by Peggy Webb
“Well and happy and growing.”
“I hear your twin sisters, Hallie and Hannah, are both pregnant again.” Jacob arched one quizzical eyebrow, and she added, “Dad would never discuss the Donovans, but my friend Evelyn Jo keeps me informed.”
So, she cared enough to keep up on news of his family. The thought pleased Jacob so that he threw back his head and laughed.
Rachel joined him. It felt good to laugh again— especially with Jacob. But then, everything had always felt good with Jacob.
“Hannah takes great pride in saying that she started it this time. Their daughters were born only two weeks apart.”
“I know. I envy them.” She made herself remain calm as he studied her.
“You and Bob never had more children.”
It wasn’t a question; it was a bomb dropped into the silence between them. Rachel folded her hands carefully in her lap and looked at a spot on the wall behind Jacob’s head.
“You kept up?”
“No. Someone told me about your son . . . Mom, I think. She’s a hopeless romantic. She thought I still cared.”
“You don’t, of course.”
“No.”
Rachel looked him straight in the eye, but she couldn’t read his careful expression. She could only hope he was telling the truth.
“No, we never had more children.”
“You used to say you wanted a big family.”
“Bob was older.” She watched his face, praying he would believe her. “One seemed to be enough.”
Looking at her with her long honey-and-butterscotch streaked hair and generous mouth, Jacob held on to the absurdly jealous thought that Bob had been too damned old to perform more than one miracle. He even hoped that fathering one son had tuckered him out so much, he’d had to spend the next six years celibate, recovering.
“Did you love him?”
Rachel’s head went up in defiance. “I married him, Jacob. That’s all that matters.”
“No. It’s not all that matters.” He stood up abruptly and kicked aside his chair. “When I went to Saudi Arabia, I left behind a woman I loved, a woman I fully intended to marry. I want to know what in the hell happened.”
She rose to face him, regal in her rage. “What happened is that you and I fought over your bullheaded determination to do everything in the world you could to put yourself in danger. You seemed bound and determined to get yourself killed, one way or the other—in one of your damned fast planes or in some godforsaken part of the world fighting an oil field fire. I couldn’t go through that again.”
“I think we’ve had this conversation before. Are you going to let your mother’s untimely death rule your emotions for the rest of your life?”
“Untimely death!” She stabbed the air with her finger for emphasis. “Hers was a foolhardy death, one that never would have happened if she hadn’t been taking dumb risks in that air show, flying that old World War One plane with no more thought than she would have had flying a kite.”
“And so you wrote me a Dear John letter because of your mother.” His face was unreadable as he strode across the small space. “I don’t believe it, Rachel. We’d fought over my profession before. It was a difference we could have worked out.” He put his hands on her shoulders. “What happened while I was gone? What sent you running to Bob Devlin’s bed?”
Jacob was a worthy opponent, but Rachel was more than a match for him. She’d be darned if she’d be rattled by Jacob Donovan. And she certainly had no intention of ever telling him the truth.
Her eyes flashed fire as she squared off with him. “Love. Is that what you want me to say, Jacob? That I loved him?”
“Did you?”
“Yes . . . I loved him.” She felt no triumph at the pain she saw in Jacob’s eyes. But she’d endured pain too. Six years of it. And guilt, besides. But it was a small price to pay for sanity. She looked straight into Jacob’s eyes and sent home the last barb. “He was always there for me—and he was damned good in bed.”
Jacob loosened his grip. He began slowly caressing her bare shoulders. She felt his power, his turmoil, and his tremendous magnetism.
She toughened her mind even as her body began to go slack in his hands.
“You’d have me believe you couldn’t wait to climb into another man’s bed.” His hands continued their massage. Every nerve in her body was screaming. “After all we’d been to each other, all the promises we’d made, you want me to think you changed your mind and fell in love with somebody else—in two months time.”
Suddenly, the caressing stopped. Jacob released her and stepped back. “I don’t believe you, Rachel.”
