by Annie Jones
“Sorry to disappoint you, Darlin’, but that’s not going to happen.” He folded his arms over his chest. “The camping grounds aren’t open until April down there. I received a special dispensation to park the RV in a secluded staff parking lot to use as a base of operations. We’ll have use of the lodge if we need it.”
She swung her head to look at her surroundings. “So, this isn’t just going to be our home this weekend, it’s going to become spy central?”
“Something like that.” The keys jangled in his hand. He shoved them into the ignition, buckled up, reached to start the engine, then turned to look over his shoulder at her. “I are you through making excuses, girl? Frankly I don’t see what’s so bad about these accommodations. I’ve lived in apartments that were smaller, had less in the way of facilities and had to share them with flat mates that weren’t half as… lovely companions as you.”
Were those flat mates… women? Girlfriends? One night stands? A wife? She wanted to ask for details. Not exactly the business of a person who had protested wanting to spend the weekend with this, had dismissed their one kiss with a snarky remark and who knew they had no future beyond the whatever lay ahead for them in the land of waterfalls and moonbows.
Julia dropped her gaze to her lap and exhaled slowly. “You’re right.”
He bent his neck to try to steal a look into her face, asking softly, “About what? This space? The shelter? The trip?”
“All of it.” Julia lifted her head and pulled her shoulders back. “You were right about everything.”
“Everything?” He did that not quiet smug, not quite sincere smile thing that made her heart melt. “Even about the kiss not being measly?”
Her breath caught in the back of her throat. All she could do was nod.
“Good.” He nodded too then twisted around to face the steering wheel. He cranked the key and the engine growled to life. “I think that’s something we both need to keep in mind on this trip. We can’t afford to be distracted by anything like that again. Not until this task is done and Devin is safe.”
*
“How much longer until we get there?” she asked as she started to prop her feet up on the dash then stopped herself and settled for shifting restlessly in the passenger seat.
“It’ll be late afternoon. If you’re bored already, you can microwave some popcorn and grab a pop from the fridge watch a dvd. Before you know it, we’ll be there.”
“Boy, Norman doesn’t believe much in doing without, does he?” She twisted around to gaze into the back of the RV.
The movement sent the fragrance of her hair wafting over him. He drew in the warm scent of vanilla and held it a moment as he contemplated her question.
Doing without? That was more his style, Cameron decided as he exhaled slowly. For years he’d done without a wife or children, without a real home, without the kind of love a woman like Julia could give. His new friend, Norman, had all that and more.
“No.” Cameron shrugged to release the tension between his shoulder blades. “Your neighbor is the sort of man who believes in having it all. He told me ’twas something he learned as a firefighter. Putting his life on the line each time the alarms went off gave him a greater appreciation for the things that mattered most to him.”
Julia studied him for a moment. Studied was the right word, too. More than just a curious stare less than intense scrutiny. Even without looking at her he could feel the difference. Years doing what he did had honed that skill, made him ever wary, ever suspicious and quick to act, to prefer distance to closeness and and solitude to real human interaction. Maybe that gold was cursed. He realized now, the pursuit of it had robbed him of the emotional richness of a balanced life.
“You put your life on the line in your work as well, don’t you?” Julia finally asked, never taking her eyes from his profile.
He gripped the steering wheel. “For me the work is a means to an end, a way of reaching my one true goal to redeem my family’s honor. To Norman, the work was the goal. To help others, to save lives.”
“You can’t tell me your work hasn’t helped others. You’ve saved lives, I’m sure.” She laid her hand on his arm.
The softness of her touch made his forearm tense. He shook his head. “Don’t you see, Julia? I’m not saying my work isn’t important in general, but that it isn’t important to me. It hasn’t been for many years.”
“Really?” She lifted her hand from his arm. The broken connection seemed to say more than her words even as she asked, challenge in her voice, “Then why don’t you change professions? Why have you stayed in a line of work so unfulfilling?”
“Any work I did would have been unfulfilling. Because no work could accomplish the thing I wanted most to accomplish.” His own voice went rough then, almost breaking. He had hardly ever allowed himself to think these things, much less say them out loud. He had to practically wrench the truth free from the depths of his being and that effort resonated in every word. “At least with Interpol I could use the work to further my personal quest.”
“The gold,” she whispered.
“Yes.” He scanned the horizon and the road arching over the next long, sloping hill. “Getting the gold, that’s what mattered to me. I thought only that could mend my family and remove the taint of my grandfather’s crime."
“The son shall not suffer for the sins of the father,” she reminded him with quiet conviction. “That’s from the Bible.”
“I know. I was good Catholic lad in my youth, you know. I even still have my own Bible from those days.” He marveled that he would tell her such a trivial thing that had no bearing on their quest but it had come out so easily. “Aye, yes, I have a Bible but no bookshelf to put it on. No lamp to read it by. No home or hearth to shelter it or me.”
The leather of the seat sighed and groaned as she moved around, almost like she was hunkering in to hear a good story. “You don’t even have an apartment somewhere?”
A heaviness settled in his chest. He pinpointed some distant speck far, far down the road. “I’ve had one on and off through the years, but I never wanted the idea of home to become too dear to me. Nothing could take precedence over my goal.”
