He rattled off the lake house number. She shook her head. She already had that. “Their cell-phone number.” Trace rattled that off, too. She wrote it down, on a FBGC notepad, thanked him and retired to her private reading room, where she tried again. And again got no answer. Not the first time, nor the second, nor the third.
Frowning, Susannah tried the lake house. The cell phone. The lake house. The cell phone. She thought about the vicious storm the evening before, the water rising upstream, and tried not to panic, and failed mightily. Something was wrong, she just knew it.
7:01
AT THE SOUND of the knocking, Trace glanced up irritably again. Looking at the disgruntled faces around him—he couldn’t blame them for resenting the interruption—he stood. “I’ll get it.”
He opened the door. Seeing Susannah there, looking incredibly beautiful in a white linen business suit and pearls, did little to ease the mounting frustration emanating from the room. Shutting the door behind him, he stepped out into the hall. “What now, Susannah?” he demanded impatiently.
Her sable brown eyes narrowed at his tone, but she plunged on, anyway, announcing flatly, “Something’s wrong. I can’t get hold of the boys.”
“Did you try the lake house?”
Susannah nodded, but she kept her eyes on his as she related anxiously, “And the cell phone. Repeatedly. They’re not answering.”
Trace frowned. At ten and fourteen, Nate and Jason were old enough and mature enough to be left alone. There had never been a problem thus far. He had no reason to think there was a problem this morning. “They’re probably playing that Hootie and The Blowfish CD at top volume again and can’t hear the rings of either.”
Susannah paused, and bit her lip. Apparently, Trace thought, she hadn’t thought of that. “Now, if you don’t mind, I want to go back to—”
She flattened a hand across the portal, blocking his way back inside the conference room. She tilted her chin at him defiantly. “I want to go back to the ranch, Trace.”
“Fine. Just give me another fifteen minutes to wrap this up.”
“Take your fifteen minutes. Just give me the keys to your Jeep. As you reminded me earlier, we have one time-out left. I want to use it. Now.”
Aware his own emotions were skyrocketing, he blew out an exasperated sigh. “Susannah—”
“Fine.” She spun on her heel. Hands curled into fists at her sides, she marched away from him. “If you don’t want to help me, I’ll call a cab.”
Trace caught up with her in two short strides and blocked her way. His frown deepening, he reached into his pocket and pressed the keys into her hand. “Take the Jeep, Susannah. But wait for me.” If there was trouble, as she suspected, he wanted to be there, too. “I’ll be down in five minutes, max.”
SUSANNAH HEADED for the Jeep, taking their last and final time-out from each other. Pulse racing with a mixture of apprehension over the boys and anger at Trace for his insistence on putting his business deal ahead of the welfare of their children, she climbed behind the wheel, inserted the key in the ignition and picked up the cell phone once again. Dialed repeatedly, hoping she would be proven wrong, Trace right. But once again, there was no answer either place. And there was no sign of Trace. Four minutes had already passed. Then five. Six.
To hell with it. She was not just going to sit here, waiting until all the “i’s” were dotted, the “t’s” crossed, when their boys’ very lives could be at stake.
She started the Jeep, and pulled out into the light traffic peppering Main Street, praying all the while that everything really would turn out to be all right.
Some fifteen minutes later, halfway to the ranch, Susannah became aware of a pickup truck behind her. It was gaining fast. As the distance between them on the long, lonely highway closed, she saw why. His attorney was behind the wheel, Trace beside him. The attorney honked. Trace motioned for her to pull over. She had half a mind to ignore them both. Only her reluctance to put Trace’s attorney in the middle of her disagreement with Trace, as her quarreling parents had often done to her, made her reconsider.
Scowling all the while, she reluctantly pulled over.
Trace got out, and circled to the front of the truck. Not on the passenger side. But the driver’s side. “Thanks for waiting,” he told her sarcastically.
“I waited five minutes. And then some,” Susannah said as she slid across the console to the passenger side.
Trace got in behind the wheel. Checking behind him and finding it clear, he thrust the Jeep into gear and swung out onto the highway again. “Have you tried to reach the boys again?”
“Yes.” She fastened her seat belt, then folded her arms in front of her. “With absolutely no luck. You?”
“The same.”
Susannah released an unsteady breath as her eyes scanned the horizon. “If they are in trouble, I am never going to forgive myself,” she muttered.
He slanted her a clear, direct look. “If they are in trouble, and it is—as I suspect—the kind of trouble that could be easily avoided because they know better, then you aren’t the one who is going to need to be forgiven, Susannah. They are.”
Susannah had no answer to that, so she fell silent. And concentrated instead on any signs of Medivac choppers whirling about.
Excruciatingly long moments later, Trace turned into the driveway of the lake house. The yard was oddly silent. No stereo was playing. The debris from the storm had been cleared up and was neatly stacked at one corner of the yard, but the boys were nowhere in sight.
They split up, exploring the inside and outside of the house, and met again in the kitchen. “Anyone in here?”
“No.” Susannah paused, fighting panic. “Any sign of them in the yard?”
“No,” Trace reported grimly. “Nor were they at the dock, or in the woods adjacent to us.”
