by BJ James
“It was there all along and I didn’t see it.” Valentina was whispering to herself, letting the idea grow as it would. “Erratic, unstable, compulsive. He paces when he talks on the telephone. A creature of ingrained habits. That’s it! That’s the key. Lewis is like Brown.”
“Ten puffs,” Rafe murmured, his voice hoarse with emotion, quoting her from a memory forever branded in his mind. “Not nine, not eleven. Ten.” Leaving the remainder unspoken, he addressed the present. “You’re thinking Lewis will keep strongly to habit under pressure. So many paces in each direction while he talks on the phone.”
“If we’re lucky.”
“Let’s say we are. If that’s the case, each pass by the window could be timed.”
“Each pass by the part of the window I can see,” she corrected.
“Yes, dammit! Part of the window.” And so long as Lewis didn’t suspect her presence, her purpose, he thought. The enormity of what she’d been asked to do, the impossibility of what was expected of her infuriated him. But his fury was a luxury Valentina couldn’t afford. It was his help, not his anger, she needed. “At best, even if he paces slowly, that would give you...how many seconds?”
“I don’t know.” Then honestly, “Not enough.”
“You have to anticipate. Lead him.”
“That’s right.”
“If you’re wrong, and you miss...”
“Betty Lewis is as good as dead.” Her face was grim, but she was the cool professional once more. The excitement of discovery calming, she had a job to do. A life to save.
“But if you don’t try...”
“She’ll die.” Valentina didn’t look at him again as she took up her weapon.
“That doesn’t make it any easier, does it?”
“Not for me, and not for her two little girls.” She was staring down at the window, engrossed again in the plight of a young mother, when she said in a level monotone, “I’m ready. Would you ask Simon to make the call? Explain that I need as long as he can give me to establish a pattern—if there is one. Tell him—” she hesitated, her tongue moving over dry, pale lips “—tell him, let’s make this count. I have a gut feeling time’s not on our side.”
Rafe was standing now, looking down at her. “Anything else?”
“Nothing,” she answered shortly, anxious that he go to Simon, to set into motion this last-ditch plan. A minute sped by, then she heard his footsteps crossing the bare floor. As a board by the door that always creaked protested his passage she called to him. “Rafe.”
The silence of total stillness told her he had stopped. Perhaps that he had turned back, that he waited. Her throat was suddenly clogged with emotion she couldn’t afford. Not now.
“Never mind,” she managed at last. The board creaked again. There was the murmur of guarded voices before she whispered, “Thanks.”
Simon’s response seemed to take an eternity. Finally she heard him saying, “Lewis, this is Simon McKinzie.”
She heard no more, but it was enough. His voice became a gruff drone fading into the background. Words she heard, but made no effort to distinguish. What Simon said was of little consequence. All that mattered was time. Time to seek out a pattern. To find its rhythm.
“All right, Bryson Lewis,” she muttered, her cheek against the stock of the rifle. “Do your thing,” she coaxed. “Come to the window. Yes. Yes! That’s it! Pace.” Beginning her count, she tracked Lewis’s brief passages by the sliver of window visible to her. Hardly daring to breathe, she counted, tracked, prayed. Counted, tracked, prayed. Then...
“Gotcha!”
She had the cadence. With instincts that set her apart, without thinking or understanding how, she knew the milliseconds of lead time, the trajectory. But not the margin for human whim.
Her finger squeezed gently on the trigger. “Don’t,” she whispered hoarsely, haltingly. “Don’t...break...habit... Now!”
She never heard the blast of the powerful rifle nor the shattering of glass. She never saw her target. Yet she knew the bullet had gone home, that Bryson Lewis would never harm anyone again. As she laid the rifle aside, she knew, as well, that she would never fire it again.
When she turned from the window, she found Rafe standing in the open doorway. Hair disheveled, face ashen. His eyes like green, fathomless pools, watching her with their worried gaze.
“It’s over, Rafe.”
“Thank God,” he muttered hoarsely. “And you.”
