Shattered Blue: A Romantic Thriller

by Jane Taylor Starwood

  “I’m sorry, Shane. I wish—”

  “It’s all right, Matt, I understand. I love that you’re doing this for me, and I don’t want to wait any longer to see Gram, so we’ll make it this weekend.”

  He grinned at her. “Great. It’s a six-hour drive, so let’s say I pick you up Saturday morning at five. We’ll get to Phoenix in time to find a motel and grab some lunch, then I’ll go get Gram. You can spend the whole afternoon together, then I’ll take us all to dinner in some out-of-the-way restaurant, drop you off at the motel, and take Gram home. We’ll head back Sunday morning and nobody but the three of us will know that the notorious Shannon Malone was in town.”

  She put her elbows on the table, rested her chin on her fists, and smiled at him. “It’s sneaky. I like it.”

  “I thought you would. What about the cats and the peacocks?”

  “I’ll call Beth’s grandson, Bobby. He lives in San Miguel and he’s taken care of them before.”

  She went to the phone and called Bobby. While they worked out the details, she watched Matt clean his plate and help himself to more eggs and potatoes. The pleasure she felt far outweighed such a simple thing.

  After they’d washed the dishes together, Shane sent Matt out of the kitchen with a glass of wine while she put the pots and plates and silverware away and set up a pot of decaf. She hung the dishtowel on its peg, then turned to see him studying the eclectic contents of her living room: antique twig furniture; reproductions of ancient Mimbres pottery; a few of her own weavings; her collection of geodes in their niche above the white-plastered kiva fireplace.

  Matt stopped in front of the row of geodes. He reached for one, hefted it and discovered it was heavier than it looked. Half of the split rock fit neatly in his palm. It was lined with sparkling purple crystals, like a miniature mountain range.

  Shane came up beside him.

  “It’s beautiful,” he told her.

  “Those are amethyst crystals,” Shane said. “My dad gave me most of these. He was an amateur geologist, a rock hound. He took me rock hunting a couple of times the summer before he died, but we didn’t find any geodes together.”

  He heard the echo of old grief in her voice. “You still miss him,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “I still miss my parents, too. I guess you never get over it.”

  “No,” she agreed. “But it gets easier with time.”

  Matt set the amethyst geode back in the niche and picked up a much larger one that was lined with chunky, blue-white crystals. “This one’s a real beauty,” he said.

  “Ray gave me that for my ninth birthday,” Shane said.

  “Ah. Trying to take your father’s place?”

  Shane nodded. “I cried when I opened the box, and then I felt terrible about hurting Ray’s feelings.”

  “I’m guessing he didn’t find it himself,” Matt said.

  Shane laughed softly. “No, but I’m sure he got it at the best gem-and-mineral shop in New York City.” She paused, thinking about her stepfather, then continued. “Ray was a good man, in most ways. He was always kind to me, and he was devoted to my mother.”

  She took down the largest geode, another blue-white single specimen the size of two fists held together. She held it in both hands.

  “This was my last birthday present from Ray, before he went to prison,” she said. “It puzzled me at the time, but I guess he was trying to reclaim a happier past.”

  “Not happier for you. The first one he gave you made you cry.”

  “I know. I think he’d forgotten that. I guess he was already losing his mind.”

  “Alzheimer’s?”

  “Yes. The last time I spoke to him, by the end of the conversation he’d forgotten who I was. He kept asking me why they wouldn’t let him leave. ‘Why won’t these people let me go home? I want to go home,’ he kept saying in this terrible, childish voice. It was so sad.” She fell silent for a moment, and then she shook her head. “But I really don’t want to talk about that right now.”

  “Then we won’t,” Matt said. He put the geode he was holding back in the niche and took the bigger one from Shane’s hands. Impressed by its weight, he turned it over, studying the gray, pockmarked shell. “You’d never guess what was inside.”

