Unbuttoning his shirt, he headed toward her room and stuck his head in. “Clair?”
Her room was empty, as well. His disappointment turned to irritation. Where the hell had she taken off to now?
Her bed was neatly made, the nightstands clear.
And her suitcase was missing.
His heart slammed against his ribs.
Oliver.
A muscle jumped in the corner of Jacob’s eye. He shouldn’t have left her alone, dammit. Especially after last night. Clair was vulnerable, maybe having regrets. That idiot Oliver had probably bullied her, played on her guilt and talked her into returning to Charleston.
He’d strangle the bastard.
Clair was too damn trusting. Maybe he should have told her about Oliver messing around with that blond bimbo, that the two of them had been at the Wanderlust Motel the night before the wedding and the night before that, too.
That certainly would have blown all her wide-eyed innocence to hell.
Which was exactly why he hadn’t told her. He couldn’t remember when he’d met a woman with such enthusiasm for life, such honesty. A woman who blushed so easily, laughed so heartily and trusted without question.
Fists clenched, he strode into the bathroom, looking for something, anything, she might have left behind. A brush, a tube of lipstick, a razor.
But there was nothing. Because she’d stayed in his room last night and used his shower this morning, even her motel soap was unopened, the glass still in its plastic wrapper, the shampoo still on the counter. As if she’d never been here at all.
She’d gotten to him, dammit. Gotten under his skin. No woman had ever done that before. Not like this.
Dammit, dammit.
Well, fine, then. He set his teeth. He thought he’d seen beneath her submissive rich-girl facade and glimpsed a stronger, more determined, decisive woman. Obviously he’d been wrong.
Swearing under his breath, he tore at the buttons of his shirt and headed back toward his own room. If she wanted to go, then good riddance. He’d never wanted to go traipsing around these backroads, anyway. He hoped she and Oliver and his blond bimbo would be happy. “Hasta la vista, baby,” he said tightly. “Sai la vie, Auf Wied—”
“Who are you talking to?”
He turned so fast at the sound of her voice behind him, he whacked his elbow on the doorjamb. A jolt of numbing electricity shot up his arm. The single word he uttered was raw and coarse.
“Well, for heaven’s sake.” Key still in her hand, Clair stood in the open doorway of her motel room. “What’s wrong with you?”
Momentarily dumbstruck at the sight of her, Jacob simply stared. She’d dressed to suit the hot day, a black tank top, tan capris and a pair of sandals with a white daisy between the toes.
Relief poured through him.
Followed quickly by annoyance.
“Where the hell were you?”
She lifted a brow, then closed the door behind her. “You didn’t see my note?”
Note? He glanced back at his room. He’d been too busy ranting about her leaving to consider she hadn’t actually left, or that she might have written a note.
“Obviously not.” She dropped her black shoulder bag onto the bed, then crossed her arms as she faced him. “You thought I left, didn’t you?”
“No.”
“Liar.”
“All right.” He shifted awkwardly. “So maybe I did. Just for a minute or so.”
“You really thought I would do that? Leave without saying goodbye?”
“You were talking to Oliver when I left.” He defended himself. “Your suitcase is gone. What the hell was I supposed to think?”
“My suitcase—” she kept her gaze level with his as she walked toward him “—is right next to yours, in your room—the same room I put the note in.”
When she moved past him and disappeared into his room, he shoved his hands into his pockets and followed.
Snatching a note off the bed, she stuck it in his face. “If you would have taken a moment to look instead of jumping to conclusions, you would have noticed.”
Jacob, her note read, Went to see Bridgette. Be back shortly.
“Oh.” Dammit. The only thing he hated more than being wrong about something, was having it waved under his nose. “Well, okay. I’ll just take a shower and we’ll hit the road.”
“Not so fast, Carver.”
“What?”
“I believe you owe me an apology.”
There actually was something he hated more than having a mistake waved under his nose—saying he was sorry. “For what?”