“You were right,” she said, neither noting nor comprehending his tribute. “This was the last time.”
Drawing a long, hard breath, Rafe found he could only nod. Oblivious of the commotion of Simon’s men deploying to complete the rescue, he said at last, “I suppose you have some thinking to do.”
“When it’s truly over, I will. After Lewis’s traps and gizmos have been defanged. Once I know for sure she’s safe.” The list dragged on. “After I’m debriefed.”
“But you’re all right, for now?”
“As all right as one can be when...”
“When a life has been saved,” Rafe interrupted determinedly.
“And one taken. I can’t forget that part.”
“No one expects you to.”
“But I’m supposed to deal with it.”
“Can you?”
“Yeah.” Her expression was grave, filled with sorrow. But there was strength in her voice. “This time I can.”
He wanted to go to her, wrap himself around her, but he held himself aloof. She was vulnerable now, and the choices she made must be hers. Not his. “You’ll be busy for some time.”
Valentina nodded. “With the investigation. The reports. With the counseling Simon requires.”
All she could cope with for a while. He would be excess baggage, a hindrance and a distraction. There was nothing more he could do here. Nothing he could do for her. Not yet. He made a sudden decision. “Then I’ll be on my way.”
Surprise flickered in her face. “Where will you go?”
Rafe managed a grim smile. “Not far. If you really want to find me, it shouldn’t be too hard.” He turned to go, then stepped back around. “I left some papers for you with Simon. Information I spent most of last night gathering.” Was it only last night he’d contacted Patrick, and between them called in every favor ever owed them, incurring a few along the way? With every one of them worth it. “I think you’ll find the report interesting reading.”
“What papers? What report?”
She was nearing the end of her stamina. He could see it in her stance, hear it in her voice. “Nothing urgent,” he assured her. “Get some rest. Do what Simon requires. When you have a moment and the inclination, read them.”
“Then what?”
“That, my love, I leave to you.” Standing as he was, he looked at her for a long while, his gaze touching her, caressing. “Be well, Irish.” His voice was deep, thoughtful. “Be happy.”
He left her then, standing in the middle of the barren room of a deserted hotel, more lost and alone than she’d ever been.
The island hadn’t changed. It came as a shock to her that it hadn’t. In the two weeks since she’d visited with Betty Lewis and her children, feeling the love between them, seeing the mending and sharing it, Valentina felt as if the whole world had altered. It had become, for her, a new world. One Rafe had given her.
“How long?” She glanced over her shoulder at Jeb Tanner.
“Five minutes less than the last time you asked.” He grinned at her from his place at the wheel of the small sloop he called Tanner’s Lady, for Nicole. “That makes it ten total.”
“Ten.” In ten minutes she would be in Rafe’s arms.
Jeb chuckled. “Nine minutes too long?”
“Nine and a half.”
“You know this is what you want? You’re sure now?”
“I’m sure.” A freshening breeze teased at the bill of the cap she wore. Catching at it, she tugged it lower, shielding her face from the sun. “Thanks
to you.”
“Hey, I just told the truth. But if it helped, I’m glad. Nicole sends her love and good wishes, by the way.”
“How is she?”
“A tittle queasy.” Jeb beamed. “The doctor assures us it will pass.”
“Does it scare you?”
“Having a baby?” He grew sober. “Scares the hell out of me.” Then he laughed. “I’m so damn proud I need a hat two sizes bigger.”
“Any regrets?”
“Only that it took so long to reach this point”
“Any doubts?”
“About the choices I’ve made? About my life as it is? Not one.” From his vantage, he watched her as she turned in profile to gaze at Eden, lying like an emerald in a sea of silver-capped turquoise. “It will be the same for you one day. I promise.”
Valentina kept her gaze on Eden. “I hope so.”
They were close. So close she could distinguish the small cabana on the strip of gleaming sand. A shanty, really, of posts and thatch. A respite from the sun for beachcombers and surf fishing. A shelter for making love after a lazy day of salt and sand.
