Flirting with Disaster

by Jane Graves

  He sat down on the end of the bed, and for a moment he seemed lost in thought. “Carla was more than just a little shy.”

  Lisa buttoned her jeans. “What do you mean?”

  “She was dependent. Needy. Helpless.”

  Shocked by his words, Lisa froze for a moment, then walked over and sat down on the bed next to him. “What are you talking about?”

  He exhaled, closing his eyes. “Day in and day out, she clung to me as if I was only one step away from walking out the door.”

  “I don’t understand. Why would she think that?”

  “Insecurity.” He paused, then turned his gaze to meet hers.

  “And because she knew what happened between us.”

  Lisa recoiled. “She what?”

  “That day in the shop. She knew.”

  Lisa was horrified. “But how? I never told her, Dave. I swear to God I didn’t.”

  “I know you didn’t.”

  “Then how—”

  “I did.”

  For the count of three, Lisa stared at him with total disbelief. “You what?”

  “I told myself that if she was going to marry me, she should know everything about me. No secrets. So I told her.”

  “But why? I never would have said a word. She never would have found out.”

  “I know. I told myself that I was just trying to be honest with her. But I think . . .” He was silent for a moment. “I think I was trying to drive her away. Deep down, I was hoping she’d call off the wedding.”

  Lisa couldn’t have been more shocked if he’d slapped her. “You didn’t want to marry her?”

  “No. At the time I didn’t really realize why. But somehow I knew. Deep down, I knew it wasn’t right.”

  “What did she say when you told her what happened between us?”

  “She made excuses for me. Told me it was your fault, not mine, and that she knew I’d never do anything like that again.”

  “She wasn’t angry?”

  “Sure she was. At you. It was my fault, and she was angry at you. No matter what I told her, she just kept taking up for me.” He rubbed his hand over the back of his neck. “Finally I made a decision. If she wasn’t going to call it off, I was.”

  “You told Carla you didn’t want to marry her?”

  “Yes.”

  “What happened?”

  “As soon as I said it, she started to cry. She told me over and over how much she needed me, and said if I walked away from her then, she couldn’t go on living.” He paused, then turned to Lisa, a strange light in his eyes. “Then she told me she knew where her father kept his gun.”

  Lisa’s mouth dropped open. “Oh, God. She didn’t.”

  “I was stunned. I couldn’t believe I’d driven her to something like that. I apologized. I told her that of course we’d get married, and I promised that I’d always be faithful to her so she’d never have to feel that way again. And I never told another soul what happened.”

  “But, Dave, you should have. Don’t you know that? You should have told somebody what she was doing to you!”

  “I was just a kid, Lisa! What was I supposed to do? I was terrified to say anything. I thought if I humiliated Carla by telling someone that I’d even thought about calling off the wedding, she’d kill herself.”

  It was as if a curtain had fallen away, exposing as a lie something Lisa had accepted as truth all these years, and she just couldn’t believe it. Dave and Carla had seemed like the couple on top of a wedding cake, pristine and perfect, their lives scripted right out of a storybook. Sure, all married couples had their ups and downs, but the fact that there had been a dark side to Carla and Dave’s relationship astonished her.

  “After we were married, things were fine for a while,” Dave said. “Then the insecurity started all over again. If I worked late, she’d quiz me, wondering where I’d been. If she found a receipt from a restaurant she didn’t recognize, she gave me the third degree about that, too. At the same time, she had no life of her own. I was it. She rarely left the house. I started to see that something more was wrong than just a little bit of insecurity. But she kept telling me that I was all she needed, that I was everything to her. Then she did it again.”

  “What?”

  “I had to stay late at work one night. When I got home, she accused me of cheating on her. I denied it. She said she knew I was lying, and she threatened to kill herself again. I had to take my guns out of the house, because I believed she might actually do it.”

  “But you didn’t tell anyone?”

  “She said if I ever said anything to anyone, I’d come home and find her dead.”

  Lisa slid her hand to her throat. “Oh, Dave. . . .”

  He closed his eyes as dark memories seemed to fill his mind. “I begged her to see somebody. A doctor. A psychologist. Somebody. But she wouldn’t even admit she had a problem. She kept saying that I was all she needed. But pretty soon it was happening all the time. Every time I’d work late, or was gone from home longer than she anticipated, she’d accuse me of sleeping around. Then the tears would start, followed by the threats.”

  “God, Dave. How did you deal with that?”

  “Not very well. Particularly when Ashley came along. I couldn’t imagine her growing up around a mother like that. Carla loved her. She really did. But how can you be a good mother when you’re barely able to deal with your own life?”

  He dropped his head to his hands, rubbing his temples with his fingertips, and Lisa could see how badly he’d wanted to run away from all of it. How lonely he’d felt. And how he must have lain awake at night sometimes wishing he were anyplace else on earth.

  “Sometimes when Carla was yelling at me, crying, threatening to kill herself, I just couldn’t take it. I’d have these flashes, these split second thoughts, when . . .” His voice became a raw whisper. “When I wished she’d just go ahead and do it.”

  Lisa was shocked. “No. You didn’t really feel that way.”

