Fugitive Father

by Jean Barrett

  She leaned toward him from her cushion, appealing to him. “Then get him back legally. If your enemies aren’t sure of your guilt, and I’ve been convinced of your innocence, there’s hope now to reopen the case and clear yourself.”

  “You’re dreaming, Ellie. Nothing has changed. If I turn myself in, I go straight to Boonville with no detours on the way. And Buchanan gets to keep Joel. You want that after what you heard on the terrace?”

  Brett. She’d forgotten for a moment what Peaches had said about Brett. “Capable of murder,” she murmured. “You tried to tell me that back in Ridley, that Brett could have killed his father. But how, when he had a solid alibi? And why?”

  Noah ran a distracted hand through his sleep-tousled hair. “I don’t know. And since at this point it isn’t gonna do me much good to speculate about it, I don’t care. All I give a damn about is getting my son away from Brett Buchanan.”

  She gazed at him, amber eyes widening in concern. “He wouldn’t hurt Joel. He has no reason to touch him.”

  “You wanna take that chance, Ellie?” he asked her softly.

  The thought of Joel sharing a fugitive existence with his father was still abhorrent to her, but she could no longer argue Noah’s intention. Brett had become a threat, but without evidence, the court would never agree to remove the child from his care.

  “I’ll help you to get Joel,” she promised him quietly. She refused to think beyond that, to recognize that then he and his son would disappear. Would no longer be any part of her life. The ache of that loss—

  “No,” he said decisively. “All I want is the address, and the first thing in the morning when it’s light I’m gone. Then you’re out of it.”

  “It’s too late for that,” she said, angry that he was already dismissing her. “I’m involved. However he found it out, Lew Ferguson knows I’m with you.”

  “He has no real proof of that You can turn around and drive back to St. Louis. You can say you were in the Ozarks, just where you were supposed to be, and nobody will question it.”

  “I see,” she said, her voice like ice. “In other words, once I give you the address, I’ve served my purpose. Not only am I no longer useful to you, I become a burden if I stick around. Is that it?”

  “Close enough,” he said, his voice equally cold. “Sorry, Ellie, but after tonight I just don’t need you anymore.”

  She held his hard gaze for a long moment, searching his face. “You’re lying.”

  He had no answer for her. She went on challenging him with her eyes. In the end his gaze softened in helpless surrender.

  “Damn it, Ellie,” he said, his voice gruff with emotion, “I want you safe. I want you back with your easel and your brushes in that homey house in Webster Groves. I want to know I haven’t permanently hurt you and that you can pick up your life where it was before I bulldozed my way into it.”

  She reached up and placed a hand against his beardroughened cheek. “It isn’t that easy. It’s different now.”

  “Are you telling me—What are you telling me?”

  “Figure it out.”

  She watched his face. She could see him remembering what she had told him when he had joined her by the fire. “You weren’t going to turn me in when you left here to phone Brett. You were coming back afterward to let me know you’d warned him. Giving me a chance to get away, you said, even though you weren’t sure then that I wasn’t guilty. Why would you do that, Ellie?”

  “You know why.”

  “Yeah, I guess I do.” He caught her hand where it still rested on his cheek, turned it over, and pressed a kiss against her palm. “But you and me…it’s not smart, Ellie.”

  “Everything considered, you’re probably right It’s probably a big mistake. What can we do about it?”

  He went on holding her hand, using it to draw her slowly toward him. “Talk ourselves out of it?”

  “We could do that”

  His parted mouth closed on hers in a deep, lingering kiss that left her completely defenseless.

  “Or could we?” she whispered when his sensual mouth finally lifted from hers.

  “Maybe not”

  “Maybe instead we should just make the most of tonight,” she suggested recklessly, refusing to remind herself that it could be their last, “and worry about arguments in the morning.”

  “Yeah, let’s do that,” he growled, unable to resist her invitation.

