Destiny Bay Boxed Set vol. 2 (Books 4 - 6) (Destiny Bay Romances)

by Helen Conrad

  “You can swim, Kathy,” he said sternly, taking her by the shoulders. “Pull yourself together. You've done the hard work, paid your dues. It's time to reap the benefits. All you need to do is get your mind set.”

  She shrugged helplessly. “I try to, I try so hard. But ... I can't.”

  He pulled her body to his and rocked her softly in his arms. It was all he could think of to do. He rocked her and rocked her until she fell asleep, but his eyes were wide open for the rest of the night and he was thinking furiously.

  The next morning he had to leave early. “A video meeting with the contractors,” he told her as he left her to sip her room-service coffee. It was Saturday, so she didn't have to hurry off to a workout until later in the morning.

  “You mean to tell me you're finally getting to work on that mountain resort?” she asked. “And here you promised me a romantic evening before the fireplace by Christmas—which has passed, I will note.”

  “Next Christmas, for sure,” he vowed, dropping a kiss to the top of her head before heading for the door. “I swear it.”

  “Promises, promises,” she teased as he disappeared out the doorway.

  She took a long, lazy bath with bubbles. “Relax,” everyone was always telling her. So, okay, she would work hard at relaxing. Piped-in music. Warm water. Hot cocoa. An hour later she felt limp as a noodle.

  “Okay,” she muttered to no one in particular. “I'm relaxed. Now what?”

  There was no hair dryer in the bathroom, but she knew Jace had one somewhere, so she went out and started rummaging through the dresser drawers. Nothing.

  She looked at herself in the mirror and made a face. She definitely needed that hair dryer. Turning around, she decided the closet would be the next most likely hiding place. She opened the doors and felt for a hair dryer on the top shelf. Her hand hit something, and the next thing she knew, a cardboard box of clippings was tumbling down on her head.

  She shrieked, then laughed as she looked at the mess. “My hair will be dry by the time I finish picking all this stuff up,” she grumbled, bending down to begin the job.

  She'd pushed three or four of the papers back into the box before she began to notice what they were. Magazine articles. Newspaper clippings. And all about her.

  “Pray for a Miracle,” one headline read. “Hobbling to Rome on a Cane,” read another. “Kathy Carrington's Magic Carpet Ride.” Every article was negative. What was Jace doing with these things?

  Her hands were shaking. In her current frame of mind the articles were devastating. She hadn't realized there were so many of them. The others must have hidden them from her. Most of the articles she'd seen had been skeptical, but willing to give her a chance. These writers seemed to want to see her banned from even trying.

  She picked up the final page and turned it. There was a picture of Jace at twenty with his gold medals around his neck and another of him that was more recent, his handsome face smiling. The article had a date barely three weeks old. The piece focused more on Jace than on Kathy, especially his success in business. But it also included quotes from Jace about Jim and Kathy and their project.

  “I'd hate to discourage anyone from trying it,” he was quoted as saying. “And Kathy Carrington is a wonderful swimmer, always was, always will be. But we're only human, all of us, and sometimes we have to face reality and the aging process. She was in her prime at seventeen. There's no way to get that back again.”

  Kathy's heart felt like ice in her chest. She read on, all about how Jace was sticking with her regardless, strongly implying that he was a rich tycoon who was indulging his favorite girlfriend of the moment in her delusions.

  At first her mind denied the possibility that what she was reading was real. Someone had made it up to torture her. Jace would never, never say such things, never hold her up to ridicule like this. But as she read back over the article one more time, denial turned to acceptance. He had said the same thing when they first met. Had anything really changed since then?

  She'd thought it had. She'd thought he had seen the real possibility for her to prove Jim's theories. She'd worked so hard, and the results had been so satisfying, right up until her operation. He'd seen all that. How could it be that he still didn't believe it?

  Had it been all a ruse to capture her attention? But why? Just because she'd told him no? Was that enough of a challenge to make him lie to her in order to get what he wanted?