She waited, probably for him to say more. After a moment, she turned her own gaze to the windshield and shook her head. “I don’t know. Doesn’t sound like much of a life, Cameron.”
“Says the woman whose own home isn’t much more than a place to grab a night’s sleep between shifts at the homeless shelter,” he muttered.
She turned her face down. “Guilty as charged.”
“I’m not condemning you, Julia. At least your work has had meaning.” The constant vibration of the cumbersome boat of a vehicle made his teeth grind together. “Not like me, throwing it all away after a self-styled ideal.”
He shook his head. “After all this time, I’ve finally found the gold and with it only a hollow victory. My nephew is in danger, separated from his dear mother. The remnants of the only family I have are tom apart, and it’s my fault.”
“I won’t listen to you blame yourself.”
“You’re right. Tis a sad old song.” He conjured up a roguish grin for her. “I only meant to say that a man like Norman, he has his priorities straight. He sought to help others, and yet he didn’t forget to love and cherish his own family He has a lovely wife, two grown daughters—the man even has two homes, one of them on wheels.”
“You have a lot, too, Cameron.”
“Me?” He chuckled with a sad sincerity. “I have a pot of stolen gold waiting for me to return it to Ireland.”
“And people who care about you.”
He guided the huge vehicle around a larger and even more lumbering truck carrying a wide load. When he eased into the slower lane again, he used the swerve right to study the woman with the earnest blue eyes and careless mass of black curls. He wondered if she counted herself among those who cared for him. And if so, how deeply?
Something unfamiliar throbbed with a d
ull ache inside his chest. If she didn’t care, he decided, as he let his gaze linger on her, he didn’t want to know. He wanted to pretend, if only for these few days they had left together, that she could care, that the future could hold more than just the shell of his wasted obsession.
“You’ve got a great gift for connecting with people, Cameron,” she went on.
His thoughts flashed back to how he had connected with this one beautiful woman. Even as he concentrated on maneuvering the RV through traffic, his lips tingled with the memory of their kiss.
“I mean, look at your record just since I’ve known you.” She ticked off on her fingers as she spoke. “There’s Norman, who has hardly known you a week, yet he lets you take off in his fifty-thousand-dollar recreational vehicle. Corporations, who wouldn’t even take my phone calls, fell over each other to hand you huge checks. All the staff at the shelter like you, and, of course, you have Devin and Fiona. I think even Craig is warming to you.”
“Craig is pretty fond of you, as well.”
“He’s a good friend to me.” Her straight white teeth gnawed at her lower lip. “I wish 1 had been as good a friend to him a moment ago.”
“I have a feeling he understands how hard it is for you to be out of—” He paused. “—the loop.”
“You were going to say ‘out of control,’ weren’t you?” she asked with no hint of anger in her voice. “You’re right. I like being in control of my life, my work. But I will tell you something, if you promise not to gloat too much.”
“What’s that?” He wondered if she noticed he hadn’t agreed to anything.
“I can see some validity to your way of thinking. The farther we get away from the shelter and the more I trust Craig is handling things.”
“You mean as long as you don’t have any other choice in the matter,” he translated.
“Was that a gloat?”
“What?”
“That gleamy thing in your eyes.” She waggled her fingers in his direction. “That frisky hint of delight in your tone. It reeks of gloating.”
He raised an eyebrow at her. “I have to remind you I never promised not to gloat.”
She crossed her arms.
“Besides, it wasn’t so much of a gloat as it was an observation. I mean, it’s pretty easy to embrace a walk the walk when you’re being driven in a luxury RV”
“Busted.” She smiled, taking his assessment with an uncharacteristic grace that made Cameron believe she could actually learn to surrender more of herself. “And since there seems to be only one thing I have any say over on this trip—I think I’ll go pick out a movie to watch and stop pestering you. But before I go, I just want to know one thing.”
“What’s that, my dear?”
She thrust her lip out in an exaggerated pout. “Am I really that transparent?”
“Transparent? You?” He sputtered out a laugh. “With that iron will of yours? Those nerves of steel?”
“Don’t forget my heart of gold.” She rose from her seat and headed back to rummage through Norman’s video tapes, leaving Cameron to consider her words.
A heart of gold. It fit her well and it haunted him. That, he realized with a troubled spirit, was the only gold he should have been seeking on this earth. He wondered if it was too late to begin now?
CHAPTER TEN
Of course since Julia was in a hurry, every single person around her in the mini-market at the giant service station/store/restaurant where Cameron had suggested they stop and stretch their legs was taking their time with everything.
“Hope you don’t mind me saying so, but honey, you sure do have yourself one cutie of a husband.”
“A—huh?” Julia blinked at the petite woman with her white-blonde hair teased... or maybe a better word would be traumatized… into a scrunched-but-sassy bubble. “My what?”
“Your husband.” The woman lifted the trash-can sized soda she’d been filling for, oh, what seemed like the last twenty minutes, in salute.
Julia followed the line of the offered toast to find Cameron O’Dea leaning against a wall chatting amicably with a black haired scarecrow of a man in a polyester western-cut jacket and black jeans.
