The ride to Sandy’s office didn’t take very long, but McCade put his head back anyway, closing his eyes and clearing his mind, hoping to fill in more of the blanks in his memory. He remembered there was a bartender, yeah, a really friendly guy by the name of…Peter? Smart guy, too, he thought, remembering that Peter had taken his keys away from him. Damn, if he had tried to ride his bike last night, he probably wouldn’t be alive right now. Worse yet, some innocent bystander might not be alive either.
Why had he let himself get so utterly drunk? It had been years since he’d done something so foolish. But he needed…McCade opened his eyes. The things he needed lately were so different from the things he’d needed in the past. He’d gotten nothing from last night’s ride on the highway. Instead of feeling a rush from the speed and the exhilaration of the road, he’d longed to be back at Sandy’s. He wanted to be in her bed. And not just for the sex, although that sure as hell wouldn’t have hurt. He wanted to hold her, to be with her, to love her. Man, he wanted to tell her she owned his heart.
For the first time in his life McCade wanted to stay. He wanted to stay with Sandy. Forever. He needed to stay. And the fact that she might not want him made him crazy. It scared the hell out of him.
So he drank last night to numb the fear. He got loaded and, the best he could figure it, woke her up and dragged her out of bed to give his sorry self a ride home.
Perfect.
They were scheduled to leave for the Grand Canyon this evening. He knew that Sandy’s day was filled with important meetings and phone calls and all the work she had to get done before leaving town.
So what did he do? He made sure she got only a few hours’ sleep. Yeah, he was a real prince.
The taxi pulled up in front of Video Enterprises, and McCade paid the driver and got out, careful not to bump his still-throbbing head.
Inside the building, the receptionist smiled at him, and he slowly headed down the long corridor that led to Sandy’s office. Her door was closed, and Laura sat outside at her desk like a secretarial bodyguard.
“She busy?” McCade asked.
Laura made a face. “Are you kidding?” she asked. “This is the first time I’ve been able to sit down all day. One of the cameras wasn’t tied down properly in the van, and its lens cracked. We’ve all been going nuts, trying to find a replacement part that will be here by the time the equipment leaves for points north at three o’clock. So, yeah, she’s busy. But she’s alone, if that’s what you really meant.”
McCade motioned to the intercom. “Will you, um, let her know I’m here. Tell her that I’d like to see her—if she’s got the time.”
Laura looked at him strangely. “You two have a fight? You usually just walk right in.”
“Just tell her, okay?” McCade’s hands were shaking, an aftereffect of having had too much to drink, and he shoved them in his pockets. Damn, he felt sick. “Please?”
Laura pushed down the intercom button and neatly relayed the information to the inner office.
Sandy didn’t bother to answer via the intercom. She simply opened her office door.
McCade caught his breath. She looked beautiful. She was wearing a loose-fitting white silk blouse, tucked into a baggy, pleated pair of khaki trousers that emphasized her slenderness. Her hair was swept up on top of her head in charming disarray. Strands of her curls were falling free around her face.
Yeah, she looked beautiful, but she also looked tired. And McCade was responsible for that.
She smiled at him, one eyebrow raised curiously. “Since when do you need an invitation to come into my office?” She stepped back so that he could come inside.
He turned to face her as she closed the door behind him. “I wasn’t sure you’d want to see me.”
Sandy turned to shut off the bright overhead lights and crossed to the window to close the blinds. The room became dim and soothing. “Better?” she asked, moving behind her desk.
McCade sat carefully in one of her guest chairs and took off his sunglasses. “Yeah. Thanks.” He took a deep breath. “I want to apologize,” he said, and her eyes flashed up and locked with his for one split second before she looked away again. Oh, Lord, he did have something to apologize for, didn’t he? But what?
His face was pale underneath his tan and Sandy noticed that he moved gingerly. He looked like hell, and he probably felt ten times worse, yet he’d dragged himself out of bed to come down here to see her. How much of last night did he remember? Her own words echoed in her head: If you still want to make love to me when you’re sober, just let me know.
