McCade was more amused than annoyed. “How ya doing?” He smiled at the elderly man, carefully keeping his stance loose and nonaggressive. He crossed to the counter and rested his hands on it, giving the man a silent message: See? No weapons, no threat. “I’m in the market for a ring,” he said, and the shop owner relaxed noticeably. “Something with a diamond.”
“May I inquire as to the occasion?” the store owner politely asked after clearing his throat.
“Yeah. I’m looking for an engagement ring.”
He couldn’t keep what he knew was a goofy smile off his face, and the little old man smiled back and led him to another counter.
He saw the ring he wanted to get Sandy immediately. It was a single diamond, cut traditionally, in a six-prong setting with a plain gold band. “That one.” He pointed down at it.
The old man started to look nervous again. “Perhaps we should start by determining your price range, sir,” he said so very tactfully.
“Uh-oh. How much?”
It took a great deal of throat clearing before the words emerged. “Three thousand nine hundred and—”
“Can I pay in cash?” McCade interrupted him, “or should I put it on my gold card?”
When Sandy pulled into the carport after work, McCade’s bike was gone. It didn’t mean anything, she told herself, trying to quell the nervous feelings that were starting to tighten her chest. So his motorcycle was gone, big deal. He’d gone out somewhere, shopping or something. Or…out for a ride.
On the highway, maybe? To feel the wind in his hair and the road beneath his wheels? To again taste the freedom he was lacking these days?
She’d stopped at the grocery store on the way home, and now she carried the bags of food up to her apartment, trying not to think. McCade had gone to the store. That’s all. She refused to consider the possibility that he’d gotten on Route 10 heading out of town. But of course it was possible that he had, and it was possible that the pull of the open road had been too strong, and if that was the case, then he was already in New Mexico.
Purposefully calm, she put the key in the lock, turned it, and opened the door. She wouldn’t allow herself to rush to the front closet to see if McCade’s black leather jacket was still hanging there. She took the groceries into the kitchen, set the bags on the counter, and—
His jacket was hanging on the back of one of the kitchen chairs. He couldn’t have gone far. He never would have left without his jacket.
Relief made her dizzy, and with the relief came a wave of anger—anger at herself. McCade might be a wanderer, he might be free and easy with his affections, he might be a lot of things, but he wasn’t the kind of man who would leave without saying good-bye.
Sandy put the frozen fruit bars she’d bought into the freezer, then pushed the button on the answering machine and listened to her phone messages as she stored the rest of the groceries.
There was a cheerful message from her mother in Florida, just calling to say hello, thanking her for a birthday present.
Frank had called right after she left the office. He wanted to talk to McCade—something about a major-league baseball trade had him all excited.
The last message on the machine was also for McCade. Sandy was running water into the big pasta pot, starting dinner, but she turned off the faucet to listen.
“Yes, this is Graham Parks from GCH Productions out in Santa Monica. I’m looking for Clint McCade. I need a cameraman for a project that starts in less than two weeks out in Key West, in Florida. It’s a documentary we’re producing for the Underwater Communications Group about their dolphin language studies. I got your name from Harry Stein at Soundwave Studios, he said you’ve done some underwater work before and that you’re a certified diver. I realize this is very last minute, but the guy I had lined up had an accident, his leg is in traction, and, well…The shoot should be completed in three or four weeks. I really hope you’re available. Call me ASAP.”
Parks left his number and the answering machine beeped twice. There were no other messages.
Sandy stood at the sink, staring sightlessly at the pot of water she still held.
This project started in less than two weeks.
Less than two weeks.
It couldn’t have been a more enticing offer. Clint had done a number of underwater shoots before, and they were among his very favorites.
Sandy turned to look at the answering machine, tempted to push the erase button, to make the message disappear. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t do it to McCade, and she couldn’t do it to herself—if she did, she’d always believe he’d stayed with her because he didn’t know there was a better offer in Florida. No, she couldn’t make the message disappear. She had to play it for him.
And then McCade would disappear.
McCade could smell the spaghetti sauce cooking as he came into the condo. Sandy was in the kitchen, making a salad. She glanced up at him. “Hey. You’re back.”
She’d changed out of her work clothes and was wearing cutoffs and a halter top. He came up behind her and pushed her hair off her shoulders.
“Hey?” He kissed her lightly on the neck. “That’s all the greeting I get today?”
She turned and stood on her toes to kiss him. He pulled her in close and didn’t release her, deepening the kiss until he felt her relax against him. “That’s much better,” he said as he smiled into her eyes.
“Where’d you go?”
McCade hesitated, not wanting to tell her he’d been to the jewelers. “Oh, you know,” he told her vaguely. “Just out.”
Sandy pulled free from his arms, turning her attention to the salad. “Riding around?” she asked with her back to him.
“Yeah.” He gladly grabbed that as an alibi. It wasn’t as if he was really lying. He did ride his motorcycle to and from the store.
“Oh.”
McCade lifted the lid on the pot that held the sauce. Man, it smelled great. He reached around her to wash his hands in the sink. Sandy had already put several woven place mats on the kitchen table, and he fished in the silverware drawer for forks and knives, and set them on the table along with two napkins.