  “That’s what makes geodes so wonderful,” Shane said. “They look like plain old rocks, and then you look inside, and there’s a whole beautiful world you never expected to find.”

  Matt placed the heavy geode back in the niche above the fireplace. He turned to Shane, smiling into her eyes as he traced the line of her cheekbone with his fingertip. “Kind of like some people,” he said, and leaned down to touch his lips to hers in a quick, soft kiss. “Except you’re beautiful on the outside, too.”

  Shane twined her arms around his neck. “You’d better say that,” she said. “I thought you were calling me a plain old rock.”

  “Not a chance,” he replied. He was moving in for another kiss when the coffee-maker dinged.

  Shane laughed and ducked out of his arms, then took his hand and led him back to the kitchen.

  Back in the living room after supper, sitting next to each other on the couch, sipping coffee from fat brown mugs, Shane turned to Matt. “Tell me about your parents,” she said quietly. “What were they like?”

  Matt drew a long breath, let it out slowly, took another swallow of coffee. “They were great,” he said, “the best parents in the history of the world, as far as I was concerned. And that’s saying a lot, since I was a teenager when they died.”

  “You were fifteen?” Shane asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. “The accident happened two months before my sixteenth birthday.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  He put his mug on the coffee table and turned toward her. She saw the sorrow in his eyes and felt guilty for bringing the subject up. “I’m sorry, Matt,” she said. “I shouldn’t have asked.”

  “No,” he said, “it’s okay. I want to tell you.”

  He took a deep breath and let it out before he went on.

  “They were going on a well-earned vacation, to a small ski resort in Colorado, one off the beaten track,” he said. “They both loved to ski, but they didn’t like crowds, so they chose this out-of-the-way place. Getting there required chartering a small plane from Denver. The charter outfit was reputable. They’d never had any problems with maintenance before, but this time something went wrong, and the plane crashed a few minutes after takeoff.”

  He fell silent, and Shane took his hand. His fingers felt cold in hers. She waited. Eventually he cleared his throat and continued.

  “We found out afterward that they’d hired a new maintenance chief who’d been fired from his previous job for incompetence. They didn’t do a thorough background check, and my parents and the pilot died because of it. Three good people dead because the company didn’t follow up on a couple of phone calls. What a waste.” He shook his bowed head.

  “I’m so sorry, Matt,” Shane said.

  He pulled her into his arms and held her tight. “I am, too,” he said.

  They didn’t talk much after that, but sat quietly in each other’s company, sipping their coffee. Shane had the odd feeling that they could almost read each other’s minds: They knew when to speak and when to stay silent and just be together, simply be there for each other.

  When Matt finally left, she wanted so badly to ask him to stay, but she let him walk out the door with only a gentle kiss, a tender caress. She wondered again how long he would wait for her. She hoped with all her heart that it would be long enough.

  On Friday, Shane rose at five, downed a cup of strong coffee, skipped her run and spent two hours weaving before feeding the animals. She took short breaks for breakfast and lunch and put in a full day in the studio.

  The plan was for Matt to come down at six to record the video for Gram. They’d share a quick supper, and then she’d go back to her studio for a couple of hours before turning i
n early. Alone.

  She was excited and a little apprehensive about springing this visit on Gram, but she couldn’t take the chance of giving her a heads-up with a phone call. Even if she was being a bit paranoid, she wasn’t willing to take that gamble. Matt had agreed with her that it was possible a phone call could be intercepted. Crazy things were going on out there, a lot of them laid directly on the doorstep of an over-zealous media. It was the world they lived in; she had to learn how to deal with it.

  She hadn’t done that very well so far, but she was determined to do better. She loved her home in these hills, but she was tired of cowering in the shadows like a criminal when she’d done nothing wrong.

  Maybe it was time to come out of hiding. For the first time, with Matt’s strength to add to her own growing determination, she felt like she might be able to rejoin the world. But she still wasn’t getting a cell phone. And she wasn’t going to expose Gram to that circus again, so she’d have to stay in hiding for a little while longer.

