Love on the Line

by Aares, Pamela

  A grove of redwoods nearly hid the rustic building housing the Lagunitas Café. It served the locals as general store, coffee shop and meeting place. Jackie sat at one of the outdoor tables, shaded from the sun by an umbrella that looked to be as old as the faded wood siding.

  “It’s a lovely day,” Jackie said in her perfect English accent as Cara sat at the only other chair at the rickety table.

  Weather was a safe topic.

  But as Jackie leaned back and appeared to be taking Cara’s measure, Cara was pretty sure she hadn’t brought her out here to talk about the weather.

  “Perfect,” Cara said in a light tone.

  “I’m not one to draw out suspense,” Jackie said as she leaned forward and rested her elbows on the table. “I met you at Wimbledon. Six years ago. Your brother and your parents were with you. I remembered you because you took such an interest in my work in the Okavango Delta.”

  Cara sat silent, stunned.

  “And because your brother was tracking the Moonbird,” Jackie continued. “Not many people even know it exists.” She gestured to her own face. “I had short hair and a hat; it doesn’t surprise me you had trouble placing me. But I remember you well. You suggested that I write to your grandfather to fund my work.”

  Jackie appeared calm, as if revealing world-shattering secrets was an everyday occurrence.

  “I want to thank you for that suggestion,” Jackie added. “His funding allowed me to finish up the species survey.”

  The memory flashed. “You had seats next to ours.” Though her heart raced in her chest, Cara felt like a load was lifted from her shoulders. She looked Jackie in the eyes. “Busted.”

  “Not exactly.” A smile teased at the corners of Jackie’s lips. “I’m good at keeping secrets.” She pointed to the hand-lettered sign listing a variety of espresso drinks. “Want a cappuccino? We may be miles from nowhere, but they make a killer cappuccino.”

  Cara nodded. While Jackie went in to get their coffees, her mind raced almost as fast as her pulse.

  Jackie placed the coffee in front of Cara, the smiley face the barista had swirled into the milky foam staring up at her.

  “Thank you,” Cara said. “For the coffee.” She looked up at Jackie, who held her face in the gentlest of expressions. “And for not outing me. I’m about to do that myself.”

  “I don’t envy you that. I know something about running from the restrictions of a world you’d like to leave behind.”

  “I saw the reports online,” Cara said, feeling that she should own up to her snooping.

  The press had hounded Jackie after Alex had rescued her from a crazed kidnapper intent on murder. He’d risked his career and his life to save her, but all the press had wanted to report was the discovery that Jackie was an aristocrat hiding her roots. A wealthy blue-blood hiding out as a vet in a bungalow in California made for sensational headlines.

  Cara lifted the cup to her lips, but it was too hot to sip. “Life has its ways of forcing one’s hand.”

  “Doesn’t it just,” Jackie said.

  Cara told Jackie in the plainest terms about her dilemma. About her grandfather leaving her the foundation, about her reasons for seeking a quiet life in Albion Bay. About the problem of the clinic. And about Laci.

  “I’m afraid I’ll be pulled back into the world I grew up in, afraid I’ll be engulfed and never come out. Afraid I’ll lose everything I’ve worked for.”

  A thoughtful expression played across Jackie’s face. “I know that feeling. And I’m sorry to hear about your friend. It’s tough when you want to help and can’t.”

  Cara lifted her chin. She could’ve looked the world over and not have found anyone like the strong and experienced woman sitting before her. Jackie was a person she could trust.

  Cara told her about Ryan and about her decision to cut off her relationship with him until she could pull herself together and tell him the truth. She hauled in a breath and added, “What I’d like to know, what I need to know, is how Alex took it—you not telling him about your family.”

  Jackie waved her hand as if batting away an unpleasant memory, but then surprised Cara with an impish smile.

  “One thing about a life-threatening trauma, it puts other factors in perspective. In the end, Alex wasn’t happy that I hadn’t trusted him enough to just tell him the facts.”

  Cara stirred the foam in her cup and watched the happy face dissolve into a frown of bubbled milk.