“Coming here is a good beginning.” Pausing, Jeb added gently, “He loves you, Valentina.”
“I know.”
“He believes in you. The report was for you, not for himself.”
The report! The amazing, overwhelming body of evidence suggesting more than strongly, if not proving conclusively, that only a miracle could have saved David Flynn. Revealing facts and circumstance that, in her guilt, Valentina had pushed to the back of her mind. Though there would always be that painful margin of doubt, a burden as weighty as the planet had been lifted from her heart.
Gathering such a body of information, sifting through it, analyzing and organizing it into the crisply worded report was an astounding achievement. “I’ll never understand how he accomplished what he did in the length of time he had, Jeb.”
“Don’t try to understand. Just accept that he did. Just understand why.” Jeb saw no reason to expound on the exorbitant cost nor the number of teams of experts who worked through the night unearthing every file and every scrap of film of that day. The processes used to study and analyze what they’d found were too intricate and complicated to try. With a dismissing grin, he drawled, “Modern technology! Ain’t it grand.”
Valentina wouldn’t be sidetracked so easily. “If the report hadn’t been favorable, would I have seen it?”
Jeb grew solemn, giving her query the consideration it merited. “Yes.” He watched as her body stiffened. “You would have seen it.”
“Then what?”
“If you’re asking would Rafe had gone away? No, Valentina. Not in a million years, if fate would give him that long. Not unless you sent him away.”
“He left me before. Once Betty Lewis was safe.”
“He gave you space and the time you needed.”
“Is this a test, making me come to him?”
“A choice. Not a test.” A slight adjustment of course, and the sloop began the turn that would lead to the dock on the leeward side of the island. “A question for you, my dear.”
“All right.” She turned to him then, waiting.
“If the report had been different, if it hadn’t been favorable, would you have come to him? Would you be standing on the deck of Tanner’s Lady as you are today?”
Her fingers gripping the coaming, she looked again to the island. The small seaside garden that was Jordana’s favorite was briefly visible. Within its iron fence a young girl and a younger boy kept their eternal watch over it. Children of a century before, lost to the sea. A memory captured in bronze.
As David was a memory. The sweet memory he should be. If he could see her now, if he was there in the billowing, ever-changing clouds, he would be smiling down at her. She was certain of it.
“And I would be here.” She spoke the thought aloud. To Jeb. To herself. “Rafe has given me back my life. But without him to share it, what would any of it be?”
Then, soundlessly, to the wind, to her first love, she whispered, “I love him, David.”
Closing her eyes against the ache of loss, she said goodbye.
Then Tanner’s Lady was nudging the dock, and strong arms were reaching for her. Enfolding her. The voice she loved above all else murmured thickly, “Welcome home, Irish.”
“We should be thinking about getting up and getting dressed.”
“Why?” Rafe teased and leaned over her to kiss her bare breast and then her laughing lips. “I like you much better lying in bed and undressed.”
“Ahh, that being the case, you shouldn’t have planned this splendid ceremony and its great surprise.” With a subtle shift of her body against his, Valentina paid him back in kind. “The bride and groom can hardly while away the morning in bed when guests will be arriving at any second.”
“We can’t?”
“It doesn’t seem quite proper. Traditionally, the groom shouldn’t even see the bride before the ceremony.”
Rafe chuckled as he looked down at her, naked and tousled and desirable. “Then you intend to be a very proper, very traditional bride?”
“Hardly. It’s a little late for proper and traditional, wouldn’t you say?” Valentina laughed, too, the smoky, sexy laugh he loved. Then almost lost the thought as his clever mouth explored the new and ever sweeter paths his gaze had taken. Catching handfuls of his hair, she dragged his mouth back to hers. “We shouldn’t,” she protested between yearning kisses. “We really shouldn’t.”
“No?”
“No.” Even in denial, her eyes sparkled in delight.