Nothing bad had happened to their boys. They were just misbehaving—again. “They have to be around here somewhere,” Susannah persisted.
Trace seemed to agree. “Did you check the garage?”
“There was no one there, either.”
“What about their fishing gear?”
“I didn’t think to look to see if it was there or not.” Susannah laid a hand across her chest as the next thought occurred to her. “Oh, God, Trace.” She lifted her eyes to his, anguish sweeping through her in debilitating waves. “You don’t think they went down to the stream again.”
“After the kind of storm we had last night, and the flooding that’s already happened in various places around the ranch, they definitely know better—but it would also explain why they were so happy to see us go off again this morning.”
“And they were pressing us to let them go see the white water,” Susannah recalled.
Trace opened the door to the storeroom behind the garage where the gear had been stored, and scowled. “Just as I thought. The fishing poles and inner tubes are gone.”
Susannah felt faint. “I didn’t even know they had inner tubes!”
“They weren’t inflated. Nate and Jason occasionally use them when they swim.”
Susannah had a vision of churning white water. All the blood left her face. “Oh, God, Trace. You don’t think they—”
“Went to see how high the river got overnight? That’s exactly what I think, Susannah. Worse—” Trace picked up the cell phone from the garage floor “—they forgot to take this with them.”
“Which means not only are they in a potentially dangerous situation, they’re incommunicado,” she murmured, terrified.
“Exactly.” Swearing his frustration, Trace grabbed a rope and a couple of blankets from the garage and set off through the woods in the direction of the fishing hole. She grabbed the cell phone and ran to catch up with him. As they moved through the woods, she reminded herself how bright the boys were. “I’m sure they’re all right,” she told Trace, doing her best to stay calm. Nothing would be gained if she became hysterical.
“You haven’t seen that
river after a hard rain. It’s nothing but swirling white water.”
Which was, no doubt, exactly what their boys had gone to see. Susannah swallowed hard. She could feel the anger building inside her head. “You don’t think they would try to innertube down it, do you?”
“I hope not. My boys know better.” He slanted her a glance. “Do yours? Damn it, Susannah, if I had raised my son, he damn well would have known better!”
She flinched. “What’s that supposed to mean?” She knew they shouldn’t be fighting; she couldn’t help it.
Trace’s lips compressed into a thin white line. “It means, if you had taught Scott and Mickey to follow orders from the outset, or instilled any discipline in them whatsoever we would not be in this situation.”
“Like hell we wouldn’t.” Her voice rose to match his. “You’re the one who couldn’t stop talking about the joys of living out in the wilderness, Trace. The one who had them all fishing in the river yesterday, the one who wouldn’t take them to see the white water this morning when they asked and why?—because you had to cinch a business deal!”
Trace’s mouth set grimly. He did not deny he had missed the signs of impending mischief cum disaster. “Nevertheless,” he said, his tone roughening accusingly, “Nate and Jason would never disobey my orders and sneak away on their own.”
Susannah snorted as she struggled to keep pace. “I doubt Scott and Mickey had to twist Nate and Jason’s arms. Face it, they all wanted to see the river, and they knew with us being away all morning tending to your latest business acquisition, and the wedding this afternoon, that we wouldn’t have time to go today.” Not that this was the only problem they were facing. Clearly, Trace still resented her not telling him about his son. She’d thought—hoped—they could get over this and move on, the way Max had wanted. Now she wasn’t so sure. Damn Trace for waiting until this moment to confront her.
They tore through the trees and stopped just short of the fishing hole. Water was spilling out of the banks in a swirling torrent.
“Oh, God,” Susannah gasped, staring at the churning foaming whitecaps on the gray-brown water. She couldn’t hide an involuntary shudder. “You don’t think they took inner tubes and actually went into that.”
Ignoring the possibility altogether, Trace indicated the muddy shoe-prints leading upriver. “Let’s hope these lead us to the boys.”
As they rounded the bend in the river, Susannah saw smoke billowing above the trees. How a fire was possible, when the woods were drenched, she didn’t know. Her heart jolted. Tensing from head to toe, she grabbed Trace’s arm and pointed in the direction of her gaze. “What’s that?” she demanded.
Trace peered at it. “I’ll be damned,” he muttered, looking both surprised and alarmed.
“What?”
“Nate is sending us smoke signals.” Trace quickened his pace.
“And?”
“They’re in trouble,” he said, breaking into a run. “Big trouble.”
“DAD! Dad! Over here!” Nate shouted as Trace and Susannah swept into view.
Susannah gasped. The boys were crowded together in the middle of what had once been a long wide sandbar in the middle of the river. They had their fishing gear with them. On either side of them was churning white water that seemed to be steadily rising. All four of them were bare-chested. Two of their shirts and the wooden tackle box were the basis for the fire they’d made. The other two shirts were being used to create the short bursts of smoke that had led to their rescue.