  She couldn't really believe it. And yet, here was the article.

  She'd known it was wrong from the beginning to fall for Jace. Jim had warned her. Maxie had warned her. Her own common sense had told her to avoid him like the plague. But he'd been so persistent, and finally she'd fallen like a ton of bricks. What a fool she was. Everyone else had been right all along. He was nothing but trouble for her.

  She very carefully put the articles away, but she kept the one about Jace. Slowly and methodically, she spread it out on the small round table. She dressed, packed the things she kept at Jace's place in her overnight case, and set it by the door. Then she sat down at the table to wait. It was almost two hours before she heard Jace's key in the door, but she didn't move a muscle the whole time.

  “Hi,” he said with a cheerful smile as he put down his briefcase. Then he noticed her strange, stony expression. She was pale, with bright red spots in the center of each cheek. His gaze went from her to the table where he saw the article. He didn't say a word, but his face lost all expression, and his eyes went flat and black. He waited.

  “Hello, Jace,” she said at last. “I have something to tell you.” She rose, leaning against the table. “There's something I guess you don't know about me. I respect loyalty. All my life I've hated backbiters and backstabbers, people who tear things down and don't even have the guts to say what they really think to people's faces. I never dreamed you'd end up being one of those.”

  Jace's eyes went to the article again. He began to speak, then seemed to think better of it and kept quiet.

  She felt as though the room were spinning. She'd been furious, but a small hope had lingered that he would be able to explain himself. That there would be some reason, some excuse.

  But no. He wasn't even going to try. All this time he had only pretended to support her, all this time he had been living a lie. She'd fallen in love with a lie.

  Finally he made a move toward her. “Kathy, I didn't mean for you to see that.”

  She backed away from him. “Obviously.”

  “Listen to me—”

  “No. No, Jace. I won't listen to you ever again.” She had her jacket ready and she put it on, heading for the door. She felt as though she were moving in a dream, in slow motion. Surely he would stop her. He would block her way, make a joke, tell her something that would make the horror fade away. She hesitated at the door, waiting, but he didn't make a move to stop her. She turned back, her eyes full of hurt and outrage. “How could you, Jace? I trusted you. How could you?”

  He didn't say a thing. Standing very still, he seemed to be waiting for her to leave. She'd loved him so much, and now he seemed like a stranger.

  There were not enough tears in the world to wash away her feelings. Fury raged through her. Anger jangled every nerve. Bitterness burst inside her and burned with a bright flame. “I'm going to show you,” she cried at him. “I'm going to show you all!”

  Finally he moved toward her again.

  “Kathy,” he began. “Don't go. . . .”

  “I've got to go, Jace. I don't want to see you ever again.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN:

  Affirmation

  For the few weeks remaining until the Games, she worked as though she were possessed. Instead of dissipating, her anger grew. To think she could have been fooled so badly! To think she could have let herself fall under a male spell again! To think she'd almost let it ruin her chances to blot out the failure so much of her life had been.

  No way. No more. No one and nothing was as important as winning. She worked like
a robot. When Jim told her to do something, she did it. When he said workout was over, she said, “Just one more set.” She went right home and went to bed, got up and went back to workout, went to work at Jim's firm, went back to workout, went home and went to bed.

  All she thought about was swimming. She read swimming manuals and magazines, pored over meet results and statistics. She talked to Jim about swimming, talked to Maxie about Jim, and pretended there was no such person as Jace Harper. But just below the surface, Jace was always there. And she hated him so much for the way he'd betrayed her, she choked with rage every time she allowed herself to think of him.

  She'd believed in him. She'd loved him. She'd almost been ready to sacrifice everything for him.

  But she knew she should have realized the truth. Hadn't he been skeptical from the first? Hadn't he laughed that first time he'd watched her workout? Hadn't he tried to talk her out of going back after the operation? He'd never believed in her. He'd told others, behind her back, that she was still a failure.

  She'd show him. By God, she would show them all!