  “Yes. I did. Sometimes it was right there on the tip of my tongue. I wanted so badly to say it. I wanted to tell her just to do it, to get it over with so I wouldn’t have to deal with her problems anymore.”

  Lisa slid her hand against his shoulder. “I can’t believe that you really wanted her to kill herself. You didn’t want that.”

  “I don’t know what I wanted. But I’m telling you, Lisa, the night her car went off that bridge . . .” He choked a little on the words, as if they’d been buried for so long that speaking them was an almost insurmountable task. “I remember the moment I got the news. The strangest feeling swept over me for a few seconds. It felt like . . . relief. I needed a way out of that prison. That night, I got it.”

  As he buried his head in his hands again, she could feel the guilt rising off him like smoke from a smoldering fire. Then she thought about the man on the bridge last week who’d threatened suicide. No wonder Dave had snapped. The echo of Carla in his mind must have been deafening.

  “You’ve felt guilty ever since that night,” Lisa said.

  “Wouldn’t you? God, Lisa, just saying it makes me sound like some heartless son of a bitch who wanted his sick wife dead.”

  “No. You just wanted out of an intolerable situation that wasn’t your fault in the first place. Why should you feel guilty about that?”

  He looked up at her. “Maybe it was my fault.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. I kept thinking that if only I’d loved her more, if only I’d made a bigger commitment to her, things would have been different.”

  “How much more could you have committed? You married her, and you promised to be a faithful husband. And you were.”

  “Yes. But my heart wasn’t with her. She knew that. From the moment I told her about you, she knew it.”

  “But, Dave, there was nothing between us! It was just a kiss. We got caught up in an emotional situation. That’s all. It didn’t mean a thing!”

  “It didn’t?”

&nb
sp; “Of course not!”

  Dave turned slowly to face her, fixing his gaze on hers. “The day I married Carla, when I came out of the church, I saw you across the street.”

  Lisa looked back at him in shocked silence, suddenly feeling as if he’d discovered some deep, dark secret of hers she’d never intended to tell. She wished she could lie. She wished she could tell him that he must have been mistaken. Or if she’d been there, it had to have been some kind of coincidence. But she couldn’t.

  Instead she gave him a dismissive shrug. “So you want to know why I hung around waiting for you to come out of that church? Well, maybe it was because I was a dumb, misguided eighteen-year-old girl who thought she was in love with you.” She laughed, but it came out sounding harsh and strained. “Imagine that.”

  “I did. All the time.”

  Lisa stared at him wordlessly, unable to believe what he was telling her.

  “I cared about you, Lisa. Far more than you ever knew.”

  He slid his hand over Lisa’s where it rested against her thigh, and just that tiny touch telegraphed every bit of the despair he must have felt back then, coupled with the feelings he’d had for her that he’d been forced to deny.

  “Lisa? Do you know what the definition of hell is?”

  “What?”

  “Taking your new wife on a honeymoon and wishing she was somebody else.”

  Lisa’s heart was suddenly beating rapid-fire. How could she have known? How could she have known that while she was walking away from the church that day he’d desperately wanted to walk away with her?

  With a hand against her shoulder, Dave pressed her gently back on the bed, then eased down on one elbow beside her. He brushed a lock of hair away from her forehead, then trailed his fingertips down her cheek.

  “Sometimes after a particularly bad day,” he said quietly, “I’d lie awake in bed, and I’d see your face in my mind. You were so independent, so passionate, in every word you spoke, every move you made. And I thought, God, to have a woman like that . . . what a relief that would be.”

  He kissed her gently, and she inhaled the feel of his lips against hers. She couldn’t believe what he was telling her. Couldn’t believe it.

  “That night in Monterrey,” he said, “you were right. I felt guilty, but not because I was having feelings for a woman other than my wife. I felt guilty having feelings for the woman I never forgot, even when I was married to Carla. Because of the way I felt about you, I came into that marriage only halfway, and she always knew it. Wanting you again made me feel as if I was betraying her one more time.”

  “How does it feel now?” Lisa whispered.

  He stared at her a long time, his thumb skimming back and forth along her cheek. “Like I’m getting a second chance and I’d better not screw it up.”

  He kissed her again and she melted into the bed, feeling as if every dream she’d ever had was coming to life. For these few moments, she put their differences out of her mind and saw only the connection between them—a connection that had lasted over the miles and over the years to come back now stronger than ever.

  “Ever since Carla’s death,” Dave said, “I’ve wanted to run from anyone who needed anything from me. It made me feel trapped. Closed in. I think it was a knee-jerk reaction to getting dragged down into somebody else’s problems for so many years and not being able to do anything to help her.”

  “No. Carla took advantage of you. Don’t let the resentment you feel because of that make you forget the wonderful gift you’ve got.”

  “Gift?”

  “It’s part of who you are, Dave. Taking care of things. Being there for people. I felt it all those years ago, and I feel it even stronger now. You’ve just got to realize you’re helping people out of caring and not out of obligation.”

  “I won’t lie to you, Lisa. When you called me, it really blindsided me. I’d tried so hard to put you out of my mind that having anything to do with you felt like betrayal all over again. If I hadn’t made you that promise . . . I don’t know. I might never have come.”

