I'LL REMEMBER YOU

by Barbara Ankrum

  She made a sound of disagreement. "It's not as if I had nothing to do with it. You can't take all the blame. I could have driven away."

  "And pigs can fly."

  He felt her smile against his shoulder. "Nevertheless, here we are. Two strangers lying together under these stars. Doesn't it make you wonder why?"

  "I don't know. I think it's just … serendipity. Luck. Good or bad. It happened and we have to make the best of it. You saved my life, and now I'm going to try my damnedest to save yours. That's all. That's all there can ever be."

  "But what if it isn't?" The question loomed large between them, like the proverbial elephant in the living room.

  "Trust me on this, Tess."

  "I do. That's just it, Jack. That's why I'm asking you. What if it isn't?"

  He didn't have an answer for that. If he dared to consider it…

  "All these months, years really," she continued, "it's been easy for me to stay hidden, to run to research and away from all the things that terrified me. I've been running from myself and my own feelings. I never really stood still long enough to get my bearings. Not until…"

  He frowned. "Until?"

  "Not until I met you."

  He exhaled sharply. "I'm no road map, darlin'. God knows…"

  She rolled over onto her elbows and smiled at him. "I wasn't looking for a road map." She hesitated. "I guess I was just looking for a reason to 'be' again."

  Jack's gaze traveled over her features one by one, cataloging them in his memory so he would never forget what she looked like right now. He brushed her hair back from her face, thinking that it had been worth getting shot for this. And simultaneously, wondering how to stop it.

  Her eyes darkened and grew shiny. Then she leaned closer and brushed her lips over his once, twice. Mistake, he thought raggedly, but he hadn't the will to push her away. Instead, he breathed in the scent of her as she covered his mouth with her own in a kiss that no longer asked permission. A full-bodied, aching, damn-the-torpedoes kiss that would have knocked him on his butt if he hadn't already been there.

  His hands were in her hair before he knew what had happened, and he was dragging her closer. She tasted of chocolate and a little bit of heaven, and he couldn't get enough of her. He slanted his mouth against hers hungrily. God help him, he wanted her underneath him with her legs wrapped around his waist and her breasts bare and soft against his chest.

  She made a sound against his mouth, a greedy, anxious sound that stirred his overheated blood like a poker of molten steel. He deepened the kiss, his tongue dancing with hers, exploring her mouth and the smooth edges of her teeth.

  His hand slid downward of its own accord, skimming over the contours of her backside and up again until he'd reached her breast. Filling his palm with its weight, he felt the taut peak harden against his hand. "Ah, Tess…" he murmured.

  She leaned into his caress. "Jack … oh, Jack…" she whispered against his ear.

  Like a well too long dry, need rose up in him in a rush, scraping past all the well-considered arguments against this. As her lips tortured his jaw and neck, it filled him with a pounding urgency. And when her hand slid down his ribs, exploring the contours of his abdomen and the waistband of his jeans, he nearly lost it.

  He pulled her cheek alongside his and held her close. "What're you doin' to me?"

  "Kissing you," she breathed, sliding her open mouth down his neck, then moving up toward his ear again.

  He shut his eyes as pleasure tingled down the length of him. He turned his head, denying her access, which brought his mouth back in line to hers. "You said—"

  "I said a lot of things," she whispered against his mouth. "Forget what I said."

  He dragged her face against his shoulder and held her there. If he looked at her, he'd take her right here. Right now. "Think, Tess."

  "I'm tired of thinking."

  "Tomorrow you'll regret this."

  "Will you?" Her question, stark and forthright, almost weakened his resolve.

  "Dammit," he said, tilting his hips against hers. "I want you. More than air. Can you feel it?" She tightened her arms around him. "But there's no future in it."

  Her lips pressed against his shoulder. "I told you, there is no future. It doesn't exist. Not tonight."

  "Tess. What if I'm married? You said it yourself."

  "Don't." It was her turn to warn now.

  "And if I took you here like this, knowing that, what would it prove? Only that I am the bastard they say I am. If I made love to you, and left you in a day or two, not knowing—"

  She lifted her eyes and searched his face. "Leave? You're leaving?"