He looked down at the sunglasses in his hand and played with the earpieces. Finally, he glanced back at her. “I want to apologize,” he repeated, “but to tell you the truth, I don’t remember exactly what it is I did that I need to apologize for.”
He didn’t remember. Thank God. Sandy straightened the papers on the top of her desk, lining up all the edges and corners. “If you don’t remember, then how do you know you did something that needs an apology?”
“I was hoping you could answer that. Do I need to apologize for anything besides waking you up in the middle of the night?”
She looked up at him again. “No.” She smiled very slightly as she shook her head. “You don’t.”
But McCade swore softly under his breath. “Yes, I do. I remember. I made you cry, didn’t I?”
Her silence was enough of an answer.
“I did.” He swore again.
“It was late,” Sandy said. “And I was tired—”
“What did I say?” he asked with dread. “Oh, damn, what did I do?”
“We had this exact same conversation last night. Just let it go, all right?”
“Sandy, I’m sorry,” he said, leaning forward. “Whatever I did, it upset you, and I’m sorry.”
“The apology’s unnecessary but accepted, okay?” she said lightly, then opened her desk drawer and fished inside for her car keys. She held them out to him. “Take one of the guys and go pick up your bike. It’s at a place called the Cactus Ranch down on the corner of Van Buren and Vine. I think Frank might be in the editing room. If not, Tom or Ed should be around here somewhere. One of them can drive my car back.”
McCade took the keys from her. “Thanks.”
“You think you’re going to have steady hands by five o’clock?” she asked.
“Gee, and I thought I was hiding the shakes so well.”
She laughed. “Seriously, McCade. Harcourt’s flying his Cessna up to the canyon. James is going with him, and they invited me and a cameraman along. It’s a great photo op—”
“You’re going to fly in a Cessna?” McCade was astonished, and rightly so. Sandy usually didn’t fly in large commercial jets, let alone tiny private airplanes.
“It’s a great photo op,” she said again, trying to convince herself as well. “I was counting on you being there for moral support, but if you can’t hold a camera steady—”
“I’ll be fine.”
“I can ask O’Reilly to do it.”
“I will be fine.”
Sandy’s intercom beeped and Laura’s voice said, “Mr. Vandenberg is here to review the footage from the shopping mall.”
Sandy pushed the intercom button. “Tell him I’ll meet him in the editing room.”
“That sounds like my cue to leave.” He stood up and put her car keys into his pocket. “Thanks for coming to get me last night.”
“Thanks for knowing you were too drunk to drive.”
McCade shook his head. “I’m afraid I can’t take credit for that. The bartender’s the one you should thank.”
“Then thank him for me.” Sandy crossed to the door and reached for the doorknob, but he put his hand against the smooth wood, holding it closed.
“I should kiss you good-bye,” he said.
Sandy’s heart did a quick three-sixty. “We’re alone, McCade. What’s the point?”
He gently touched her face. “You don’t look like a woman wh
o’s been kissed. Vandenberg’s going to notice that.”
“That’s silly,” she said weakly, but she didn’t move, couldn’t move as his mouth found hers.
It was a sweet kiss, gentle and soft, but laced with the same fire that had burned fiercely between them last night. Sandy remembered the way McCade had touched her, the feel of his hand on her breast.
He pulled away. “Now you can go.” He nodded in satisfaction. “Now you look kissed.”
Sandy pulled open the door. “We’re leaving for the airport at four-thirty,” she said briskly, to cover her embarrassment. “Pack enough clothes for several days and get back here. Don’t be late.”
McCade’s quiet chuckle followed her down the corridor.
She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror across from the elevators and stopped short. McCade was right. She did look kissed. Her eyes were bright, her face slightly flushed, her cheeks rosy, and her lips…
If one little kiss could make her look like this, how had she looked last night, after the two of them had tried to inhale each other in the front seat of her car? Thank God he couldn’t remember, because if he did, he would surely realize that she was in love with him.
