“Anyone who’s ever been to the movies would have recognized the scene. I took it almost verbatim from Pop’s performance in Speak No Evil. He won the Oscar, for Pete’s sake.”
“Just your luck to give an Oscar-winning performance to a policeman who believes Dragnet was the only good movie to come out of Hollywood in the last decade.”
She slumped on the uncomfortable wooden bench. “I knew it was pointless to expect you to understand.”
“I understand, Gentry, but I can’t find it in my heart to offer you much sympathy. If you’d just kept a handle on your temper, you could have been in the hotel suite right now, listening to Harris shake the rafters with his snoring. And I could have been snug in my own bed, dreaming of a cure for deviated septums.”
Her sigh was uncharacteristically regretful. “You’re right, Jake. I have no right to complain when I dragged you into this. You were wonderful to stay with me at the hospital and afterward and…I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have lost my temper, no matter what Sergeant Orange said to me.”
He didn’t think he’d ever heard that note of humility in her voice before. Maybe she really was sorry. “Would you repeat that, please?” he said. “I’m not sure I heard you correctly.”
“I said, I’m sorry.”
“No, not that. The part where you described me as…how did you phrase it…uh, wonderful. Wasn’t that the word?”
She cut her gaze to him. “You must have misunderstood. I would never refer to my ex-husband as wonderful.”
“I’m not your ex-husband, remember? That marriage was wiped out, expunged from the record, it never happened.” He crossed his arms at his chest and leaned his head against the concrete block wall behind him. “So, you can describe me as wonderful. Unless, of course, you’d prefer to substitute something else, like, oh, let’s say…magnificent.”
A small, husky, hollow note of humor tripped from her lips. “Why am I laughing?” she said. “Nothing that has happened tonight is the least bit funny.”
“Don’t give up hope. The night isn’t over yet.”
Leaning back beside him, she drummed her fingers against her tweed-covered arm, unconsciously brushing his sleeve with each rhythmic tap, sending a ripple of quiet pleasure through him with her familiar nearness. “You know,” she said slowly, “now that I think about it, there is something funny about what happened tonight.”
He nodded. “You know, you’re right. When Mrs. Deets put her ear close to Sonny’s mouth to see if he was breathing, and he broke the sound barrier with a sudden snore, I thought seriously about laughing aloud. Probably would have, if the hotel doorman hadn’t been frisking me for concealed weapons at the time.”
Gentry shook her head. “No, the funny thing is that after all that’s happened, I still don’t know what you were doing at the country club. I’m not sure if my friends used you to try and trick me into putting on the wedding dress, or if you were there for some other reason.”
“I had a sudden desire to apply for membership.”
“Stick to the facts, Jake.”
“Okay, Cleo had a sudden desire to become a member.”
“She’s already a member, by virtue of belonging to Ben.”
“Well, there you have it, then. She wanted to play a few holes of golf. Practice her follow-through.”
“They don’t allow dogs on the greens.”
“No wonder she wanted to wait until after dark.”
“Tell me why you crashed the party, Jake, or I’ll convince Sergeant P. Henry Orange you have facts you’re trying to conceal.”
“That isn’t funny, Gentry. I knew Harris would have a detrimental effect on your sense of humor.”
“Leave Sonny out of this.”
“Believe me, I’d like to, but you insist on keeping him around.”
“As if you care.”
He turned his head to look at her, wondering if she regretted the abrupt way their marriage had ended. If maybe she, too, wished they hadn’t given up quite so easily. “I care, Liz. I care very much.”
Sighing, she closed her eyes and continued to rest her head against the gray wall, her hair a bright splatter of color against the dreary concrete blocks. “You know, Jake, when I left the Two-Penny Lodge that day, it never occurred to me you wouldn’t be hot on my heels. Imagine my surprise when two weeks later, you hadn’t even phoned to see if I made it home all right.”