  Jim was worried about her new intensity, but he didn't dare say a word to her. He and Maxie talked about it but couldn't decide what to do. As for Jace, no one had seen him for a long, long time, and it was assumed he'd gone back to Los Angeles.

  They were coming down to the wire. Kathy went to one qualifying meet after another. She made the American team, but she was holding back. At least they all hoped she was.

  Finally it was time for the trip to Rome. She and Jim went ahead, Maxie followed a few days later. There was no sightseeing. The pool and the dining room were all Kathy saw. And the other swimmers.

  A few of the girls were friendly and interested in what she was trying to do, a few were hostile, most were indifferent.

  She kept up a cold, aloof front, but inside, her anger burned hot and bright. She would show everyone. She had to show them. If she humiliated herself here, she would have very little left to live for.

  She did well in the preliminary heats and moved up to the finals. She thought of nothing but swimming, putting up a firm wall in her mind against any other thoughts.

  “I'm shaving down,” she told Jim the morning of the final.

  He nodded. Getting rid of body hair not only helped lower water resistance, it gave the swimmer a psychological boost.

  “And I'm cutting my hair.”

  “What?” That shocked him. Her long golden hair was her pride. He'd tried to get her to cut it in the beginning, but she'd never been willing to consider it before. “Are you sure?”

  Her gaze was steely. “It's now or never.”

  She went into the locker room, a pair of scissors in her hand. She stared in the mirror at her hair for a long moment. That fatal extra second opened a chink in the wall, and her mind flew to Jace. He had loved her hair. She could still feel his fingers combing through it, his breath warming it as he pressed his face into its shimmering cloud.

  Coldly she cut off her thoughts, reached up, and cut off her hair mechanically, one clump at a time, until it was short and spikey around her head. She left the silky strands where they lay on the locker-room floor.

  The hours until the race passed slowly, but finally it was almost time. She began to loosen up, then dove in to do her warmup laps. As she was pulling herself out of the pool, her eye caught sight of a familiar face in the crowd. She looked again. The dark hair, kissed by the sun at the tips, the dark blue eyes—it was Jace, turning away as though he hadn't meant for her to see him. Her heart began to thump so hard she was afraid she was having a heart attack.

  “What is it?” Jim called from the sidelines.

  She turned to him, trying to catch her breath. “Jace. He's here.”

  Jim went pale. “Oh my God. You saw him?”

  She nodded. Why couldn't she catch her breath?

  Jim put a hand on her arm. “Are you going to be okay?”

  She looked him full in the face. “I don't know,” she said. “I just don't know.”

  She still loved Jace. Even as she hated him, she loved him. Why had he come here to ruin everything? Why couldn't he have stayed away? Did he want to be in on her big defeat? Did he want to be on hand to see his predictions fulfilled? Rage filled her again. She would show him. She had to.

  The warning bell rang. She walked over to begin stretching behind the blocks. Her heart was racing. This was it. Now or never. She was up on the blocks, lane six, not one of the top qualifiers. All she could see was the cool blue water before her. She adjusted her goggles, pulled her cap tighter, and then she was extended in the blocks and following the dictates of the gun.

  It was a fifty-meter pool, and her event was the fifteen-hundred meter freestyle. “Break sixteen minutes and you've got it made,” Jim was always saying. Well, she would try. Hell, she would do it!

  Pacing was everything in a long race like this. She hit the wall and turned, hit the wall and turned, and beside her, the others were doing the same. “Faster” came the signal, but she ignored it. She knew her pace as well as she knew her own breathing. She would stick to it. On and on and on. Her muscles began to tire, but not too much. Just enough. The girl next to her was a body length ahead, but that was all right. Kathy would make up the difference in the last hundred meters. On and on. Flip turn, glide, stroke, stroke, stroke. Was the crowd yelling? Probably, but she couldn't hear a thing. Was Jace watching? Yes. Of course he was. Her stroke got stronger. She was going to show him. Flip turn, glide, kick, kick, kick. She would show him, she would show him.