She crossed her arms in front of her and gripped her own shoulders. They were still warm and tingling from his touch.
“Let it go, Jacob,” she whispered. “Please, just let it go.”
“I’ll never let it go until I learn the truth.” He turned and quickly left the room.
The sudden silence thundered around her. It would have been so easy, she thought, just to give in to him. But she had her son’s future to consider.
“Never,” she whispered fiercely. “You’ll never learn the truth.”
Only three people knew, and one of them was dead.
CHAPTER TWO
Jacob found her house on Wednesday afternoon.
It was the kind of house he’d always imagined Rachel would live in. The tall white columns and wide verandas were cool and elegant, just like their owner. Huge live oaks, draped with Spanish moss, guarded the front lawn, and a white fence protected the house from the busy boulevard that faced the gulf.
Rachel, in white shorts and halter top, was kneeling beside a bed of bright red petunias.
He stood at the gate, enjoying a stolen moment of watching her unobserved. Her legs were as long and luscious as he remembered, the here-to-eternity legs of a tall woman. And her skin was that special honey hue of blondes who spend just enough time outside to let the sun kiss them.
Jacob found himself getting nostalgic, remembering the good times they’d had. He remembered the exact texture of that golden skin, soft and satiny with an underlying firmness. He remembered how her eyes would darken from spring green to jade when he touched her.
Impatiently, he rammed his fists into his pockets. If he didn’t watch himself, he’d be so carried away by his Irish sentimentality, he’d forget that Rachel Windham Devlin had cast him off like an old shoe. Clenching his jaw, he strode toward her. If he’d known how fierce he looked, cocky and arrogant and solid and dangerous, silhouetted against the fiery sun, he’d have been pleased. Jacob, like all the Donovans, loved to make an entrance.
“Rachel.” The way he called her name was a command not a greeting.
Her head jerked up. Jacob had to give her credit. Except for the widening of her eyes, she seemed totally in control, royal even. He wanted to lean down and kiss that imperious look right off her face.
He stood over her, feet planted apart, blocking out the sun. “Doing a little gardening to ease your conscience, Rachel?”
She jerked a handful of weeds out of the ground before answering. “My conscience doesn’t need easing, Jacob Donovan.”
“Yes, it does. For all those lies you told me last night.”
Rachel grabbed at her flower bed again, but this time she came away with a handful of petunias. Oblivious, she flung them aside like so much crabgrass. “Nobody invited you here, Jacob. Go away.”
“Not until I get what I came for.”
Another handful of flowers bit the dust. “There is nothing here for you.” She swiped angrily at her cheek and left a trail of dirt. Damn Jacob Donovan for coming, she thought. She used to see him, standing just the way he was now, feet apart, looking for all the world like he’d conquered the universe, and she’d go limp with wanting. And now, six years later—she sneaked a peek at him—now, it was just as bad.
Madder at herself than at him, she snatched another handful of petunias and flung them into the dir
t.
“Go away and leave me alone.”
“I’ll never leave you alone, Rachel.” He knelt beside her and stilled the hand that was hovering over another clump of flowers.
“Don’t touch me.”
She tried to jerk out of his grip, but he held her fast.
“Make no mistake, Rachel. It’s not you I want.”
Her heart slammed so hard against her ribs, she thought she would faint. Jacob’s next words restored her sanity.
“I want the truth,” he continued.
She saw a way out and took it. “You want the truth about why I jilted you?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll tell you. I didn’t love you enough, Jacob. I was too young. What we had was puppy love.” She forced herself not to waver under his stare. “The truth is I never really loved you.”
The smile he gave her was the most dangerous thing about him. “Is that why you’re mutilating your flower bed? You’re tearing up your flowers over a man you never even loved?”
She thrust out her chin. It was smudged, too, he noticed. He came dangerously close to kissing her. Instead, he laughed.
