m as sorry as can be about your wife, and I wish you all the best, but—”
“Let me tell you about my wife. I loved her. I loved her with everything that I am. Everything I could make myself be. When she lay there in that hospital bed, I used to beg God to take me instead, to use my corneas and my kidneys and leave her and the baby be. So yeah, I loved her. Then I lost her, and I’ll never get over that. The grief won’t go away. It’s a part of me, like loving her was a part of me.”
Jessie braced herself. Surely he was leading up to the heartbreaking disclosure that, in his short time with Karen, he’d loved enough for a lifetime, and now he’d never love again, but that didn’t preclude screwing around.
The expected recitation didn’t come. Instead he said, “I want to love someone again, Jessie.”
Shock stole her breath. “Why are you telling me this?”
“I thought that, before we go any further, we should discuss it,” said Dusty.
She blinked. Everything this man said surprised her. How could a guy possibly be as wonderful as this one seemed? “That’s supposed to be my line.”
“You wouldn’t have initiated the discussion.”
Unsettled, she folded her hands tightly on the tabletop. “Yeah? How would you know that?”
He gently and deliberately disengaged her fingers, covering them with his. His touch was familiar, intimate. “Because I can tell you’re protecting yourself. You don’t want to get involved.”
“What makes you the expert, Matlock?”
“Because up until we met, I was just like you.”
“What are you like now?”
“Ready. And surprised as hell that I am.”
CHAPTER 19
Since meeting Jessie Ryder, Dusty hardly slept at all at night. He couldn’t stop thinking about her. She’d struck him like a bolt of lightning, and his nerves buzzed at the prospect of getting to know her—quickly, deeply. She inspired a curious urgency in him, a sense of time running out. For the past six months, he’d tried to feel this way about a woman. A few times, he’d given in to his mother’s attempts at matchmaking and had arranged several dates on his own. But nothing had felt quite right. He’d met nice women, pretty women whose heartbreak over his situation was sincere, who cooed over Amber and sent out signal flares of availability. Yet he hadn’t felt that lightning bolt, cracking open his heart again—until now. It wasn’t a comfortable feeling, but he welcomed it, wanted it. Old sadnesses, fears and frustrations were untangling in his heart in a way he’d never expected.
In the morning, he drank his coffee in silence while watching Amber with the sunlight in her hair and then he thought of Jessie again and his chest actually hurt with wanting to see her. Horniness was one thing; this was much different. This was going to change his life. Hers, too. He wondered if she knew that yet.
Scooping up Amber, he did something he hadn’t done in a long time. He went to the closet and took out a well-worn Matlock Aviation jacket, size extra small. He could still picture Karen wearing it, grinning and giving him the thumbs-up sign from the pilot’s seat. His Karen, who loved flying, and adventure, and her husband.
Gathering the jacket to him, he caught a light, ineffable fragrance so evocative that he nearly sank to his knees. “This belonged to your mama,” he told Amber, putting her down and sitting on the floor to show her the jacket.
“Mmm.” She clutched at the slick fabric of the lining and peered up at him with Karen’s eyes.
“That’s right. Your mama. And this—” digging in the inner pocket, he took out a gold wedding band “—will always belong to me.” He put the wedding band on and showed it to Amber. “Too big,” he declared. “Arnufo doesn’t cook like your mama did.” Slipping off the ring, he held it at an angle and studied the engraving inside: Love Never Dies. When they had chosen their rings, the phrase had been nearly meaningless. Now he felt the weight of it, every day of his life. Karen was gone, and the love he’d borne her now belonged to Amber, just as the love his wife had borne him shone from the baby’s eyes each time she looked up at him.
He slid the ring back into the pocket of the flight jacket and zipped it closed. As he did so, a curious lightness slipped over him. Maybe it was wishful thinking, but he felt Karen’s approval like a blessing.
He used to think Amber was enough, but he was fooling himself. Karen had been on life support until Amber was born. Now he realized he’d been on life support ever since Karen had died. Meeting Jessie Ryder forced him to face that. “I need to do this, short stuff,” he said to the baby. “Can you understand that?”
“You afraid of heights, Miss Ryder?”
Jessie blinked sleepily at the visitor on the doorstep of her house. “At seven in the morning, I’m afraid of everything.”
“It’s after nine.”
“Oh. Then no. But what the hell are you doing here?”