  “I wasn’t ready to tell anyone. I’m still not. Maybe I should have trusted Ryan, but things between us got rolling and then it seemed too late to say anything.”

  “You love him,” Jackie said.

  “I hadn’t intended to.”

  Jackie laughed.

  “You’re like me, thinking that love is something you can control with your mind. It doesn’t work that way.” She tapped a finger to her head. “Love alters activity in your brain,” she said in what Cara imagined was the voice she used to lecture colleagues or volunteers. “And it triggers parallel changes in the other person’s body and brain. Love doesn’t belong to just one person; it resides in the resonance between you. If it’s love, it’ll survive all this.”

  “But—”

  “It’s science, my dear.” Jackie shoved her sunglasses to the top of her head and nailed Cara with an unwavering gaze. “You ignore such a strong power at your own peril. I’ve discovered that love is a stronger power than fear; I owe that lesson to my relationship with Alex. But if you don’t use the power love offers, other forces will shape your brain and your life for you.”

  Cara clasped her hands under her chin, aware of the prayer-like gesture. At that moment, Jackie and her words—her wisdom—were a tether to the life she dreamed of. A floating sensation washed through her, and she held herself still, as if any movement might banish the hope coming to life inside her.

  Jackie tapped one finger on the table. “I nearly lost everything by trying to ignore love. It bites back if you ignore it.” She lowered her sunglasses against the glare of the sun. “All those other details? You’ll sort them out.”

  “I want to work them out before I tell Ryan, before I tell anybody, but especially before I tell him.” She pushed her cup away, to the center of the table. Her hands were shaking, and she clasped them in her lap. “And I don’t want to do anything that might upset him right now, not while he’s playing so well and the team is in the running for the pennant.”

  Jackie shook her head. “If I’ve learned anything being married to Alex, it’s that you can’t rule your life by the game.”

  “Even if I were prepared to tell Ryan, it’s not like I can just go up to him and say, Hey, you know the simple woman you’re so into? Well, I’m really one of the richest women in the world; I just didn’t want anyone to know. Like that will fix everything and he’ll go out and hit home runs?”

  Jackie pressed her lips together. Cara wished she could see her eyes.

  “I understand your reasoning. It’s considerate of you and perhaps not off the mark.” She removed her sunglasses and set them on the table. When she looked up, there was no humor in her eyes. “There is something you should know. It’s not like I’m telling a secret since anyone with an Internet connection could turn this up. Alex told me that Ryan was horribly deceived by a woman claiming that he’d fathered her child. The truth came out recently that she’d schemed the whole thing, but Alex thinks the experience, the deception, left its mark.”

  The coffee soured in Cara’s stomach. She put her hands on the table to steady herself.

  “I thought you might not know,” Jackie said. “And I can see that you didn’t,” she added as she read the shock in Cara’s face.

  Cara swallowed and tried to counter the heaviness weighing down her limbs, sinking her into the chair. “That explains the sense I’ve had of being auditioned. It’s subtle, but I feel it with him, as if he’s testing my motives. You’ll laugh now, but I think he was worried that I’d like him for his money.�
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  Jackie didn’t laugh. And Jackie’s response made Cara realize they had more in common than she’d surmised.

  “I’m afraid I’ll lose him, which is crazy since I don’t even have him—since we don’t even know twenty things about each other. But I love him. That’s the thing that scares me the most.”

  It was the first time she’d said it without reservation. Each word was like ballast, tilting the ship of her life and sending waves crashing over the sides.

  Jackie put her elbows on the table and leaned toward Cara. “Fear can make you overlook opportunities. And when we let fear win, we dream smaller dreams.”

  Cara flattened her palms against the table and straightened her spine. “I do have a plan. But what you just told me, well... my plan may not be enough.”

  She told Jackie about the strategy she’d set up with Alston. And hoped that Jackie was right, that love was a stronger power than fear.