Turning away from the mirror, she hurried toward the editing room.
As McCade stopped at a red light something reflected from the floor, catching his eye. Another button—the third one he’d found since he’d gotten into Sandy’s car.
“Whadidya find?” Frank asked idly as McCade’s fingers closed around it.
“Nothing.” He slipped it into the ashtray with the other buttons.
That was when the memory hit, slamming into him like a sledgehammer. It was fragmented, in pieces like a jigsaw puzzle, but there were enough to complete the picture. Sandy. McCade. Sitting in this very car. The eerie glow of predawn. Desire exploding inside of him as he kissed her. Buttons exploding off of her shirt as he roughly ripped it open—
“Mercy,” he muttered, holding tightly to the steering wheel.
“Light’s green,” Frank said.
McCade woodenly put the car into gear and drove through the intersection. What had he done? And why hadn’t Sandy said anything?
Sandy was sitting in an aluminum soda can with wings that was floating thousands and thousands of feet above the earth.
“What do you say,” McCade whispered into her ear, “in order to get some really good shots of Arizona from this altitude, I climb out on the wing and—”
“No!” she said before she realized he was teasing.
“Then I’m done shooting for a while.” He grinned at her and carefully set his camera down.
Harcourt was talking on the radio to the tower at the airport near the canyon, and James was in the other front seat reading his mail.
McCade slipped his arm around Sandy, pulling her close. “How’re you doing?” he asked quietly.
Sandy could see concern in his eyes and she made herself smile. It was shaky, but it was a smile. “Great,” she lied. Takeoff had been the worst. With McCade filming, she’d had no hand to hold, no fingers to squeeze. But he was trying to make up for that now.
“This plane is actually very safe,” he whispered into her ear. “You know we would have been at greater risk driving on the highway, and I’m not even talking about riding my Harley. I’m talking about driving a car. Hell, riding a bike would damn near quadruple the risk.”
“Thanks for telling me,” she muttered. “Now I’ll be scared to death whenever you ride your motorcycle.”
“I’m always very careful when I ride.”
“Careful people wear helmets,” she pointed out.
“It’s hard to look cool with a helmet on.”
“It’s even harder to look cool when you’re dead.”
“Point and game,” he conceded with a crooked grin.
His jean-clad thigh was pressed against hers, and he wore one of his standard black T-shirts underneath the bright red shell jacket Sandy had ordered him from the L. L. Bean catalog. He would have been more comfortable in his black leather jacket—she knew he wore this one for her.
Somehow, in the hours between the time he’d appeared in her office late that morning and the four-thirty ride to the airport, McCade had lost that sick, recently-hit-by-a-truck, hungover look. With the exception of slightly bloodshot eyes, she wouldn’t have known from looking that he had stayed up until dawn, drinking himself to the point of memory loss.
He smiled at her again, his eyes warm, his lean face creased with laugh lines. Sandy loved his face. Inwardly, she shook her head, admonishing herself. True, he was outrageously handsome, but there was more about McCade to love than just his face. Yeah, there was his body too…she snickered to herself as she remembered how wonderful it felt to dance with him, how great it was to have him hold her in his arms.
Still, James was handsome too. James also had a great body. But she didn’t love James, she loved McCade.
She loved McCade’s tough, streetwise attitude. She loved his quick sense of humor and his gentle kindness. She loved his fierce sense of loyalty, and his smart-aleck mouth that was equally able to get him both into and out of trouble. She loved his keen intelligence and sharp wit. She even loved all the things about him that normally drove her crazy—his over-protectiveness, his inability to keep from taking sides, the chip he still carried on his shoulder from all those years he was dumped on in middle school and high school, his attachment to the open road, and his aversion to settling down.
“This is what it feels like to be a bird,” McCade said. “Free and alive, and with an entirely different perspective of the world from the creatures that live on the ground.”