  The girl beside her fell away, and she barely noticed. It hardly mattered. She was on pace, going great, still feeling strong. She was on the last hundred, then the last fifty, and then she hit the wall and pulled herself up and saw the others coming in behind her, one after another. She looked up to find Jim's face on the sidelines. It was radiant. Only then did she believe that she had done it. And all emotion seeped out of her like the air out of a spent balloon.

  It was over. She'd done it. And her world record was the icing on the cake.

  She didn't remember how she got out of the pool. People were congratulating her on all sides. She moved in a fog, hardly knowing what she was doing, what she was saying. She got to Jim and leaned down, and he hugged her so hard she was afraid he would break a rib. Maxie was jumping up and down. And Jace . . .

  Jace was there, with the others. His eyes were dark, wary. She looked at him. She'd done it. She'd showed him, shown them all. But suddenly that didn't matter anymore. The only thing that mattered was Jace.

  He'd betrayed her. Lied to her. Left her when she needed him most. But all she saw was his wonderful face, the light in his dark, cloudy eyes, and she reached a hand toward him. “Jace . . .”

  His arms were around her, and his face was in her short wet hair, and he was laughing, and she was crying.

  “You did it,” he murmured to her, as full of triumph as she was. “You did it, Kathy. I knew you could.”

  “I did it,” she whispered and lifted her face. She needed his kiss. His mouth was heaven against hers. “I did it,” she repeated, in a daze. “Oh, Jace, I wish you'd believed in me.”

  He stiffened. His hands went to her shoulders, and he set her back a bit so that he could look straight into her face.

  “I did believe in you, Kathy. Not quite from the first, but almost.”

  She gazed at him, bewildered. “No . . . no, you didn't. You left when I needed you most—”

  Jim stopped her with his hand on her arm. “Listen to me, Kathy. He's been here all the time. Did you really think he would desert you? He's been watching from the distance, but he's been here.”

  She turned to stare into his eyes, looking for truth. “You didn't go back to L.A.?”

  He shook his head. “Are you kidding? I had to be near you.”

  “Don't you see, you little fool?” Jim crowed. “He did it on purpose. We all knew you needed something to get you back on track. And when you found that
article . . .”

  She felt as though events were swirling past too quickly for her to grasp their meaning. “You knew about that?”

  Jim nodded. “Jace came to me right after it happened and told me all about it, all about what he planned to do. You found that article, and he realized anger and hurt were helping you focus again. He decided to let you go on thinking he was a traitor if that would help get your will to win in gear.”

  “But that article . . .” It still hurt to think he could have told those things to a reporter.

  “I gave that interview back last summer when I first knew you,” Jace said. “The writer used what he'd got from me then and incorporated it into the article he printed later, blending the two stories. I did believe those things back then, Kathy. But by the time the article came out, I certainly didn't any longer. I had total faith in you.”

  “But why did you keep all those negative articles?”

  He reached into a briefcase he had along and brought out a bound notebook. “For this,” he told her. “At first I was just keeping them away from you, because I didn't think they would do your morale any good. But then I decided to keep them together, to remind you that you proved them all wrong.”

  “You really did believe in me.” She was finally getting the message. She'd spent so long resenting his defection, she could hardly assimilate this new way of looking at things. “Jace, you didn't desert me.”

  He drew her hand to his lips and kissed it, watching her all the while with love in his eyes. “Never,” he said simply.

  “I love you,” she said, loud and clear. “Jace, it's over now. I can say it.”

  His crooked grin sent a shiver through her heart. “I know it. I've always known it.” He pulled her close. “Just like you know I love you.”

  Maxie had tears in her eyes, but Jim had a more sarcastic nature. “If you two have finished plighting your troth, they want us to get out of here. The next event is preparing to take the field.”

  Jace put an arm around Kathy's shoulders to lead her out. He looked out at the waiting press. “What about it? Are you going to be vindictive?”