; Dusty Matlock’s gaze caressed her, and suddenly her silk tap pants and camisole seemed insubstantial.
“I’m kidnapping you,” he said.
“I’ve had training,” she warned him.
He grinned. “So have I. That’s a great outfit, but you should get dressed.”
This was absurd, she thought, yet at the same time, she felt totally drawn to him and deeply intrigued that he’d shown up out of the blue like this.
“I’ve got coffee,” he said.
“Then how can I resist?” She ducked inside and took her time getting ready, even though she wanted to hurry. Her eagerness to be with him bothered her. “Down girl,” she muttered.
He was deeply appealing to her. Taking his picture was the most challenging assignment she’d ever attempted. Photographing real people with real emotions demanded something from her that she wasn’t used to giving. The encounter with him and Amber had given her a glimpse of a sweetness that could never belong to her. For that she ought to resent Dusty Matlock. But when she stepped outside into the autumn sun shine, she was glad she’d met him.
“Well, come on, then.” He started walking toward his blue pickup truck.
She followed him, feeling things she had no business feeling. “Where are we going?”
“Trust me, I’ll have you home in time for dinner. You have your camera, right?”
She patted the much-used leather bag. “Trust you?”
“With your life. You won’t be sorry.”
Swept up by his irresistible energy, she went with him. He turned the radio up and rolled the windows down as they made the short drive to his house. Parking the truck, he led the way down to the dock where the floatplane was moored. He flipped open the tiny, flimsy-looking hatch and offered his hand, palm up.
“Ma’am?”
Her whole body responded to the deep invitation in his voice, in his hand extended in welcome. She took his hand. “I thought you would never ask.”
“So now the truth comes out. You’re only interested in my machine.”
“Right.”
He held the plane steady as she stepped on a pontoon and climbed in. The thing dipped and shifted, catching her with one foot in the cockpit, one still on the dock. But he was there behind her. Strong hands gripping her around the waist, his body a wall between her and disaster. Clumsily she hoisted herself into the plane and landed squarely in the passenger seat. The plane was like a child’s toy; small planes always seemed that way to her. Everything was crammed together in miniature. The wings and hull were flimsy, insubstantial as a whirligig made from an aluminum beer can.
“Thanks,” she said, eyeing him with a combination of interest and suspicion. It wasn’t like her to feel flustered by a man.
“No problem.” He didn’t seem at all perturbed, but openly attracted and very focused on her. Then his attention shifted as he went through a routine, checking gauges, valves, buttons, levers and a GPS screen with an air of long familiarity. “So did your pictures come out okay?”
“There’s genius in those shots, I swear,” Jessie said. “Blair’s happy, anyway.”
“She’s a real charmer,” Dusty said.
“Being charming is not a priority with Blair.”
“You work with her a lot?”
“No.” She caught his eye as he unmoored the plane from its cleats. “You’re my first.”
“Does that make you want to come back for more?”
She looked him in the eye. Her vision wavered—or maybe it was the motion of the plane. “I think I got everything I need the first time.”
He grinned. “Nope,” he said. “Not by a long shot.” He let the comment linger in the air between them, then flipped on a radio monitor. He finished his inspections and preparations and shoved the plane away from the dock, riding a pontoon and grasping a wing-shroud as he pointed the nose away from shore. With a practiced, unhurried grace, he climbed into the pilot’s seat. She reached around and found a seat belt, drawing it across her lap and clicking it in place.
“You don’t seem to be too nervous about flying,” he commented.
“Should I be?”
“With me? No way.”
“Then I’m not. To be honest, I have more experience flying in small planes than I do taking pictures for Texas Life.” She’d been transported in rattletrap tuna cans and patched-up puddle jumpers from Kashmir to Kathmandu. She had flown screaming between jagged Himalayan peaks with the pilot laughing and stoned out of his gourd on hashish. After what she had seen and done in Asia, this felt pretty tame.
Except that it didn’t, somehow.
With a stroke of a lever, a turn of the key, he brought the engine roaring to life, propellers bursting into motion. He turned to study her for a moment while the plane drifted.
“Just so you know,” he said, raising his voice over the chugging engine.
“Know what?” The flurry of awareness inside her stirred again.
“We’re starting something here.”
Jessie frowned. “I don’t know what you mean. Starting what?”
His grin was wicked. “Us.”