  "You know I have to."

  "No, I don't! Jack – you just – you can't leave!"

  "I won't until I make sure you're safe."

  "Safe?" Shoving herself upright out of his arms, she threw the quilt off her. "Where is that going to be? Where can I be safe without you?"

  Or I, without you, he thought. "Don't worry about that now. I'm not leaving yet."

  "But soon. You are, aren't you? What about Gil? He's trying to help us. If we just give him time, he'll figure out how to—"

  "Time we may not have, Tess."

  At the far end of the lake, a burst of color exploded in the sky. Red-and-white streaks of light showered down over the hanging lanterns of the Pioneer Days Celebration. Fireworks. Perfect, he thought, sitting up beside Tess.

  "Where will you go?" she asked.

  "Back. To find out who tried to kill me and why."

  "Then let me take you."

  "No," he said too sharply. "I don't want you anywhere near—"

  "But you wouldn't know them if you saw them. They could walk right up to you and … Jack, I saw them in the ER, those two men. I could find them again. I could help you."

  He took her by the arms. "That's my problem. Not yours. Your job is to stay alive. When this is over—"

  "You mean when they've killed you?" Her expression was angry and scared.

  "I got you into this. I'm going to get you out."

  "Then wait," she begged. "We'll go somewhere else. We'll keep moving so they can't find us."

  "And then what? Change your name? Dye your hair? Pretend you're somebody else? Is that what you want, Tess? To be on the run from them from here on out?" She put her hands over her ears. He reached for her when she moved to get up, and pulled her back down. "Listen to me, Doc. It's the only way. Whatever went down back there, there's some business I've left undone. And I've got to finish it."

  Tears were gone as she lifted her head. In their place was frustration. "I worked too damn hard to save your life to watch you throw it away as if it didn't mean anything. It means something to me, Jack. I don't want to see you die!"

  He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her back against his chest. "I'm too damned stubborn to die. Don't you know that by now? But you were right. Let's not talk about tomorrow. Let's just … watch the fireworks together. Let me hold you. Nothing more."

  He ached to kiss the fight out of her, but instead he held her like a trapped animal against him. If she could squirm out of his arms, he thought, to find a way to keep him here, she would. But a woman as smart as Tess would see the logic in his reasoning soon enough. A little time was all she needed. She had no business with a man whose history was as tangible as those colorful specks of gunpowder drifting down from the sky and vanishing into the dark. And a man like him had no right to dream of a future with a woman like her.

  But that night, when he slept, he did dream of her – hot, erotic dreams of Tess's sweet, slick body wrapped around his and the heart-thudding rhythm of their passion. Dreams, he thought with resignation, that would be his only solace when he left her.

  * * *

  Chapter 12

  «^»

  Gil picked up the phone on the first ring. "Tess?"

  "Sorry to disappoint'cha," the decidedly unfemale voice at the other end replied. "It's Ben."

  Gil's colorful oath
earned him a chuckle from across the phone line.

  "Hey, don't hold back, pal. Tell me how ya really feel." Nearing fifty-five, with his last opportunity at sergeant gone, Ben Tepper was still one of the best cops Gil had ever known. There was no one he trusted more, which was why he'd sent him where he himself couldn't risk going.

  "Sorry. I'm contemplating homicide," Gil retorted. "Not yours."

  "That relieves my mind, considering it's only 9:00 a.m. What? She hasn't called yet?"

  Gil growled a reply that needed no interpretation. "Well? What did you find?"

  "Just what you thought. They ransacked her place."

  Gil swore.

  "Looks like yesterday, if fresh tracks around the house belong to the perps. I checked her automatic sprinklers. They went on yesterday, 7:00 a.m. These pricks took her place apart piece by piece. Beds. Couches. Drawers. Impossible to say if anything is missing. Except maybe…"

  "Maybe what?" Gil dreaded the answer.

  "Well, I don't know if it means anything, but I found an empty picture frame, glass broken on the floor near her mantel. Five-by-seven. Any idea what it was?"