Her days on Eden, then at her lodge, had been filled with wonder and passion, magnified by the excitement and great mystery surrounding the planned festivities. Her family would be coming from scattered parts of the world: her parents from their part of the bay, Patience and Matthew from their ranch in Arizona, Tynan from Montana, Kieran from Egypt, and Devlin from wherever the message found him.
The McCallums were coming from Sedona, Jeb and Nicole from Charleston, and Simon from his mountain retreat. With him would be Mitch and Katherine Ryan, and Hunter and Raven Slade.
The party grew: the mystery deepened.
Even Hattie had to agree to a rare sojourn from her beloved Eden to attend the preparations and work her culinary magic. And magic it seemed, indeed.
All very intriguing. All very exciting. But nothing to compare with waking up each morning with Rafe at her side. With the memory of his love like a dream come true.
“The morning’s young yet.” Rafe kissed her throat and nibbled at her ear. “I couldn’t change your mind?” Dancing fingertips traced the line of her throat, the crest of her breast, and came to rest on the flat plane of her belly. “Or prove how wrong you are?”
“Well.” Sighing in mock uncertainty, she shifted again, not so subtly. Her palms skimmed over his bare chest, her nails curling into the duck pelt swirling in a narrowing spiral to the sheet that barely covered his hips. “You could try.”
“I could, but on second thought, you’re right.” Levering away from her, he rolled to the edge of the bed. “We shouldn’t.”
“Rafe Courtenay, you devil!” Catching at his arm as he pretended to rise, she drew him back. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay right here, in this bed, and finish what you started.”
“I will?” His smile was wicked as he returned to her.
“Indeed. Considering.”
“Ahh, I see. Considering.” A brow tilted over green, blazing eyes. “That you want me madly, I suppose.”
“How did you know?”
“Lucky guess.”
The teasing suddenly gone from her, she looked into his searing gaze. “You don’t need to guess. You never have to guess.”
In a whirl of tousled sheets, he tumbled with her. “Show me.” Lifting her over him, he eased her down, letting her take him, all of him. “Finish what I started.” His voice was rough with desire only she could a
nswer. An ache only she could ease. “Make love to me, Irish.”
“Yes and yes and yes.” Leaning over him, she let the sway of her body and the brushing caress of her hair tease him. And then her lips, the tips of her breasts. In dappled morning light she was glorious. “My love, Mr. Courtenay, and my pleasure.”
“Wrong again.” He drew her down to him as quickening shudders began to build within him. In whispers against her trembling lips, as he took her deeper into ecstasy that found its mate in him, he promised, “Ours, Mrs. Courtenay. Always and forever ours.”
“Always.” Valentina sank into his embrace, sated, content, happier than she ever thought she could be. “And forever.”
Beyond mullioned windows, a blue heron stalked the edge of the lawn. The morning sun shone down on a world in full blaze of autumn, while the tidewater of the Chesapeake lapped in its everlasting cadence at the shore. From the kitchen of the lodge, Hattie’s voice lifted in song as she worked, readying for this special day.
A day to celebrate.
Thirteen
She stood on the shore, the sound of the tide surrounding her, supplanting the laughter of departed family and friends. Reaching out, she stroked the smooth folds of a gown of bronze. “She’s beautiful. Much more than I ever dreamed she could be. A surprise worth all the mystery and intrigue, and my banishment from the shore since we came from Eden.
“I won’t ask how you managed all of this.” In an encompassing circle, Valentina included the sculpture, newly set stepping stones, and plantings that created the small seaside garden. Caressing Rafe’s cheek, she smiled. “I’ve discovered you can accomplish anything you set your mind to, in a heartbeat and a blink of an eye.”
Keeping her hand briefly in his, he turned his mouth into her palm. A kiss as tender as the look in his eyes. “She could be you,” he said thoughtfully. “The moment I saw her at the gallery, though Hunter had never met you or even seen you, I knew she was you.
“Serendipity or fate, expressed in an artist’s vision?” There was gentle irony in the curve of his smile. “I’ve always been the emphatic realist, but I’ve no explanation for her...except that she was meant to be, and that one day she would come here.”