  Hands framing her face, he began to kiss her again. A series of warm, wet kisses on her nose, cheeks, throat. Then his mouth settled once more on her lips, his tongue seeking and receiving a willing entry into her mouth. She clung to him, whimpering with need as his tongue stroked her seductively.

  Long seconds later he was puzzled when she broke the kiss, pulling back from him.

  “What?” he demanded, his voice thick and raspy.

  “There’s something I need to be sure of,” she said, her own voice sultry and breathless. She scanned his face in the flickering light of the fire. “Yes, it’s true.”

  She could see the sudden concern in his dark eyes. “What’s wrong? What are you looking at?”

  “This,” she murmured, her finger lightly tracing the side of his jaw. “You have a muscle here that’s been twitching at the oddest moments ever since St. Louis.”

  “I’ll be damned.”

  “It’s throbbing like crazy right now,” she informed him solemnly, “which confirms it. Whenever you’re seriously aroused, that tiny muscle gives you away.”

  “You ought to be flattered then, you little witch. It’s been doing a number on me since the night I broke into your house.”

  “Oh, so you are aware of the problem.”

  “Why do you think I wore a beard for years before that night I shaved it off? I had to cover up this twitch. It was forever getting me in trouble.”

  “Women took advantage of you, did they?”

  “Hell, yes. They were all over me.”

  “Uh-huh. Then you wouldn’t want me to—”

  “C’mere,” he commanded, hauling her into his arms. “No more games.”

  He claimed her mouth with another blistering kiss.

  No more games, she silently agreed as his hands dropped to her jeans, freeing her sleep shirt from the waistband. His fingers impatiently burrowed under the folds of the shirt, sliding up to her breasts, molding their fullness.

  She couldn’t have said just when he peeled the sleep shirt over her head, when his eager mouth replaced his fingers on the taut buds of her breasts. Didn’t know at what point she rid herself of her jeans. Had no actual awareness of his casting aside his briefs and T-shirt so that she could touch his body without any barriers.

  It was all a sweet blur of lush sensations: The glow from the fire licking their naked flesh as they stretched out side by side on the cushions. Their hands and mouths caressing each other. Their breathless murmurs communicating a raw, mutual need.

  “It has to be now, Ellie,” he rumbled, his voice desperate and hoarse as he strained his swollen hardness against her thigh. “If I’m going to stop, it has to be right now. Tell me to stop before it’s too late.”

  “I won’t,” she whispered. “I can’t.”

  “Then tell me exactly what you want.”

  “You, just you…”

  He gave her that, answering her plea when he covered her with his strength, his arousal gently, slowly probing an entry into both her body and her soul. In the end, unable to hold back, he completed their joining so deeply and forcefully that she gasped with stunned pleasure. Then he rested, permitting her a moment to adjust to him, to marvel with him at their oneness.

  “Hold me,” he commanded.

  She clasped him tightly with her arms and legs. He groaned and began to stir inside her. She answered his rhythms as, together, they spun an elemental magic. There were endearments from him between his long, powerful thrusts. Blurred love words that she didn’t dare to define as anything more than an expression of his passion, but
which she cherished all the same.

  Then the words were gone, consumed by the urgency of their bodies searching for a pinnacle. Reaching it. Surging over the top. Tumbling into a blinding oblivion.

  They were silent in the long, languid aftermath, savoring the joy they had found in each other. The fire burned on, its light casting a mellow glow on their flushed, sated bodies.

  It was Noah, after an exaggerated clearing of his throat, who finally ended the silence. “Speaking of flaws on jaws…”

  She blinked in surprise. Whatever he was talking about, it wasn’t what she expected to hear on the heels of intense lovemaking. “Were we?”

  He grinned at her outrageously. “You picked on me first with that twitch thing. Now it’s my turn.”

  Propping himself up on his side, he reached out with one finger and slowly stroked the line of her jaw.