  “Are you sorry you did?”

  “God, no. I want to help you any way I can.”

  “Because you feel obligated?”

  “No,” he said. “I told you before. I’m here because I care about you.”

  He stroked her hair, staring down at her with such warmth that for the first time she finally allowed herself to see the truth in every word.

  “And once you’re on your feet again,” he said, “you won’t just walk. You’ll run. If you happen to stumble, I can be there with a hand up. You’ll never be reaching for me just to drag me down. That’s what I’ve got to have, Lisa. What I need a woman to be.”

  What I need a woman to be. The words sent shivers down her spine, and as he leaned in to kiss her again Lisa knew in her heart that there were things that would always keep them apart, but just for now she wanted to pretend that dreams really did come true.

  Then she heard the phone ring, and her heart jumped. Dave got up, and Lisa followed him to the phone in Sera’s bedroom. Dave picked it up, waiting until the person on the other end of the line spoke first.

  “Alex,” Dave said finally. “I hope you’ve got some good news.”

  chapter twenty-three

  “I found a sales rep who spilled everything,” Alex said. “We’ve got our witness.”

  Dave breathed a sigh of relief. Alex was good at his job. For fear of feeding his already expansive ego, Dave had to watch telling him that too often. But damn, he was good.

  “So he’s going to testify against Robert?”

  “Yes. A little immunity from prosecution goes a long way.”

  “Good. That’s good.” Dave checked the clock beside the bed, then talked to his brother again. “Okay, Alex. It’s one o’clock. Robert should be on his way to San Antonio right now. Do you have customs officials in place at the airport to grab him?”

  There was a moment of silence. “No. That’s the bad news.”

  “What?”

  “We checked with the charter companies in San Antonio first thing this morning and found the one he’d contacted, just to ensure that we knew exactly when he was coming in. Right before the pilot was due to fly out, Robert called and canceled.”

  Dave felt a stab of apprehension. “You mean he’s still down here?”

  “Evidently. I thought that was fishy, so I started checking into his bank accounts. Sometime late this morning he moved virtually every monetary asset that he could out of his U.S. accounts into Mexican banks.”

  “He knows somebody’s on to him?”

  “It seems so.”

  “But how?”

  “I don’t know. But it means he may never come back across the border.”

  “But if he never comes back to the U.S.—”

  “He’ll never be prosecuted. Extradition from Mexico is almost unheard of. There are serial killers from the U.S. sipping margaritas in Tijuana as we speak.”

  Dave felt righteous anger explode inside him. “Do you mean to tell me he’s going to get away with this?”

  “Unless he chooses to come back across the border, our hands are tied.”

  Dave just sat there, paralyzed with disbelief. This couldn’t be happening. They had evidence tied up with a nice, neat bow sitting back in the U.S., and it wasn’t going to do them a damned bit of good.

  “There must be some way to deal with this,” Dave said.

  “No. There’s nothing you can do. Cut your losses and get out of there.”

  Dave turned to look at Lisa, knowing she’d gotten the gist of the problem. She met Dave’s gaze with an expression of pleading, of hope, waiting for him to tell her that somehow this was going to be all right. That somehow they were going to take down the man who’d tried to kill her.

  That somehow he was going to make right for her what had gone so wrong.

  Dave thought about how she’d spent her whole childhood living with parents who didn’t give a damn about
her, who’d forced her to become harsh and wary, who’d taken the joy right out of her life. Then she’d dealt with her low-life brother and faced a drug conviction she was innocent of. Now she faced circumstances she couldn’t control that threatened to tear her life apart one more time. Call it a streak of hellacious bad luck, karma gone wild, or anything else you wanted to, but the fact remained that it wasn’t fair, it wasn’t right, and, by God, this time it wasn’t going to happen.

  “Alex,” he said. “We’re coming back today.”

  “Good.”

  “And Robert’s coming with us.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll call you later and let you know when we’ll be there.”

  “Dave, listen to me. That son of a bitch has a multimillion-dollar operation going. He’s already proven he’ll kill to protect it. I want you out of there now.”

  “I told you I’m bringing him in.”

  “Dave? Let it go, Dave. Dave!”

  He hung up the phone over his brother’s protests, then turned to Lisa. “We’re getting out of here today. But we’re not leaving alone. Robert is going to be on that plane with us.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “We’re taking him back across the border.”

  “He’s not going to like that.”

  “I hadn’t planned on asking his permission.”

  The phone rang again. “It’s Alex calling back,” Dave said. “Let it go.”

  Ten rings later, the phone fell silent.

  “Let me get this straight,” Lisa said. “You’re planning on grabbing him, putting him on the plane, and flying him back to San Antonio.”

  “Yes. Where we’ll have customs officials waiting for him.”

  “That’s kidnapping.”

  “I’d prefer to think of it as a police escort. But before we can grab him, first we need to find him. If he really is pulling completely out of the U.S., the clinic is history, so I doubt he’s there. Do you know the number at his apartment?”

  Lisa told him. Dave dialed, then handed her the phone. “Just listen. If someone comes on the line you recognize as Robert, hang up.”