So, the breakup was his fault. The responsibility, his. If only he’d followed her…If only he hadn’t been too proud to make a second conciliatory gesture…“Did it ever occur to you that the phone lines run both ways, Liz? You could, at least, have acknowledged my apology.”
She opened her eyes. “What apology? You surely don’t mean that cryptic little note you didn’t even bother to sign.”
“What note? I sent a package.”
“No, you didn’t. You sent a card that read ‘Hasta la Vista, Baby! Bon Voyage, Goodbye and Lots of Luck!’ Sentiments courtesy of Hallmark. I thought at the time that the least you could have done was draw in a happy face.”
“I didn’t send a card, Gentry,” he said. “And what makes you think I was happy when you left?”
“Oh, right. I remember what you said during that last fight.”
“Well, refresh my memory, because I don’t.”
“I don’t remember exactly, but it was something about how all I wanted was to change you into the kind of man you detested, that I expected you to make all the concessions and that only a spineless idiot would agree to the kind of life-style I was demanding, and that you weren’t about to become a henpecked husband, and that I should stop trying to destroy your individuality and spend my free time learning how to cook a decent meal.” She pressed her hands together, fingertip to fingertip, and brought the resulting pyramid to rest beneath her chin. “At least, I think that was the gist of it.”
Jake didn’t remember the quarrel quite that way, but in the interest of discovery, he decided not to offer his version. “So what part of it sent you packing? My defense of male individuality or the remark about learning to cook?”
“It was your untimely decision to go fishing. I decided, if you could run away from the problem, then so could I.”
“And all this time I thought you left because you were too stubborn to admit I was right about your cooking.” Her lips tightened at that and he bit back a surge of satisfaction. If she could still get mad at him, maybe…“In all honesty, Liz, I did not send that card.”
“Then who did? And don’t call me Liz.”
“Don’t be so touchy, Gentry. As for the card, I don’t know who sent it. Maybe one of the guys at the lodge. Phil or Seth, maybe. You have to admit you didn’t go out of your way to be friendly to them.” Annoyance crackled in the gaze she turned on him. “Okay,” he said. “So they didn’t exactly roll out the welcome mat for you, either.”
“I’m sure they were ecstatic when I was gone and the Two-Penny Lodge could return to its fishing fraternity atmosphere.”
“It didn’t. For better or worse, nothing was the same after you left, Gentry. Especially me.”
A moment clipped past. Two patrolmen walked past the bench. Then, unexpectedly, her hand closed over his, a gentle touch, there on the hard wooden bench. “Why didn’t you come after me?” she asked. “Were you too proud to admit you missed me?”
“I was too proud to go running after a woman who barely got my wedding band off her finger before she replaced it with another man’s engagement ring. I couldn’t believe it when Ben told me you were planning to marry Harris. Six weeks, Liz. You waited only six weeks before you were right back where I found you…planning a wedding to the wrong man.” He withdrew his hand from hers. “I suppose that’s one way to cover up your failures. Pretend they never existed to begin with.”
A pay phone shrilled a few feet away. A stack of folders fell off a desk and spilled across the floor. Someone stepped on the papers, then stooped to pick them up. No one made a move to answer the
phone. Gentry, he knew, wasn’t going to answer him, either.
“What was in the package?” she asked finally, as if it mattered.
“A fish.”
“A fish?”
He shrugged, somewhat self-consciously. “I figured you’d know it was my way of saying I’d rather have you hit me between the eyes with a trout, than be without you.”
She laughed, but he detected the quiver of tears in the sound. “No wonder I never received it,” she said. “That package was probably in the trash ten seconds after it was delivered. Didn’t you think a fish might be a slightly smelly way to apologize?”
“I knew you’d understand. Besides, I packed that baby for travel. He should have been fresh as a daisy when the package arrived.”
“Fresh as a daisy.” She fell silent as she watched a harried-looking woman walk past, followed by a sullen teenage girl. “I’m glad you told me,” she said with a sigh. “Even though it is all water under the bridge now.” Her shoulder brushed across his upper arm as she shifted her position on the bench and tucked one long, graceful leg beneath her. “You still haven’t explained what you were doing at the country club tonight.”