  TWENTY

  Shane had just finished packing a small cooler with peanut butter-and-jam sandwiches, bananas and orange juice when she heard Matt’s truck. She zipped up her royal-blue hoodie, slung the strap of her duffle bag over her shoulder, grabbed the cooler and two travel mugs filled with hot coffee and stepped out into the predawn dark.

  The stars were still sharp overhead and the barest glimmer of golden light rimmed the eastern peaks. She drew cold, crisp air into her lungs as she watched Matt’s headlights bounce up the hill toward her.

  The happiness she’d felt last night was still with her. With each passing hour it sank more deeply into her bones, smoothing away the jagged edges of the past. Now, here in the rising dawn, she felt she was on the brink of something she’d been looking for her whole life, but had never been able to define.

  In the distance a lone coyote protested the vanishing dark. Shane raised her head and listened as its high-pitched, yipping howl echoed down the valley. She loved that lonesome sound, but she was glad Fiona and Furball were snug in their cage and Fred and Ethel were safe on the roof.

  The brawny pickup came to a halt at the top of the drive. Matt started to get out, but Shane opened the passenger door, stowed her duffle behind the seat, put the small cooler on the floor and climbed in beside him. Before either of them could say a word, she handed him one of the travel mugs.

  Matt took a long swallow. “Thanks,” he said, his voice hoarse with sleep.

  In the dim light from the dashboard, Shane took in his tousled hair and droopy eyelids. “Not a morning person, are we?”

  “If it looks like night and quacks like night, it ain’t morning.” He swallowed more coffee, then parked the mug in the center console, put the truck in gear, made a gravel-spitting U-turn and headed back down the bumpy hill.

  Shane smiled sweetly. “Want me to drive?”

  Matt snorted out a hoarse laugh.

  “What?” she said. “You don’t think I could drive your big, manly truck?”

  “Oh, I’m sure you could, if your dainty little feet could reach the pedals. But it’s my big, manly truck, baby, and I’m driving.”

  Shane laughed. “Definitely not a morning person. May I be so bold as to remind you that it was your idea to leave at five?”

  “May I be so bold as to tell you to shut up and drink your coffee?”

  Smiling, she drank.

  Yawning, he drove.

  At San Miguel they turned south, heading toward Silver City. Behind them, the sun slowly emerged above the Black Range.

  As the sky brightened and the caffeine did its work, Matt felt his body and brain begin to awaken to the pleasures of the dawning day. He opened his window and took a deep breath of the chilly air streaming in.

  “Ah, there’s nothing like the smell of New Mexico in the morning,” he said. “Except maybe coffee.” He glanced at Shane, picked up her hand, kissed it, inhaled the scent of her skin. “And you. I love the way you smell.”

  “Yeah? You should get a good whiff of my armpits after a long run.”

  He shook his head. “Don’t you know female sweat is the world’s most powerful aphrodisiac?”

  “Says who?”

  “It’s the pheromones. Which, by the way, are at their most powerful when the sweaty female in question is in bed with an equally sweaty male pumping out his own pheromones. When the two sets of pheromones combine, boom!”

  “ ‘Boom,’ huh?”

  “Nitro and glycerin.”

  He caught her sideways glance.

  “It strikes me that this is an odd topic of conversation so early in the morning,” she said.

  “Does it?”

  “It does. Which makes me wonder if, just perhaps, someone woke up in a certain condition peculiar to virile males, often induced by a particular sort of dream.”

  Matt kept his eyes on the road, but he felt the side of his mouth quirking into an involuntary, embarrassed grin.

  She went on, relentless. “And which, I surmise, might also account for someone’s grumpy mood.”

  Matt took a big swallow of his coffee, stalling for time, then slid a slit-eyed look at her. “You’re right,” he said. “This is not a good time for this conversation. Especially since someone is behind the wheel of a big-ass truck. Come to think of it, there is no good time for this conversation, unless the parties are horizontal.”