  As she drove back to Albion Bay, her hope wavered. But she knew what she had to do. Step by step, Alston had said. She had a couple of weeks to go step by step. By then the baseball season would be over. By then she’d have sorted out the best way to break the news to her friends in Albion Bay.

  Yet no matter how carefully she rehearsed her lines in her head, she dreaded breaking the news to Ryan. No plan she came up with for that confession featured anything close to a happy ending.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Molly waved from Cara’s front deck as Cara pulled into her drive.

  “Amazing, amazing news!” Molly said as she ran out to greet Cara. “Ryan has arranged for a fundraiser in the city for the clinic.” She spilled the news before Cara could even turn off the car. “His teammates are coming. They have money, Cara, loads of it. It’s Wednesday, after the day game. It’s at a swanky club; Belva told me it was the Pacific-Union.” She opened Cara’s door for her. “Belva’s in such a state, I think she’s going to bust an artery. I told her to wait till we have a clinic.”

  “That’s wonderful,” Cara said, unable to laugh.

  There was no way she was going into the city and especially not to the Pacific-Union Club. Her dad was a member. He liked to throw his weight around when he came out west, and it was the most exclusive club in San Francisco. There’d be people she knew there. She had weeks of work before she’d be ready for something like that.

  “It’s the break we’ve been waiting for, Cara. Imagine getting to make our case to people with real money. I have a great feeling about it.”

  “Does this mean you’re staying in Albion Bay?”

  “Yes. I thought about what you said. And this fundraising effort gives me hope. Plus Sam doesn’t want to change schools. He wants to stay and play with his team. He pulled out all the stops. Told me—me!—that the stress of moving would be worse for his health than any risk of an attack. The little weasel.”

  Cara did manage to laugh at Sam’s antics.

  Molly walked Cara to her front door.

  “You’ll need a dress,” she said. “I’m going to make one for you. I think red. You’ll look stunning in red.”

  “That’s sweet of you, Molly, but I can’t go. I have to—”

  “You have to go! Ryan put this together. I can think he cares about this town, about my son, and I’m sure he does, but we all know he’s doing it for you.”

  “I don’t think that’s true,” Cara said. At least she hoped it wasn’t.

  “Don’t be ridiculous; the guy’s smitten. And I am making you a dress. I’ll come over tomorrow and fit it on you.”

  Cara raised her hand to say an emphatic no, but Molly fisted her hands to her hips.

  “I won’t let you refuse. You’re too darn modest. This is the biggest thing to happen to help this town since Grady built the feed barn. We have to look our best. And by the way, Cain’s my date. Four years is long enough to mourn, and it’s not doing Sam or me any good. Anyway, Cain asked to go with me and I accepted. But he’ll have to buy a suit.”

  She turned on her heel and headed to her car.

  Before she stepped in, she held up two fingers in a victory sign. “See you at two tomorrow—two o’clock sharp.”

  Ryan sat in his office at the ranch and made the last of the calls that topped his to-do list. Everything was set for the clinic fundraiser at the Pacific-Union Club that night. Then he called his dad and convinced him to come out for Thanksgiving. He didn’t tell him about the donkeys, but he rehearsed the lines he’d say when he saw his dad face-to-face. It was time to own up to the truth about where he was headed with his life. But his lines for Cara, they didn’t come as easily.

  But the dreams did.

  He walked along the west fences, checked and double-checked them. And decided to add a higher section of wire to the most vulnerable section that bordered the creek. But it wasn’t donkeys that filled his mind as he worked. The dream he’d had late in the night was as real as the steel wire he molded with his hands.

  He shut his eyes and remembered.

  At first he’d been caught in the cloying darkness of his recurring nightmare. His arms were bound, his shoulder pinched and aching, and he was stuck in layers of a filmy yet cloying web twisting around him and crushing his chest. Elaine Mooney’s image rose before him, her head thrown back in a soundless laugh. Terese stood over him, drawing the web tighter until he gasped, unable to breathe. He fell, tumbling, and no force of his will or his struggle slowed his sickening descent. A faint light appeared, burning brighter as he fell toward it.