She folded her arms and lifted her chin. “Based on erroneous information, you made an assumption that I’d packed my bag and left without so much as a thank you. That is a hardly a compliment to my character, and it speaks volumes of your faith in me.”
“All right.” He scowled at her. “I shouldn’t have assumed.”
She lifted a brow. “That’s my apology?”
“Take it or leave it.”
Rolling her eyes, she sighed and moved close to him. “Do you want to know what Oliver and I talked about?”
“No.”
“Okay.” She turned to walk away.
He grabbed her arm and dragged her back, though he was too dirty to haul her against him the way he wanted to. Damn her to hell, anyway.
“Yes,” he said through clenched teeth.
“He said we could still get married in a quiet ceremony, that he would forgive me everything.”
“What a generous guy.” Jacob’s voice was hard enough to cut granite.
“He said we could save our social situation if we told everyone I had a breakdown after I found out I was adopted.”
“He’s an idiot.” Jacob decided he just might take a trip back to Charleston after all. He’d like to see Oliver’s face just before he slammed a fist into his nose. “What else did he say?”
“That I shouldn’t trust you.” Clair dropped her gaze as she ran a finger down the front of Jacob’s open shirt. “He said that men like you seduce women like me.”
His pulse jumped when she tugged his shirt from his jeans. “Maybe you shouldn’t trust me,” he said evenly. “Maybe I will seduce you.”
His blood drained from his head and shot straight to his groin when she reached for the snap on his jeans.
“Too late,” she all but purred as she tugged his zipper down. “I seduced you first.”
“Is that what happened?”
“That’s exactly what happened.”
“Clair.” He covered her hand with his to hold her still. “I need to take a shower.”
She pressed her lips to his. “How long will that take you?”
“You know that town we were in two days ago?”
“Plug Nickel?”
“Don’t Blink.”
Careful not to brush up against her, he kissed her hard, nearly forgot his good intentions, then yanked his mouth from hers and headed for the shower, pulling clothes off on his way. The water was still cold as he soaped up, but it did nothing to cool the fire burning in his blood.
“Jacob?”
He smiled at her impatience, stuck his head out to tell her to join him if she couldn’t wait.
The camera flashed.
He swore, reached out a hand to grab her.
She jumped back and the camera flashed again. Laughing, she hurried out of the bathroom before he came out after her.
He was going to wring her neck, he told himself.
Right after he’d made love to her.
Nine
The two-lane highway stretched long and flat under a hot sun. Fields of alfalfa on one side of the road gave the air a sweet, earthy scent. Until the breeze shifted. Then the pungent scent of cow from the dairy farm on the other side of the highway gained dominance.
Clair rested her arms on the door frame of the open car window and breathed in deeply. Cow or alfalfa, it didn’t matter. With the sun on her face, the wind in
her hair, and Jacob humming along with a Billy Joel song beside her, what could possibly matter? Nature was a beautiful thing. Even the dark, thick clouds gathering on the distant horizon didn’t worry her.
Life was wonderful.
They’d been on the road for three hours since they’d left Liberty. To Jacob’s annoyance, she’d made him stop several times so she could take pictures: a white steepled church in a tiny town called Hat Box; an abandoned tractor covered with moon-flower vine in a meadow outside of Bobcat; an old barn in Eunice. She couldn’t wait to see them developed.
Especially the picture she’d taken of Jacob in the shower this morning.
The expression of shock on his face, then anger, had been priceless. Definitely a “Kodak moment.” Though he’d grumbled about the surprise photo, she’d told him that turnabout was fair play. He’d taken two of her; she’d taken two of him. They were Even Steven, as the saying went.
Somehow, Jacob hadn’t quite seen it that way, but after he’d stepped out of the shower, they’d both forgotten soon enough about the pictures.
Their minds—and their hands—had been occupied elsewhere.