“Rachel, you are the worst liar on the face of the earth. You always were.” He released her and reached for an uprooted petunia. “You are also a bad gardener. Here, let me help you fix this flower bed.”
All she wanted him to do was go. She felt as if a hurricane had blown in off the gulf, and she was standing right in the eye. She snatched the poor wilted flower from his hand.
“Give that to me. My flower bed is no concern of yours.”
“Everything you do is my concern, Rachel. Don’t you know that?”
“Why? If you don’t want me, for heaven’s sake, why?”
He picked up another flower and took his time patting it back into the rich black earth. “Everywhere you go, I’ll be there. Every song you sing, I’ll be listening. Every move you make, I’ll be watching. I’ll dog you from here to the ends of the earth until I learn the truth.” He sat back on his heels and took his time viewing his handiwork. Then he turned to her, and she felt as if she were looking into the blue-hot fires of a furnace. “It’s the only way I can ever be free of you.”
She felt chilled, even in the ninety-degree heat. “You really mean that, don’t you?”
“It’s a promise, Rachel.”
She lost control with him, just as she had the night before. Losing control had always been so easy with Jacob.
“I won’t have it.” She snatched a handful of petunias out of the ground and flung them at his chest, dirt and all. “Who do you think you are to come barging into my life after six years?”
She reached down again and came back with only a clump of weeds and soil. It didn’t matter. She drew back her hand and watched with satisfaction as the whole dirty mess drifted over him. She was getting as soiled as he, but she didn’t care. She simply wanted to get him out of her well-ordered life.
“I won’t let you ruin everything I’ve worked for.”
“Rachel.”
He caught her hands as she aimed another chunk of dirt at him. She struggled, and she was almost his match. Tall and slim, she was just one inch shy of Jacob’s five ten.
They rolled together in the dirt, and she hit him with every weapon she had, knees, elbows, fists, feet.
“Stop it, Rachel.” He pinned her beneath him. The breath whooshed out of her.
“No. Dammit, Jacob Donovan. Let me go.”
“Not until you calm down.”
She wriggled a fist loose from his grasp and aimed it at his ear. It missed by a city block.
He chuckled. “If you’re going to take up street fighting in your old age, you’d better get a few lessons.”
“I don’t lessons from you.”
Still laughing, he kept her pinned down. “You used to say you wanted to be a Donovan because you admired the Irish spirit. Show me your Irish, Rachel.” He leaned closer and got a whiff of her fragrance. His laughter ceased. He tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “Rose perfume to garden in?”
The unexpected tenderness of his voice made her stop struggling.
“You always did put your perfume in the most provocative places. Where is it now, Rachel?” He nuzzled her ear. “Here?”
He smelled like soap and mint toothpaste and freshly turned earth..
“Or here?” His lips touched the base of her throat, right where her pulse was doing a crazy fandango. “Here?” His voice was hoarse as his tongue traced a hot line across the tops of her breasts.
She fell in love all over again with the man she’d never stopped thinking about for six years. His audacity, his boldness, his wicked good looks, his Irish temper, his great boom of laughter, even his recklessness—all caught her up on the same giddy merry-go-round she’d known when she was twenty-three.
He lifted himself on his elbows and looked down at her. There was no laughter in his face now. What she saw scared her.
“Rachel?”
“No, Jacob. I’m not a wide-eyed innocent anymore. I don’t believe in fairy tales. Let me go.”
For a second, she thought he was going to release her. Then his face hardened.
“And I’m not Prince Charming anymore.” He caught her hands, pinning them above her head. “I’ll let you go, but first I have to find out just how much you never loved me.”
He caught her to him fiercely. His mouth was demanding. It possessed, it punished. And it was impossible to resist. As hard as she tried, she couldn’t make her body verify the lies she’d told him.
When he was finished with her, he lifted his head.
“You kiss like a hungry woman, Rachel. Are you?”
She added one more lie to her web of deceit.