  “You’ve got this small, white scar right here on the side of your chin. Been fascinating me since Missouri. Gotta be an interesting explanation for it”

  What was he doing? she wondered. Defusing what could be a dangerously emotional moment with a playful interlude? Avoiding the risk of a commitment that, under the circumstances, just wasn’t possible? If so, she had no right to complain of his tactic. She had known what the consequences would be, had to be, when she invited his first caress. Now all she could do was hide her ache and join his game.

  “There is,” she said gravely. “The scar is a souvenir of something that…well, it’s too painful to talk about.”

  “A tragedy?”

  “Almost one. I shudder to think what would have happened if I hadn’t been there.”

  “Where?”

  “In Arizona visiting my parents. They’re retired there. I was out in the desert that day hunting for gemstones.”

  “Say again.”

  “Gemstones. When I’m not painting, I create jewelry. There were these men camped at the bottom of an arroyo. I was up on top, so I saw it coming.”

  “What?”

  “A flash flood. I had to rush down to warn them and—”

  “Uh, hold it, Ellie. These guys are down in an arroyo, and a flood is coming, and they don’t know enough to get out?”

  “They didn’t have to be smart. They only had to look spectacular, which they did. Didn’t I mention this was a company of exotic male dancers on their way to their next

  gig?”

  “Wow. Lucky for them you were right there.”

  “Yes.”

  “Let me guess. In racing down to rescue them, you fell and cut your chin on a gemstone.”

  “Exactly. The point is, I did save them, and they were very, very grateful.”

  “I don’t want to hear any more verys, if they mean what I think they mean.”

  “I’m in trouble with this scene, huh?”

  “I’m giving you thirty seconds to revise it.”

  “All right, but the truth isn’t much fun. I split my chin falling off the back of Stan Hooser’s bike when I was ten, which I guess makes ol’ Stan the first boy who ever dumped me. Satisfied?”

  “Not yet.” He snuggled down beside her, cradling her in his arms. “Tell me the rest.”

  “What rest?”

  “Everything,” he said, his voice earnest this time. “I want to know about Ellie Matheson. All the vital stuff.”

  So she told him how her father had been a high-school coach and her mother had arranged flowers for a local florist. Her parents really were in Arizona now and wanted her to come out and be another Georgia O’Keeffe, but Ellie preferred the solid, old-fashioned life-style of the Midwest. And she told him about her career-driven ex-husband and how he had wanted them to wait to have children and how eventually she’d realized David didn’t want children at all, and that’s when they’d drifted apart. Then she told him of her ambition to hang a show in a major art gallery, but she was far from ready for that…

  Noah listened with both interest and sympathy, but she didn’t deceive herself. She knew the real purpose behind these stories about herself was to avoid the reality of tomorrow. Anything to keep from discussing their unavoidable parting once he’d recovered Joel and was forced to disappear and leave her behind.

  The fire had died to a bed of glowing embers and Noah was asleep when she finally ran out of things to tell him. Lifting herself on one elbow, she gazed down at him with a bittersweet longing. She noticed the small tattoo of the sword wrapped in flames on his upper arm. She had meant to ask him about that tattoo, as he had asked her about the scar on her chin. Now she would never know.

  With the fire down, the room was growing cool again. Ellie was careful not to disturb him as she slipped away from his side. She brought the quilt from the bed, stretched out beside him again on the cushions, and tucked the cover around both of them.

  She closed her eyes and tried not to think that by this time tomorrow Noah could be gone from her life. He would take a part of her with him, because he had stolen her heart. But there was no comfort in that.

  Knowing this might be her last time to share any physical intimacy with him, she put her arms around him and held him close. Only that way could she finally join him in sleep.

  “ROSEBAY,” she told him.

  “Rosebay,” he repeated, searching the map spread open across his knees as she started the van and drove away from the inn where they had spent the night.

  “It’s just south of here,” she indicated.