He shrugged, the answer really no longer relevant. “Maybe I wanted to be there to toast your happiness,” he said. “Or maybe I hoped I’d have an opportunity to kiss the bride.”
“That’s not done until after the ceremony.”
“You don’t honestly believe Sonny would let me get that close to you on your wedding day, do you? Besides, I’m not staying for the wedding.”
“You’re not?” Her voice registered dismay.
“I’m going back to the lodge tomorrow evening.”
“But you wanted to see Ben and meet Sara.” Her protest gave him hope, but not much. “You could stay until they arrive on Friday evening.”
He shook his head. “I’ll see them another time. I have no business hanging around here now. As Hillary would say, it simply isn’t the proper thing to do.”
“Since when have you cared what’s proper or what anyone else thinks?”
“Since when have you changed your mind about the warmth of my welcome here? When I first arrived, you were adamant that I had to leave. Now that I’m prepared to go, you seem to want me to stay.”
“It does sound that way, doesn’t it.” She wrinkled her nose with rueful self-honesty. “I guess it is that way, Jake. I don’t want you to leave, but I don’t want you to stay, either. You shouldn’t have come here at all. Then, again, having this conversation was a good thing. I needed to know that, in your own offbeat way, you tried to apologize…even if it doesn’t make any difference now. It’s important to come to closure on past relationships. Don’t you agree?”
He couldn’t believe she said that so calmly, as if it were simply a matter of dotting an i or shutting a door. “Oh, absolutely,” he said, repressed anger kicking in like a salesman’s foot trying to keep a door from closing. Before she could fathom his intent and avoid it, he grabbed her shoulders, jerked her into his arms and captured her lips in a nonnegotiable kiss. A kiss he intended to demonstrate what he thought of the closure she wanted. A kiss he planned for her to remember long after he was gone. A kiss he would accept as final payment on the debt of pain she’d left him.
She sighed and surrendered, her hands softly slipping around him, her lips cleaving to his with candid familiarity. In an instant, the kiss ignited with raw, unbridled emotion, swiftly circumvented the safety net of his anger, and exploded with the passion he had kept too long suppressed. Closure? Who the hell were they kidding?
Gentry had no time to prepare, no time to blurt out an objection, no time to consider…as if time would have made a difference. The moment his fingers gripped her shoulders, she was turning toward him. Before his lips could descend on hers, she was lifting her face to receive him. Her body anticipated his nearness and curved eagerly to meet it. She was as helpless to prevent her response as she was to deny it.
With long-belated words, he had kicked out the supports of her self-absorbed anger. For two years now, she had nursed her resentment, fed her hungry heart the message that Jake didn’t care where she was or what she did. He didn’t want her back. Then, out of nowhere, he offered the truth. He’d sent a trout to offer his apology. A rather sweet gesture of conciliation no one except the two of them would understand. And she had answered with some nonsensical statement about bringing closure to their relationship.
She deserved the punishment in this kiss, had earned the anger that pushed against her and, paradoxically, pulled her closer. The noisy room, the phone that kept ringing and ringing, the activity, the people…all of it faded into fantasy as he became the only reality she knew. His lips moved over hers with absolute possession, refusing to accept less than her wholehearted response.
As if she had any other choice. Their passion was a two-edged sword, pushing and pulling at them as if they were magnets, drawn inexorably together in one direction and forced apart in the other. She was compelled by forces she could neither embrace nor resist, caught between the powerful pull of their attraction and the stubbornness that pushed them apart.