A shiver rippled over her skin. “Oh, come on.”
“I mean it, Jess. Everyone swears it’s Amber who keeps me going. But it’s more than that. I’m still here, and there are things in life I won’t get from my daughter. So I need to do more than stand around taking up space.”
A dizzying hope spiraled through her, but she forced herself to face facts. He needed to face them, too. “Don’t tell me you’re over losing your wife, Matlock.”
“I’ll never be over her. But there’s room for more. Listen, I thought Karen was the love of my life.”
“What do you mean, you thought? Wasn’t she?”
He adjusted a small, shiny lever on the dashboard. “I loved her like crazy. But she wasn’t the love of my life. If I called her that, then it would mean my love life was over when she died.” Unexpectedly, he cupped her cheek in his hand. “As you can see, I’m not quite ready to give up.”
Jessie let out an involuntary sigh and sat back in stunned amazement as he turned the Cessna Caravan and accelerated. He plucked a pair of Serengeti aviator shades from his shirt pocket and put them on. The motor engaged with a loud nasal whine. His hand lightly controlled the rudder to navigate forward. The plane taxied out and weathervaned into the wind. The motorized buzz intensified. As nimble and delicate as a water strider, the craft turned to the open water, the engine noise deepening to a growling sound. She could tell he was an experienced bush pilot from the practiced way he lined up, applied full up-elevator and full throttle. He relaxed the elevator to neutral, then applied it up again until the floats left the water. The noise crescendoed, and she could feel the moment the wind caught beneath the delicate wings. The plane went aloft as though a large hand scooped them up and transported them, angling toward the sky. Leveling out to gain airspeed before completing the climb out, he aimed toward the headwaters of Eagle Lake.
A shudder passed through the Cessna as they cleared the bank, and then the ride smoothed out. A few moments later, they were floating along like a boat on calm water.
Jessie knew she ought to be looking out at the scenery, but her gaze kept being drawn to Dusty Matlock’s face. He put on his headset but the earpieces were set back, the mouthpiece angled away from his lips. That mouth.
“Do you do this often?”
“A few times a week, at least. Only I usually head north first, circle up over Marble Falls. But today I wanted a longer ride. I reckon you don’t mind.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“So what did you mean?”
Damn. He was going to make her say it. “I meant grabbing a woman you just met, shanghaiing her to God knows where—”
“I thought we would take a look at Lake Travis and Enchanted Rock. It’s pretty this time of year.”
“So do you?” she asked.
“Do I what?”
“Do this often?”
<
br /> He grinned. “Would it matter one way or the other to you if I did?”
“No.” The truth popped out of its own accord.
“Good.”
They banked and then soared with the sun glinting on their wings, the landscape racing along in a blur of umber and green and the light blue smear of the river cleaving through the hills. The very tops of the lost maples had barely begun to turn, and they resembled a forest of red-tipped matches, not yet struck to fire.
Dusty flipped a switch, and the old Texas swing sound of Asleep at the Wheel filled the cockpit.
Jessie shut her eyes. Her mouth eased into a grin she couldn’t control.
“What?” he asked, an answering smile evident in his voice.
“We’re musically compatible.”
“There was never any doubt.”
She knew whatever it was he intended to start with her was going to be short-lived. She’d be gone before anything serious happened. He gave her the sensation of looking down into a flickering well with the sunlight glinting on it, offering tantalizing glimpses of mysterious depths, gleanings so elusive and quickly gone, flashes and floaters of deceptive allure.
Even without looking at him, she knew he was grinning with an air of irresistible charm and self-confidence. She scarcely knew the man, yet there was such a sense of recognition between them that she could already picture him perfectly in her mind’s eye. White teeth, tanned skin, eyes a shade too blue, hair a shade too long, curling over the collar of his shirt. More than that, she could picture something she’d glimpsed in his eyes the very first time she’d seen him. She had no name for it yet.
She blinked her left eye open to foggy nothingness. Before panic set in, she opened her other eye and let out a breath of relief. She refused to let this day be soiled by dread, and turned to the window, looking at the overwhelming beauty of the view. Taking out her Nikon F5 with an image-stabilized lens, she slid open the window and fell into her element, photographing the scenery. She’d always had the uncanny ability to keep a straight horizon. Her bestselling image, a sunrise over the Seychelles, had been taken without a grid screen.