  He crashed against a hard surface and felt the bruise forming on his back. Pushing against the web binding his arms, he struggled to free himself, but each motion only shrank the cords tighter around his body. He gasped as the web contracted around him, wrapping him in an icy, otherworldly chill. Death called to him seductively with a siren song promising release from the pain racking his body, enticing him to give in. He knew this nightmare too well, had thought he’d left it behind. But never before had there been any light. Pain laced through him as he turned his head toward the glow in the periphery of his vision. The light flared brighter and moved toward him like a slow-moving tumbleweed. He forced himself to focus on the river of light trailing behind the approaching specter. He fought to take a breath and not give in to the darkness. But he couldn’t hold on and his world went black.

  Fingers touched his throat. Warm, almost searing. He wanted to cry out, but his body heeded no command of his mind. Slowly the fingers eased the web from his throat. He gasped in a breath and opened his eyes.

  Cara crouched over him, her fingers working at the web, loosening it. Light glowed around her and trailed her body as she bent closer to him, leaving a phosphorescent image against the pure darkness surrounding them. He saw alarm in her eyes as she focused on unwinding the cable-like strands of the web, her hands dissolving them as if they were no more than spun sugar. He couldn’t take his eyes off her face. Wordlessly she freed the web from his shoulders and the pain eased. She worked her hands down his chest, pulling at the strands that bound him. His heart stuttered, and he tried to speak. She put her finger to his lips, her eyes sending a silent warning. She traced her palm down his bare chest, and he realized he was naked.

  Sensation returned, and he felt grass pressing into the skin of his back, smelled the sweetness of the air. She drew both her palms to his shoulders, and heat and wholeness pulsed under her touch. A smile lit her eyes. He reached for her and the light fell away from her like a cast-off cape, revealing the beauty of her body. He pulled her close, his lips blazing as they met hers. The warm, honeyed taste of her dissolved the chill that had threatened to snuff him. His pulse raced as he slid his body against hers. When she tipped her head and deepened her kiss, astonishing power passed between their lips, coursed into and through him, the kind of power that beat at the heart of every living thing. A power that called forth life and hope and not death or despair. The all-consuming power of love.

  A horn sounded in the distance, growing l
ouder and insistent. With each blaring blast, more of Cara dissolved from his arms. He clutched at her image, willing the spell-breaking noise to stop, desperate to hold on to the sensual, heart-binding, life-giving bliss.

  But the noise grew louder, and she disappeared.

  He’d jolted up in his bed. In the blur of waking he’d grabbed his blaring alarm clock and thrown it against the wall. Then he’d sat, stunned, at the edge of his bed, running his hands over his chest and shoulders. And lower, to his throbbing hard-on. Though his body screamed for release, after such a dream his heart wasn’t in a quick hand job.

  He wanted Cara and he would have her. However long and whatever it took. Her last email didn’t daunt him. In fact, it fired him up for the challenge of winning her.

  He didn’t need a dream to tell him she was the one. How he’d managed to find a woman with such integrity, such kindness and a body that sizzled passion through him the way hers did, he didn’t know. Maybe there was a God. Just in case, he said a silent prayer.

  He repeated the prayer as the memory of the dream once again ran through his thoughts. And then he turned his mind and body to the task before him.

  The sun was high before he finished running the wire in the westernmost section of fences. He’d have to reinforce two sections and put in two taller, stronger posts. He checked his watch. That work would have to wait until another day.

  Before he left for the stadium he pulled the zippered garment bag that held his favorite suit from the back of his closet. The last time he’d worn it had been to his grandfather’s funeral. At least this time it would see a happier occasion.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Alex and Scotty hopped out of Ryan’s Jeep, still laughing about the razzing they’d taken from the guys in the clubhouse. Though their joking had been good-natured, several of them had wisecracked about the big price tag to help Ryan land a lady. Knowing they didn’t mean anything, Ryan took it in stride. Most of the team were attending the fundraiser, and Ryan hoped those who didn’t might soften up and send a check.