He might’ve been describing himself. Impulsively, she turned and kissed him lightly on the mouth.
McCade was shocked. He had never, not in a million years, expected Sandy to kiss him. Not while they were sitting in the back of a tiny airplane with her two most important clients in the front seat. No way.
But she had. For the first time since she had pushed him away in the movie theater, McCade allowed himself to hope that she could fall in love with him.
But then he frowned, remembering that disturbing memory he had of ripping her shirt open, buttons flying everywhere. Man, he wished he knew what had happened last night. He didn’t doubt that he’d been stupid—he was particularly good at that. He just wanted to know exactly how stupid he’d been.
“This isn’t so bad.” Sandy looked out the window at the mountains that seemed like a relief map so far below them. “You’re right about the perspective. Life makes more sense from this altitude. Everything that seems so huge down on the ground is really just laughably small, isn’t it?” She leaned back, resting her head against his shoulder. “Flying’s really not so bad. I could get used to this.”
Simon Harcourt took a separate car from the airport to his cabin, leaving James Vandenberg to drive Sandy and McCade to the motel. The technical crew of Video Enterprises was already waiting in the restaurant next to the motel when they arrived.
It was almost eight o’clock, and Sandy was nearly dizzy from fatigue and lack of food. McCade and James followed her into the restaurant, where they joined the crew. After ordering a quick dinner, she made sure everyone had the next day’s shooting schedule. If the weather allowed, they’d be hiking part of the way into the canyon with Simon Harcourt and his family. In that case, there would be a six A.M. wake-up call.
“What if it rains?” someone asked.
Sandy smiled. “Then Frank will let you sleep late. If it’s raining, we’ll meet here at noon for lunch, see what we can do with the afternoon—maybe get some interior shots of Harcourt’s cabin.”
As she ate the bowl of soup and salad that she’d ordered, the crew straggled out of the restaurant, some of them heading to their rooms across the parking lot in the motel, others heading to the dark little bar that adjoined the restaurant.
McCade and James had ordered hamburgers, and they’d both finished eati
ng while Sandy spoke to the crew. James excused himself, checking on the election-campaign volunteers who’d come to help with all of the little details of the shoot.
Sandy looked up to find McCade watching her. “Do me a favor?” she asked.
He nodded.
“Go over to the motel and check us both in.”
He pushed his chair back from the table. “Sure.”
Sandy finished her soup and salad then signed the check. She had just climbed tiredly to her feet and was about to hoist her overnight bag onto her shoulder when McCade reappeared. He took her bag in one hand, his bag in the other, and led her out of the restaurant into the parking lot. “Hey, Sandy?”
“No, McCade,” she said firmly. “That ‘Hey, Sandy’ sounded an awful lot like the precursor to bad news, and to tell you the truth, I’m too tired to hear it. Whatever it is, it can wait till the morning.” She looked at the numbered doors lining the long, two-story L-shaped motel. “What room am I in?”
“Two thirty-eight.”
That meant it was on the top floor. Good. There would be no tourists stomping around over her head at all hours of the night. And number 238 was down on the side of the L directly across the parking lot from the restaurant. It was near a stairwell too. She headed for her motel room, for her nice, clean motel-room bed, her soft motel-room pillow, and deep, oblivious sleep.
McCade was just a step behind her. “What room are you in?” she asked over her shoulder.
“Two thirty-eight.”
It took about four more steps, but the meaning of what McCade said finally penetrated her consciousness. She stopped walking and turned to face him.
“That’s what I was trying to tell you,” he told her apologetically.
She turned and looked toward the motel office, but he shook his head, anticipating her next move.
“I already tried, but they’re booked solid, there’s no other room available. I had them call the motel down the road, but they’re filled up too. I even tried the lodges out in the national park, but the people in the reservations office out there just laughed at me. If you want, I could squeeze in with Frank and O’Reilly.”
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