  “Got it,” he said, locating the town on the map as they passed the split-rail fences that bordered the drive. “Man, it can’t be more than ten miles away! All this time—”

  “Joel was close by, yes, and I couldn’t tell you.” She turned onto the highway headed south.

  “What’s the rest?”

  “Ten-twenty-one Settlement Road.”

  He was silent for a moment, and she knew he must be savoring the relief of finally having secured the address. Of knowing at last just where his son was located. Then, sensing her concerned expression, he turned toward her.

  “You haven’t made a mistake by telling me, Ellie. I promise you that Joel—”

  “No, it isn’t that. I know I’ve done the right thing.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “Lew Ferguson. Are you forgetting he’s out here somewhere watching? He could be on the road now, and if he spots this van and the Missouri license plate…

  “You shouldn’t be with me. You should let me go on alone.”

  She shook her head emphatically. “We settled all that last night. It’s not me I’m worried about.”

  “There’s nothing we can do about Ferguson.”

  Other than be very careful, she promised herself, remembering just how eager the detective was to get Noah.

  In an effort to ease her tension as they sped toward Rosebay, she tried to interest herself in the scene outside the van’s windows. It wasn’t difficult. The mountains that loomed on both sides of the valley were majestic, shimmering in the clear light of an early morning sun.

  The fall colors on their lush slopes had reached their peak. Ellie could hardly believe they were real. The flaming scarlet and blazing orange of sugar maples, the gold of birches, the russet of oaks. So brilliant that they hurt the eye. It was almost a relief to find momentary distraction in the ranks of evergreens with their somber greens.

  As they neared Rosebay, she asked the question that had been nagging at her since they’d left the inn. “Have you any idea just how you’ll get Joel away from the estate?”

  “Not yet. I’ll know better after we scout the place. I don’t suppose Brett provided you with any directions?”

  “Just the address. I think we’ll have to stop somewhere and ask.”

  “It’s either that,” he agreed, “or risk drawing attention to ourselves by searching up and down every back road.”

  Minutes later, they halted at a four-way stop at the edge of Rosebay. “How about trying in there?” Ellie asked, indicating a general store on the
opposite corner.

  “Looks like it’s been there since the Civil War,” Noah said, judging the sagging building with the critical eye of an architect. “Which means whoever runs it probably knows every house in the valley. Go for it.”

  He made no objection when she urged him to remain in the van while she tried her luck in the store. Both of them realized that, unless it was absolutely necessary, he shouldn’t be seen in the area.

  Ellie was immediately intrigued when she entered the building from the porch stretched across its windowed front. The general store, crammed with merchandise of every description and smelling of another era, was the genuine article and not the tourist version, although there were displays appealing to travelers. Fried apple pies and fresh cider, locally made baskets, whimsical carvings of a true rural character, even a board advertising cabins to rent in the region. Under other circumstances, she would have lingered and explored the place.

  Rounding a potbellied stove, she arrived at a wooden counter near the rear of the store. Here the twentieth century had intruded in the form of a computer. A woman with a lined face and silver hair that needed taming looked up from the screen she’d been consulting.

  “Help you?”

  “Yes, please. I need directions to an address. Settlement Road.”

  “That’s not a town road. It winds off into the country. Goes for miles. You have a number?”

  “Ten-twenty-one.”

  The woman didn’t immediately answer her She looked surprised. “You sure that’s the place?”

  “Yes.”

  “Take the next turn to your left and just follow the road. There should be a mailbox with the number on it.”

  Ellie thanked her and left the store

  Noah was waiting for her impatiently. “Any luck?” he asked as she slid behind the wheel of the van.

  She told him what she’d learned. Beginning to think she had imagined the woman’s reception, she said nothing about the storekeeper’s odd expression when she’d mentioned the number of the address.

  Fifteen minutes later, as they sat in the parked van on the edge of Settlement Road and gaped in silence at the structure far above them, Ellie understood the storekeeper’s curiosity.