He’d told her before that she was naive, but she wasn’t so naive to think that what she and Jacob had shared wasn’t something exceptional. Something special. She was certain she would never know another lover like him. That she would never love another man the same way she loved Jacob. Though her mind told her she would love again, her heart wasn’t so certain.
The wind whipped at the ends of her hair and the late afternoon sun warmed her cheeks. In spite of the ache in her heart, she smiled.
There were no regrets. If their relationship was to be no more than a physical one, then she would live that. She would be happy with that. Well, if not happy, then at least content.
Tucking her chin into her hands, she closed her eyes and let her mind drift.
What if it were possible that there could be more for them? she wondered. That maybe, just maybe Jacob had feelings for her that could take them past these few short days?
He’d been angry this morning because he’d thought she’d packed up and returned to Charleston after speaking to Oliver. Was he angry because he cared about her? She’d seen something in his eyes beyond anger when she’d come back to the motel room. Relief maybe? Jealousy?
She sighed, then shook her head.
She’d only make herself crazy if she tried to second guess what Jacob’s feelings for her might be. She was having enough trouble with her own feelings, for heaven’s sake. She knew she would only be setting herself up for disappointment if she let herself hope that Jacob might want more.
“So what’s it gonna be, Clair?”
Startled by Jacob’s question, she jerked her head around. “What?”
“We’ll need to stop in an hour or so. Maybe sooner if that storm comes in.” He picked up the map lying on the seat between them and held it out to her. “Where this time?”
“Oh.” Settling back in her seat, she found where they were at the moment, then studied the towns lying ahead of them.
Forest Glen? No, too generic. Rolling Flats? A contradiction of terms if ever she’d heard one. Crab Apple? Too tart.
Gray Creek…Arrow Bend…Quartz.
No. No. No.
Fifty miles west, she found it.
Smiling, she looked up at Jacob and held out the map.
An hour later, Jacob pulled into the parking lot of The Forty Winks Motel in Lucky, Louisiana. Thick, dark clouds had already soaked up the light before the sun had even gone down. The air was hot and heavy and still, charged with electricity.
When thunder rumbled in the distance, Clair shuddered, then grabbed her purse and followed Jacob into the motel office.
The clerk behind the desk, an elderly woman with gold chains on her thick glasses and tight gray curls on her head, dozed in a corner chair. Curled in the woman’s wide lap was a fat tabby cat, who opened one eye when Jacob and Clair walked in, then closed it again. From a small color TV, the sound of a popular game show blasted out questions in rapid-fire succession.
“…‘Then there was bad weather’…was the opening line for this Hemmingway story…”
“Moveable Feast,” Jacob muttered.
Clair glanced at Jacob, who didn’t appear to be aware that he’d answered the question. When the game-show host gave the answer and Jacob was correct, Clair lifted a brow.
While they waited politely for the clerk to realize she had customers, the questions from the television continued. “This is the eighth planet out from the earth,” the host said.
“Neptune.” Jacob tugged his wallet out of his jean’s back pocket.
Clair raised both brows.
“What is the square root of twenty-five thousand?”
“Fifty.”
Her mouth open, Clair stared at Jacob, who tapped his palm down on the counter bell. The clerk came awake with a small snort. The cat tumbled off the woman’s lap, then looked at Jacob and twitched his tail.
“Dear me.” A hand on her ample bosom, the clerk jumped up and pushed her glasses back up her long nose. She wore a silver-metal name tag that said Dorothy. “I must have nodded off.”
“We’d like a room for the night.” Jacob slid a credit card across the counter. “King-size bed, non-smoking.”
A room, as in one. Clair released the breath she’d been holding. Though they’d shared a bed last night, nothing had been said between them today regarding the sleeping arrangements for tonight.
How strange it was that she’d never checked into a motel room with a man before, and yet with Jacob it felt so comfortable, so natural to her.
The cat jumped up on the counter and glared at Jacob. Jacob glared back. A big, round blue ID tag on the cat’s collar said Zeke.