“I met him over at the tourist information center. ’Course at the time I didn’t realize he was spoken for, you understand.” The woman gave a little wave.
Cameron responded in kind.
The woman’s raised soda popped and fizzed, spewing icy drops onto Julia’s hot cheek.
Julia planted her hands on her hips and cocked her head at him, as if, somehow, she expected him to send her a mental message to explain the situation.
He winked at her.
Her heart skipped.
“I started up a conversation with your man on account of I heard his accent when he asked where tourist brochures might be.” She stabbed a red-and-white-striped straw into her hissing drink. Julia moved her gaze from Cameron to sweep their surroundings, in hopes of finding a way of excusing herself from an obviously pointless conversation. She supposed she could fake a sudden craving for one of the glistening frankfurters rotating on steel racks in the glass case a few feet away.
The babbling blonde yanked a paper napkin from its holder and snapped it open with a flick of her wrist, sending the aroma of the roasting hot dogs wafting over Julia.
The smell made her stomach lurch. So much for quick evasions, she decided, as the woman began again to speak in a drawling, high-pitched voice.
“Now, don’t you get mad at me for sayin’ this.”
“Get mad?” Julia wondered, she didn’t even know this woman.
“But I sidled right up to your husband on account of I thought he might be, you know, the friendly type.” She wriggled her penciled eyebrows. “Like this other fellow I met today with that same darlin’ European accent.”
Julia felt her forehead crease as she waded through the bizarre conversation to make some semblance of sense out of it. “Year-a-pin accent?” She parroted the woman’s exact pronunciation.
“Now, ain’t you cute? Your husband said it jus’ like that, too. Two peas in a pod.” She shook her head and not a single blonde hair fluttered. “Well, anyway, my brother Rex and I— Rex is that fellow over there talking to your husband.”
The woman waved again.
“He’s not my—”
Both Rex and Cameron nodded a greeting.
Julia let her protest drift off with a sigh.
“As I was saying, Rex and I, we’re up from Tennessee to visit kin, and it happens that jus’ outside of Cumberland Falls, we stop to take some pictures and run across this fellow.”
The woman churned her straw up and down through the crushed ice of her drink.
The cold, crunching sound grated on Julia’s nerves almost as much as the delay in the story. Still, she had to hear the woman out. If she had run into another man with an Irish accent at Cumberland Falls, it could well be Shaughnessy. She couldn’t let her agitation keep her from that kind of information.
“And this other fellow—” Julia prompted.
“Now, he was the friendly type. If you know what I mean.” She nudged Julia and giggled. “I struck up a conversation with him on account of that’s jus’ the kind of big-hearted gal I am.”
Julia pretended to join in her laughter.
“And I was glad I did it, too. That accent gave me fits! What a charmer. Had the most darlin’ redheaded kid with him, too.”
Devin. Julia jerked her head up, trying to catch Cameron’s eye so she could signal him to come over and hear this. “Did you notice what kind of car they were in?”
“A dark green four-wheel drive jobbie with Ohio plates—I noticed on account of—well, you know, them four-wheel drives ain’t cheap, and a gal takes note of a thing like that.”
“Did they mention how long they had been in the area or how long they intended to stay? Just curious.” She tossed in the afterthought in hope of disguising the interrogation and passing it off as a bad case of nosiness.
“I don’t suppose he told you where they were staying?”
“Nope. I just figured they’d be camping in the park, but he didn’t say as much.”
“Didn’t the fellow, or his kid, say anything?”
“The fellow said plenty. Plenty of nothin’—but it sure sounded pretty.” Her thin shoulders rose and fell in a huge sigh. “Said he was cornin’ into some money and headin’ south soon, wanted my number so’s he could call. Got the impression that menfolks from that part of the world really took after us southern belle types, you know what I mean?”
“Well, I—” This was going nowhere fast. The woman had clearly encountered Shaughnessy and Devin at Cumberland Falls, proving Cameron’s hunch right. Julia doubted she’d learn anything more from the enamored blonde.
“Of course, I don’t mean your man, honey,” the woman quickly corrected. “That is, I thought he might go for my type, which is why I said hello to him.”
Julia offered a watery smile and wondered how to gracefully escape.
“But don’t you worry about your husband, honey. I figured out real quick he wasn’t no truck-stop Romeo.” The blonde gave Julia’s elbow a pinch.
If she had thought it would get her out of the conversation, Julia would have confessed that she and Cameron were not married. But she thought it might just prolong her agony if it renewed the blonde’s interest in the handsome Irishman.
“You got a good one there, you do, honey.” The woman slurped up a long draw of her soda, then smacked her strawberry-colored lips. “Hang on to him with both hands and a leash if you have to.”
Julia tucked a stray hair behind her ear. “I hardly think that will be necessary”
“Oh, me neither, doll. I mean, I saw the way he looked at you when he pointed you out. A man looks at his wife like that, he ain’t goin’ nowhere.”
“Looks at me?” Julia stilled. “How?”
She pivoted to confront the talkative stranger, but the woman had moved on to the chip aisle, her glossy lips moving as she read the nutritional statistics on the back of a bag of pork rinds.