  “So you neither confirm nor deny my theory?”

  “Not a chance. You got any food in that cooler, woman, or is it a fashion accessory?”

  Shane laughed as she reached into the cooler. She unwrapped the waxed paper and handed Matt a sandwich.

  “Damn,” he said between bites. “Who knew? On the surface you’re such a sweet, innocent thing.”

  “What, you think it’s some big secret?” she said as she bit into her own sandwich and then licked jam from her fingers. “Women have those kinds of dreams, too, in case you didn’t know.”

  The finger-licking and the second wet-dream reference were the last straws. He almost groaned in frustration. “Okay, that’s it, Shane,” he said. “Unless you want me to pull over and jump you right now, this conversation is officially over.”

  He saw the color rising in her cheeks.

  “All right, fine,” she said. “Sorry. I guess I got carried away. But you started it.”

  “What are you, ten?”

  “You don’t have to yell, Matt.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s not easy to drive in this condition.”

  He grimaced when she glanced at the bulge in his jeans.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “What can I—” She broke off and covered her mouth with her hand, obviously stifling a laugh.

  God, she was infuriating. “Damn it, Shane, you make me crazy on so many levels. Talk about something else, anything else.”

  “All right, all right! Let’s see—” She looked through the windshield at the road ahead. “Have you ever heard of the Kneeling Nun?”

  “The who?”

  “See that rock formation up there?” She pointed to the left of the highway and he glanced up. “In front of that big cliff there’s a standing rock. See it?”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “See how it looks kind of like a kneeling woman with her head bowed?”

  “Yeah, it does kind of look like that.”

  “That’s the Kneeling Nun. There are several versions of the legend, but the most popular one says she was a nun at a convent on that mountain in the time of the Spanish Conquest. Her name was Sister Rita.”

  “Any relation to the Santa Rita mine?”

  “I think it’s named after her. Are you interested in this?”

  “Sure. Go on, I think it’s curing my—condition.”

  He heard another stifled laugh before she went on. Would this humiliation never end?

  “According to the legend, Sister Rita nursed the wounds of one of Coronado’s handsome young soldiers, and the two fell deeply in love.”

  “Oo
ps.”

  “Big Catholic oops. Then, the legend says, a jealous man revealed the affair, and Sister Rita was condemned to death. So she knelt in front of the monastery and begged God to turn her to stone as her penance.”

  “What happened to her lover?” Matt asked.

  “The legend doesn’t say. He disappeared, while she’s up there forever, turned to stone.”

  “Bummer for poor Sister Rita.”

  “Poor Sister Rita,” Shane agreed.

  “Shall we observe a moment of silence as we pass this huge, ugly scar named after her?” he said, relieved that the distraction had finally done the trick. Being so close to Shane was dangerous.

  An easy, companionable silence settled between them. It stretched to five minutes, then ten, as they passed through the outskirts of Silver City and turned southwest, headed toward Lordsburg. There they’d pick up Interstate 10, which would take them the rest of the way to Phoenix.

  Shane’s mind was far from silent. She was thinking about their earlier bantering, full of teasing innuendo. She’d never had that sort of conversation with a man before. In fact she’d surprised herself with her own frank, and vocal, assessment of Matt’s little—actually, far from little—problem. It amazed her that she felt relaxed enough with him to tease him about something so intimate. She wanted to tell him that, but didn’t want to take a chance that it would arouse hard feelings, so to speak. She smiled at her private joke and she snuck a look at him, only to find him looking back at her.

  “What’s so funny?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” she answered. But she couldn’t stop smiling.

  “Come on, you’re dying to say something. Spit it out, Shane.”

  “I don’t want to get you—upset again.”

  “Upset? Oh, upset. What, you want to talk dirty again? Okay, but fair warning, I’m going to pull in at the first motel I see.”

  She shook her head, still grinning. “No, that’s not it.”

  “Damn. What, then?”