  Gil scanned his memory of her mantelpiece and the photographs he knew she kept there. He remembered pictures of Adam and her. Pictures of him and Adam. Pictures of vacations and—

  "Dammit!"

  "What?" Ben asked.

  It took a moment for Gil to get control of his voice again. "Ben, will you do something else for me?"

  "Name it, pal."

  "Cover me with the captain. Tell him I'm taking a personal day. Maybe two." Gil shoved himself away from his desk and grabbed his jacket off the back of his chair.

  "Where you goin'?"

  He shifted the receiver to his other ear. "I would tell you, but then I'd have to kill you."

  Ben laughed. "Yeah, well, I don't wanna know that bad."

  He shoved one arm into his jacket and wrestled with the other. "And one more thing."

  "Yeah?"

  "I'm gonna transfer my calls here to you. If Tess calls, you tell her to get the hell out of there. But not a word to anyone about her, got that?"

  "I do, my friend. You can count on me."

  * * *

  For most of the next day, they kept their distance. What had happened on the island had left them raw, their nerves scraped. It seemed easier to move in separate circles than to allow intersection again. It was too hard, Tess thought, pinning a T-shirt onto the clothesline behind the cabin, for both of them.

  Last night she'd lain in bed, wide-awake, for hours, trying to think her way out of the situation. Over the years, her skill at rationalization had become something of an art. But nothing explained the feeling that her whole life before this moment had been mere shadowy preparation for this, and what she'd had with Adam paled in comparison.

  Guilt stabbed at her with that thought as she reached into the wicker basket for another T-shirt to hang on the line. She'd loved Adam, and always would, she reminded herself, clipping a clothespin around the damp fabric. He had been so much a part of her life. They'd grown up together, been best friends, lovers. They had a history, for better or for worse. But somewhere along the line, she knew now, they'd lost it.

  The affair he'd had with a young, beautiful female officer three years before his death had been the stake in the heart of their marriage. But the heart kept beating as if out of habit. She'd blamed herself for his affair, too, for her lack of attention. Had she been too busy to notice he was unhappy? Or, she wondered now, had their paths diverged long before that day, and neither of them noticed?

  To his credit, even when they'd sought counseling together to try to repair the damage, Adam had taken the full blame for the affair. But while they'd survived it, they'd never fully recovered what they'd lost. No relationship survived neglect. And they had both neglected what had once been good about their marriage. By the time he died, they had made peace with it and with each other, and had settled into a comfortable routine that bordered on happiness.

  But never, not in all the years of their marriage, had she ever felt the kind of passion she felt with Jack. Lying in bed last night thinking of it, she felt wanton. She'd wanted to go to him, to tell him that he'd been wrong, give herself to him to prove it. But of course, she hadn't.

  And now, as she cast a look back at the window of the house and saw him watching her, she wondered why she hadn't.

  She slid a sheet from the basket and tucked one edge around the line. Was it because she believed what he'd said about there being no future for them? Or was it simply that she was too afraid he would send her away again?

  Tess shut her eyes. What was happening to her? When had her life spun so wickedly out of control? The easy answer was also the obvious one: the night she'd first laid eyes on Jack. But the honest one was harder: it had spun out of her control long ago and only now was she recognizing how little she'd ever really had.

  She pinched a clothespin around the sheet as the afternoon sun bore down on her. Lifting the last edge, she draped it around the coated line and clipped it in place. Maybe, she thought, she should go to him now. Tell him how she really felt. After all, she hadn't actually said the words—

  A sound interrupted her thoughts and yanked her attention toward the wicker basket at her feet. It took her a moment to recognize the empty-gourd rattle of the snake that was coiled not two feet away from her leg, poised to strike.

  Tess froze. Her thoughts slowed to a crawl, warnings flashing like neon road signs: Rattlesnake! Oh God! Run! But her feet felt mired in concrete and she couldn't force them to—

  "Tess! Don't – move!"