Regardless of what Jake believed, she hadn’t left him because they’d quarreled. Nor had she walked out in a fit of temper because he had chosen to go fishing instead of discussing their problem. She had left him because she had seen her failures mounting in his eyes, imagined them stripping the love from his heart and replacing it with empty disappointment. She couldn’t cook, didn’t do housework, knew less than nothing about fish and how to catch them, didn’t know how to talk to his friends or the guests at the lodge, and had nothing but time on her hands. Nothing she wanted to do was right, every suggestion she made was turned aside, her opinions weren’t asked and barely noted when given. Jake had wanted her with him, but he didn’t want her to make any changes in him or in his surroundings. So she’d grabbed the first opportunity to walk away while she still had the dignity to do so.
But dignity hadn’t stopped her from missing him. She’d missed the feel of his mouth on hers, the sensual tango of their lips and tongues, the perfect oneness she felt only in his arms, the sense that if her heart stopped then and there, his heart would take over and beat for both of them. Maybe it already had. Maybe that was the reason she felt the rhythmic cadence and couldn’t tell if it was his or hers.
His arms drew her closer, lifting her partially off the bench, fitting her body against his in a mutual and mind-altering embrace. She might have been anywhere. In a desolate cave or a busy jail. It might have been midnight. Or noon. She wasn’t aware of time or place, or of other people approaching or passing by, or of the attention they might be attracting. She knew only three heart-stopping facts. Jake was here. She was in his arms. His kiss was everything she knew of heaven.
“I’ve heard that strange things go on at the police station, but I had no idea just how strange.” Sydney’s voice was like a splash of cold water on an overheated radiator, and Gentry jerked out of Jake’s arms as if she’d been burned.
“S-Sydney.” Her voice sounded guilty. “What are you doing here?”
“I thought I was here to comfort and support you through your miserable ordeal, but it appears you’ve already figured out how to reduce your misery.”
Gentry felt the telltale flush heat her face. “I was…we were just, uh…”
“Yes,” Sydney said. “I noticed.”
Sergeant Orange stepped up behind her, pushed his glasses back on his nose and frowned down at Gentry. “Here’s a question for you. If the guy back at the hotel really is your fiancé, how come you’re playing kissee-face with this guy?” Hands on his gun holster, he seemed quite taken with this turn of events, supporting as it did, his original theory. “Now, which one of you is gonna crack first and tell me what’s really going on?”
Jake looked at Gentry. “How many Oscars did Charlie win?”
“Four, in all. Two Best Actor, one Best Supporting and a Best Director.”
“MY FAVORITE WAS the scene from Cowboy Alley. When you snarled and said, ‘I always wanted to shoot the sheriff,’ I swear P. Henry nearly wet his pants with excitement.” Sydney closed the car door and started walking—in stockinged feet—with Jake toward the house, setting the locks and car alarm in an over-theshoulder shot with the remote.
Gentry hooked her fingers in the heel cups of her pearl gray pumps and fell into step beside them. “That was a spectacular performance, Jake. Pop would have been proud of you.”
“If I ever get tired of fishing, maybe I’ll take up acting,” he replied modestly.
“Don’t even think about it,” Sydney warned. “The only way I could convince Henry you weren’t career criminals with sick, twisted brains was to promise him two weeks of private instruction in the art of fly-fishing.”
“At the Two-Penny Lodge?” Jake asked with resignation.
“Well, you don’t want to commute between here and there to give him a few lessons, do you?”
“What?” Gentry tried to look shocked. “Sergeant Orange accepted a bribe?”
Sidney sighed dramatically. “I’m afraid the two of you ruined a promising career tonight. He was on a straight path to the Cop-of-the-Year Award. It’s tragic, you know, but he should have spent more time at the movies.”
Gentry laughed, sharing in the giddiness that, when she’d been younger, had always accompanied a return home after staying out all night. Even Sergeant Orange’s last words to her—”If I ever so much as see you step onto a street dressed like you are right now, it won’t matter whose daughter you are. You’ll be chewing the scenery from behind bars. Got that?”-seemed funny all of a sudden.
“Let’s go for a swim,” she suggested impulsively.
“In our clothes or out of them?” Sydney countered.
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