“There’re a couple of messages for you on the machine,” Sandy told him, still focused on the salad. “The last two.”
She heard him cross to the answering machine as she concentrated on cutting up a cucumber. He’d been out riding his bike, with no destination in mind, the way he did when he was feeling restless. After McCade heard the message from that Graham Parks guy, he was as good as gone.
The tape chirped as he rewound it.
The message from Frank played, then came the job offer.
Sandy didn’t turn around, but she heard McCade become very, very still as he listened. And then she heard the sound of a pen on paper as he wrote down the phone number. She waited for him to speak, but he didn’t. He was looking at her—she could feel his eyes, even though her back was turned.
“You can return his call in the bedroom if you want.” To her relief her voice came out level and calm.
“Sandy.”
She turned around slowly. McCade was standing near the counter that held the answering machine, the piece of paper with Graham Parks’s phone number in one hand. He used the other hand to push his hair back from his face.
She couldn’t look at him without wanting to touch him, to run her own fingers through his sun-streaked hair, to wrap herself around him, to hold on tight and never let go—
“You could come too.” His eyes looked turquoise in the early-evening light that filtered through the kitchen window. “Key West is beautiful,” he said. “You’d love it there. We could make it a…a vacation. We could even take a couple of days on one end and visit your mother.”
“There’s no way I can take three or four weeks off.” Sandy turned, busily wiping her hands on the towel looped around the refrigerator-door handle.
“Sure, you could,” he argued. “Frank’s chomping at the bit, dying to do some producin
g of his own. Leave him in charge, he’ll do a great job—”
“It wouldn’t be a vacation—you’d be working.”
“You could assist me. Or better yet, have your own camera. We could swim with dolphins, Sand. It would be so great. Let me talk to Parks—”
“I’ve never gone scuba diving.” Sandy didn’t want to be having this conversation. “I’m not qualified. I never even really learned to swim—you know that. I can’t do more than a doggy paddle. It wouldn’t work.”
“Yes, it would—”
“No, Clint. It wouldn’t.”
“Aw, come on. Dolphins, Sandy—”
“You’re a big boy, McCade,” she said sharply. “You don’t need me to go along. Just call up Parks and tell him you’ll take the job.”
The timer buzzed angrily, and Sandy reached across the stove to turn it off.
McCade watched her drain the bubbling pot of pasta into the colander in the sink. “I may not need you to come along,” he finally said, “but I want you to.”
Sandy felt tears sting her eyelids. Oh, God, she thought, don’t let me cry. “Maybe I could take a week…” But then what? Then she’d have to get back on a plane, all alone, and fly back to Phoenix, all alone. And wait, all alone, wondering if McCade was going to return, or if he was going to find some new, incredibly fascinating project to work on. Three or four weeks could quickly turn into three or four months. If she was lucky, she’d see him again next December.
“One week’s not long enough.” There was no way he was going to take a job that separated him from Sandy for two or three whole weeks. Not now. Maybe in a year, when their relationship was more solid. But for right now, as much as he wanted to swim with the dolphins down on Key West, he wanted to be with Sandy more.
He picked up the telephone and punched in the number Parks had left. Graham Parks picked up.
“Clint McCade! Great! Thanks for returning my call so quickly.” His voice boomed over the line. “I realized after I left the message I didn’t give you the exact dates. We start shooting on the twentieth of May, but U. Comm wants the underwater team to come down to their facilities by May fifteenth at the latest. Apparently, there’s certain dolphin etiquette involved. They feel it would be invasive to the dolphins if our cameramen simply showed up one day and jumped into the tank without any of what they call ‘courtship’ time.”
“Sounds fair to me. I wouldn’t want strangers jumping into my tank unintroduced.”
“Harry Stein said you’re the best when it comes to underwater photography,” Parks said. “What the hell are you doing in the middle of the desert? No, don’t answer that. Just tell me you’ll sign on.”
“I’m afraid I can’t. I’m sorry, I—”
Sandy snatched the phone from him. “Excuse me, Mr. Parks, can you hold on for just one moment, please?” she said very sweetly into the telephone. Then she glared at McCade, cupping the receiver with her hand so Parks couldn’t hear their conversation. “Are you nuts? You can’t turn down this job.”
“Yes, I can—”
“But I know you want to do it!” She shook her head. “Shoot, McCade, if you don’t take it, you’ll wish you had, and then you’ll blame me!”
“I will not!” He sounded insulted. “God, Kirk, I’m not a child. I can make a decision without—”
Sandy moved her hand from the telephone receiver to cover his mouth. “Mr. Parks?” she said. “When do you need McCade’s final decision?”
“Now,” he said, but then laughed. “Except if it’s no, which it sure sounded like it was going to be. Is there any chance at all that he’ll change his mind?”
“No,” McCade mumbled from underneath Sandy’s hand.
“Yes,” she said.
“Then he can have till Saturday,” Parks told her. “But if he comes to a decision earlier, I’d appreciate being informed.”