“Get your belts off,” Trace yelled, already tying one end of the rope to a tree. He tied the other end around his waist. Terrified, Susannah watched as Trace waded in the four feet of swirling water. She could see that the powerful force of the water was threatening to knock him off his feet, even though it was only waist-high on him. He reached the sandbar. Grabbing Mickey, who was the youngest and smallest, he snapped, “All of you, get your belts around your waists, like this, and then fasten them around the rope like a safety line. That’s it. That’s good. Then we’re all going to wade back to the other side. I want you holding tight to the rope and each other,” he instructed fiercely.
“It’s gonna sweep us away,” Mickey cried.
“No, it’s not,” Trace said sternly, still holding tight to Mickey. “Scott, you take the lead. Nate, you got next. Then Jason. Then Mickey and me.”
It took two minutes for them all to get across. It was the longest two minutes of Susannah’s life as she watched them struggle across in tandem, being nearly knocked off their feet, catching each other, persevering. And all the while, the water kept swirling and rising.
Finally, Scott reached the bank. Susannah grabbed hold of the rope still attached to the tree and him and helped pull him to safety. She and Scott helped pull Jason to safety, and so on, until everyone was out of the water, and on the bank. Trace rapidly untied the rope from the tree. “Let’s go. Now. This river could break loose at any minute,” he said.
Exhausted, trembling, they headed off through the woods. Seconds later, there was a roar. And then the sandbank, too, was completely covered with swirling, churning white water.
“BEFORE YOU YELL AT US,” an exhausted-looking Scott said as the four of them reached the house and plopped down on the lawn, “you need to understand it was all my fault. I thought it would be fun to toss in a fishing line when the river was so wild.”
“If you blame him, you have to blame all of us,” Nate interjected. “‘Cause we all wanted to go.”
“Yeah, we were planning it all night, whenever Gillian wasn’t around,” Jason said.
“As soon as you guys left this morning,” Mickey said through chattering teeth, “we hurried up and finished cleaning up the branches in the yard and then we left.”
“So, we’re to understand it was one for all, all for one?” Trace said sternly.
The four boys nodded.
“Then your punishment will be one for all, all for one, too,” Trace declared, without even looking at Susannah, who was still shaking with thoughts of what might have happened if she and Trace hadn’t come along when they did. What if they had waited for Trace’s business to be completed? What if she hadn’t given in to instinct and telephoned, and kept on telephoning? What then? Would their boys have been swept into the wildly churning river, and…? She felt the blood drain out of her face, inch by inch, until she knew she was bone-white.
“But we’ll talk about what your punishment is going to be later,” Trace said. “Right now, I want everyone upstairs and into the showers—now. Put on some warm clothes and then come right back down,” Trace instructed.
“Yes, sir!” Clearly shaken by the morning’s events, the boys scrambled to obey.
Susannah stared at Trace. It wasn’t just the shock. Never had she felt more unnecessary and extraneous in her life.
3:20
AWARE HE WAS DRIPPING river water everywhere, Trace headed for his bedroom, too. To his surprise, Susannah followed him. Her expression was stormy. “We need to get something cleared up before you say anything else to the boys,” she told him bluntly.
Trace stripped off his wet clothes. He knew she was upset. He didn’t blame her. He was upset, as well. Their children’s impetuous behavior could have easily cost them their lives. “No problem. Just give me a minute—” He turned on the shower and stepped in.
“Now, Trace.” Susannah stepped into the bathroom after him. “Where do you get off treating me that way?” she demanded imperiously.
As the warm water washed over his shoulders, Trace regarded her with astonishment. “What way?”
Susannah leaned back against the bathroom wall and folded her arms in front of her. “Why did you wait until now—until after we’d made love again and again—to let me know how you really feel?” she said in a soft, disparaging voice.
Trace shook his head. “What are you talking about?”
“Your accusation that this wouldn’t have happened if you had raised Scott.” Chin up,
she slanted him a reproachful look.
“I’m sorry I said that. I was upset. What matters is, the boys are safe,” he said calmly as he soaped his chest, then his shoulders.
“No one is more glad of that than I am.”
“But…?” Trace prompted, sensing there was more as he turned slightly toward the shower, letting the water sluice over him in a steady, cleansing stream.
Susannah released a frustrated breath. “What about us? How can you say what you did and then act like everything is still okay?” she asked, hurt.
Trace shrugged as he began to soap the lower half of his body. “Because it is.”
She kept her eyes averted, even as she paled at the remark. “Is it, Trace?” Susannah said very quietly, the hint of angry tears adding a luminous quality to her sable brown eyes.
She started to step away, but with a hand on her shoulder he pulled her back. In the past, he would’ve let her go. Now, there was no way. “What are you trying to tell me?” he demanded quietly.
She shoved at his chest with both hands, pushing him away. “That nothing has changed!” Susannah stormed, her voice rising emotionally. “We’re still all wrong for each other.”
Giving him no chance to disagree, she plunged on, “I put family first. You put your business first. And when it comes to our personal life, you still want to call all the shots, make all the decisions. Marriage for you isn’t a partnership, Trace, at least not the way it should be, it’s a solo act.” Eyes flashing, her jaw set, she continued accusingly, “And you picked a hell of a time to vent your fury at me for not telling you about Scott.”
Trace put the soap aside. “I already told you, I lost my temper.”
The Maverick Marriage Page 17