When Zeke turned his back on Jacob and sauntered over to Clair to have his head scratched, Jacob scowled.
“Welcome to Lucky,” the woman said with a friendly smile while she ran the credit card. “Where you and your wife headed?”
Your wife. Clair glanced sideways at Jacob, waited for him to correct the woman.
He simply signed the credit-card slip Dorothy handed to him and slid it back across the counter. “Wolf River.”
“Why, fancy that.” The clerk scanned two card keys, then passed them to Jacob. “I have a cousin in Wolf River.”
Clair looked up sharply. “You—you have a cousin there?”
“Why, yes. Boyd Smith. His wife’s name is Angela.”
Clair’s heart started to pound like a drum. “Have you been there?” she asked softly. “To Wolf River?”
“Used to spend every summer there on my aunt and uncle’s ranch outside of town.” Dorothy’s smile widened. “’Course that was more than fifty years ago, but I’ve been back to visit Boyd and Angie a few times. Hardly recognize the town it’s grown so.”
“Clair.” Jacob touched her shoulder. “Maybe you should wait.”
She looked at him, then shook her head and glanced back at the clerk. “Do you…have you ever heard of the Blackhawk family?”
“The Blackhawks?” The woman seemed surprised by the question. “Well, of course. Anyone’s ever been to Wolf River County has heard of the Blackhawks. They used to own more than half the land south of town.”
“Used to?”
“There were three brothers when I was a teenager,” Dorothy said. “William was the oldest. He had a mean spirit, that one. Then there was Jonathan and Thomas. Jonathan was the quiet one and Thomas was the hothead. I used to fancy Thomas when I was a teenager,” Dorothy said with a bat of her eyes, then leaned across the counter and pressed her lips into a thin line. “Never believed he tried to kill that man, even though he went to prison for it and ended up dying there, poor man. Took almost twenty years to prove him innocent.”
Her uncles, Clair realized. William and Thomas.
And her father was Jonathan.
“Did you—” Clair had to swallow the thickness in her
throat “—did you know Jonathan?”
“Met him a couple of times one summer when I worked part-time at the hardware store. We were both teenagers back then.” With a sigh, Dorothy scratched Zeke’s head. “Angela sent me the newspaper article about the car accident. Killed his whole family—three little ones and his wife, though I can’t remember her name.”
We’re not all dead, Clair thought. We’re alive.
“Norah,” Clair whispered. “Her name was Norah.”
“That’s right.” Dorothy looked up in surprise. “You know the Blackhawks?”
“No.” She shook her head. “I—I’ve heard of them.”
“Far as I know, Thomas’s son Lucas is the only one left now,” Dorothy said sadly. “There was talk about William’s boy, but the way I heard it, he ran off when he was a teenager and no one’s seen him in years.”
When the phone rang and Dorothy turned to answer it, Jacob took hold of Clair’s arm. “We should go.”
Outside the office, Clair sagged against Jacob. He circled his arms around her and held her close.
“I’d seen the documents,” she said quietly. “Listened to my parents’ admission. But, until this moment, it never seemed real to me.” She curled her fingers into the front of his shirt and looked up at him. “That woman in there just made it real.”
“Yeah.” He tucked her hair behind her ears. “It’s real.”
“She met my father.” The wonder of it had her smiling. And crying. “Knew my uncles.”
A humid breeze blew over them; thunder rumbled, closer than it had been before. They stood there for a long, silent moment, then she touched Jacob’s cheek, needed to know that he was real, too. His skin was warm, the stubble of his beard sent tingles up her arm. When he pressed his lips to her palm, butterflies danced in her stomach.
Something shifted. In the air. Between them. In the Universe, Clair thought. When Jacob’s eyes narrowed and darkened, she thought he felt it, too.
But then he dropped his hands away and shoved them into his front jean’s pockets. “There’s a pizza place across the street,” he said evenly. “Why don’t we get something to eat?”
That Blackhawk Bride Page 11