  Jack's shout came from somewhere behind her, far, far off. But she obeyed him because her body seemed not to be listening to her, anyway. The snake reared back, its rattle shaking ominously, its black, dead-looking eyes locked on hers.

  Tess's lips moved as she screamed Jack's name, but no sound came out.

  A moment later, the snake exploded and flipped in the air in slow motion. A gunshot rang in her ears. Tess staggered backward against the clothesline pole, jerking a look up to the porch to find Jack, arms outstretched, holding the still-smoking pistol, a good seventy-five feet away.

  A tremor of disgust and relief worked through her as she looked back down at what was left of the snake. If Jack hadn't been watching her…

  Heaving in a breath, Tess stumbled toward the house and Jack who, even as she watched, had a look on his face that frightened her almost as much as the snake. He appeared dazed. Disoriented.

  "Jack?" she whispered. Then louder, "Jack?"

  He lowered the gun and was moving toward her. His Adam's apple was working in his throat as if he were haying trouble swallowing.

  Reaching out, he grabbed her as she came near and held her tightly against him. "Are you all right?"

  "Yes." She wrapped her arms around him so hard she was afraid she would hurt him. "Thank you," she whispered fervently.

  With an oath, he pressed his cheek against her hair.

  "How did you do it? One shot, Jack! From that distance with a pistol? When I think of how close I came to… God, if you'd missed—" His silence made her pull back, regarding the odd expression on his face. "That was luck," she said, "wasn't it?"

  For the first time she noticed he was breathing hard and his face was covered with a fine sheen of sweat. "You're not feeling ill again, are you?"

  He shook his head and moved away from her, scrubbing a hand across his mouth. "No," he answered distractedly. He took the steps of the porch two at a time until he spun around and sat down heavily on the wooden stoop, dragging both hands through his hair.

  Silently, she moved to sit beside him. "Is it because I touched you? Are you angry with me? I'm sorry, I didn't think—"

  "It wasn't luck."

  He meant the shot. Of course, the shot. "It – it wasn't?" Shaking his head, he didn't take his eyes off her. "No. The gun. When I fired the gun … I started … to remember."

  Col
dness shot through her like a flood of ice water. She thought she'd prepared herself for his memory to return. Now she wasn't so sure. "What?"

  "A botched op. In a jungle. I thought it was a dream, but I know…" He stared at their hands. His were shaking. "Somewhere in Central America." Then, with more conviction, he stated, "Panama. An airstrip surrounded by jungle. It wasn't our specialty. Army Rangers take out airfields. But they sent us. Wick … Redbud—" his expression grew pained "—EZ … my friends." Jack squeezed his eyes shut, remembering. "Good men, all of them. All killed but me and three others." His glazed eyes met hers again. "SEALS. They were SEALS, Tess."

  She tightened her fingers around his. Her relief and sadness were so sharp and so simultaneous she had no idea what to say. "I'm sorry, Jack," she murmured, but the words sounded banal and impersonal. The stark loss in his eyes was evidence enough that his memories were vicious. She wished them back into nonexistence. But like Pandora's box, the secrets were sneaking out and would not be repressed.

  "What else?" she asked.

  Jack exhaled sharply as another wave crashed over him, pummeling him down and tumbling him over and over. The memories that had flicked by him in the past days like single frames of a film now sped by in a blur, flooding through the door that had slammed shut the day he'd been shot. But he couldn't filter the information. It was as if he was looking at someone else's life, yet he knew it belonged to him. Faces, names, rooms, landscapes … all swirled past him. Snatches of his life, all incomplete:

  EZ, laughing over the rim of a brew, recounting a training exercise with a bunch of raw recruits… His own hands assembling an M-16 against a thirty-second clock… A Special op drop from a Huey over a black North Atlantic, and the bone-chilling misery of a twenty-foot sea. The BUD/S drill instructor, who would later become his friend, inches from his face, screaming until he'd lost hearing in his right ear: "Are you on a friggin' vacation, McClaine? Or just plain Stupid?"

  McClaine. Jack's heart slammed against the wall of his chest. They called him Mac.