“No. I’m merely an experienced woman, Jacob. Six years of experience, as a matter of fact.”
His hands cupped her face, and she guessed they would leave prints on her cheeks, one of the many complications of skin that was so fair you could almost see through it. But she didn’t care. Jacob had already left his mark on her, a mark she would never be rid of.
“I don’t need any reminders that you married another man.”
“I did, Jacob. You can’t change the past.”
He leaned close, studying her as intently as if he were committing her features to memory. She thought he was going to kiss her again, but suddenly he released her. He stood up and walked quickly across the lawn and down the brick path.
He strode through the gate without ever looking back.
She dusted the dirt off her shorts and went back to her flower bed. Only when she heard the plane in the sky did she realize she was crying. When she shaded her hand over her face to look up, she felt the tears on her cheeks.
“You can’t change the past, Rachel Devlin,” she told herself. But as she watched the World War II plane circle, she wished she could.
o0o
Flying had always made Jacob feel free.
But not today. No matter how fast or how high he flew his P51 Mustang, he still felt like a Christmas box that had been flattened and thrown out with the trash.
Served him right, he thought. He’d rolled Rachel in the dirt as if she were a common tramp. He’d manhandled her and fought with her. What was wrong with him anyway? All he wanted to do was to get the two-timing woman out of his life.
Then how come you get all heated up every time you see her? He ignored the voice of his conscience. Sarcastic little toad.
Banking the plane, he turned back to fly over her house again. There was no mistaking it. Set on a wide expanse of lawn, it shone like a gleaming jewel. Whatever else Bob Devlin had done, at least he had kept Rachel in style. Jacob supposed he should be grateful to the man.
Abruptly he pulled back on the throttle and shot high into the sky. But the sense of freedom eluded him.
o0o
When he landed, he went back to the Broadwater Beach Hotel and called his office.
His specialized fire-fightin
g team was headquartered in Greenville now. When he’d first become a troubleshooter, he’d been part of a team based in Nashville. After Rachel had jilted him, he’d formed his own team, basing them in Dallas near where his brother Tanner lived. He hadn’t wanted to remain in Mississippi, because everything about the state had reminded him of Rachel. Through the years, as Rachel and her manager-husband had moved all over the country—Seattle, Chicago, San Francisco, back to Seattle and finally Biloxi—there had been no reason not to move his business back home.
And so he had.
“Rick, how are things on the home front?”
“Is that you, Jacob? Let me turn down the radio.”
Jacob grinned. Rick McGill would be leaning back in the old cane-bottomed swivel chair, sipping an orange soda straight from the bottle, his feet propped on the scarred desk, his blond hair looking as if it hadn’t been combed in two days, listening to his favorite radio station, WOLD, the station that specialized in golden oldies.
He could hear the scrape of Rick’s chair, the sound of his boots against the tile floor. At the other end of the line the voices of the McGuire Sisters faded into the background.
“I’m back. What’s up, buddy?”
“I’m still in Biloxi. There are a few things down here I need to take care of.”
“Not to worry. Jack’s servicing the equipment, and Mick’s giving the Learjet the once over. The rest of us are sitting on our fannies thinking about those sweet little numbers down in Maracaibo.”
“Take it easy. All of you deserve it. And let me know if anything comes up.”
“I will . . . wait a minute. That’s the Lennon Sisters. Let me turn them up.” The swivel chair squeaked loudly, footsteps tapped across the floor. “Man, that Kathy Lennon is something else.”
After Jacob hung up, he showered, changed, and went to Baricev’s for a hug dinner of red snapper. He’d fully intended to catch Rachel’s show, just as he had promised, but their afternoon encounter had shaken him more than he liked to admit. He wasn’t ready to see her again so soon.
After dinner, he changed into jogging shorts and raced along the gulf, running himself into exhaustion so that he could fall into bed, too tired to think about Rachel. He needed time to get some perspective. He’d deal with her tomorrow.