Sandy hung up the phone and turned toward McCade. He was standing with his arms crossed and a very keen glint of displeasure in his eyes.
“Dammit,” he fumed. “The man needs to know so he can start trying to find another cameraman. You of all people should know how even a few extra days can make a difference to a producer in a bind—”
“I want you to take the job.”
Some of the anger in his eyes turned to bewilderment. “Why?”
She turned away, unable to look at him. “Get real, McCade. You don’t honestly expect me to believe that you’re going to live here with me, happily ever after, and never take another job out of state again, do you?”
“Of course not,” he countered hotly. “We both know that would never work. But I’m just not ready to leave yet.”
She gripped the edge of the kitchen counter. He’d admitted it. He’d finally admitted that he wasn’t going to stick around forever. “What difference does it make,” she asked tightly, “whether you leave now or later?”
Either way, he was going to leave. If he waited, if he didn’t take this job, he would regret it. And she didn’t want him to regret anything, not one single thing about their time together.
“It does make a difference,” he said wildly. “It makes an enormous difference.” He took her arm, but she pulled away. “Dammit, don’t hide from me!”
Sandy lifted her gaze to his defiantly, and she knew he could see the tears that filled her eyes.
He swore. “I love you, dammit.” He gripped her shoulders, holding her chin up so that she had to keep looking at him. “I said I didn’t need you to come with me, but I was lying. I do need you. I need you.”
McCade kissed her fiercely, almost frantically, invading her senses with his taste, his scent, his touch.
“I need you,” he whispered again, “all the time. I need you next to me at night. I need you there to talk to. I need to see your face, to see you smile at me. I need to make love to you—”
Sandy wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry, so she did a little of both as she kissed him.
She heard McCade groan as her hands slid down into the back pockets of his jeans, as she pressed her body against his. He returned her kisses as he deftly unfastened her halter top, as his fingers searched for the button on her shorts. Her clothes fell to the floor.
With one sweep of his arm, he cleared off the kitchen table, the silverware clattering as it hit the ground. He lifted her up so she was sitting on its surface, and as she pulled off his T-shirt he unfastened his pants and then, Lord, he was inside of her. She clung to him, her legs locked around his waist, pulling him into her, driving him deeper, harder, faster.
Sandy pulled McCade down on top of her as she leaned back against the table, thrilling at the way he filled her, at the way he made her feel. She loved it when he lost control, and this time he was wild, possessed by a storm of passion that carried her with him to new heights. Her heart pounded with a primitive rhythm, a rhythm that speeded up with each thrust of McCade’s body. Fire surged through her veins, a fire she knew was destined to burn for all her life. She loved McCade, deeply, passionately—and unendingly.
Sandy opened her eyes and looked up at the expression of sheer pleasure that was on his face. As if he could feel her watching him, his eyes opened and he smiled at her. It was that smile, that quick, fierce, familiar grin that sent her spinning, spiraling into ecstasy, with wave upon wave of pleasure soaring through her, causing her body to shake. She felt McCade’s release, a white-hot explosion that left him out of breath and spent, lying across her.
“Mercy,” he murmured, shifting his weight.
Sandy was laughing. “I can’t believe we just did it on the kitchen table,” she said. “I’m not going to be able to eat a meal here again without thinking about tonight. Unless I get a new table, I’m going to remember this forever—at least twice a day, during breakfast and dinner.”
“Good.” McCade couldn’t keep the satisfaction from his voice. “Then you’ll also remember at least twice a day how much I love you.”
Sandy kissed him, strangely sadden
ed by his words. She should feel happy—he loved her.
She’d never forget that.
But someday he would.
Tony looked at McCade critically in the mirror, then took another fraction of an inch off the sides of his hair.
“So tell me, sweetheart, why is it really that you don’t want to take this job in Florida?” the heavyset hairdresser asked, raising one thick, dark eyebrow.
“I told you,” McCade said. “I don’t want to go. Sandy’s just getting used to me being around, and I don’t want the job. Really.”
“If you didn’t want the job”—Tony crossed his arms—“you never would have mentioned it to me.”
“I was making conversation.”
“I don’t think so, McCade.”
McCade laughed. “Right. You’re so smart, Tony, you tell me why I don’t want to go to Florida.”
“Because you know if you leave now, Sandy will think you’re leaving for good.” Tony’s eyes were nearly hidden by folds of flesh as he smiled smugly at McCade’s reflection in the mirror.
McCade swore under his breath. He hated to admit it, but Tony was right. That was definitely part of the reason he didn’t want to go. He’d seen the sadness lurking in Sandy’s eyes. No matter what he told her, no matter what he said, she didn’t believe he was really going to stick around. He hoped after tonight that was going to change.
“You want some advice?” Tony asked.
“No.”
“The only way she’s ever going to think you’re really going to stay is if you leave.” He held up a mirror so that McCade could see the back of his head. “It’s a paradox. She’ll think you’re gone for good, but when you come back, she’ll know she was wrong.”
“Terrific,” McCade growled, rolling his eyes. “I’m supposed to give Parks my answer by today. That fits in really nicely with my plan to ask Sandy to marry me tonight.”
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