“I’m so sorry, Jason,” she whispered.
He blinked, apparently startled. Then, as usual, his expression settled into one of wary suspicion. “Sorry about what?”
“That I was here, and you weren’t. That I had Aaron’s help and support when you didn’t. That he spent so much time, gave me so many chances, and that he . . . cared for me, when it should have all gone to you.”
For an instant she saw something flicker in his eyes, some hesitation that she’d never seen there before. But it was gone before she could put a name to it, to be replaced with his usual mocking flippancy.
“Very nice, Kendall. Touching. Generous. If I were even the tiniest bit of a fool, I might buy it. But I assure you, I’m not.”
“No,” she said on an exhalation, weary of the fight, “I’m sure you’re not. You’re too much your father’s son for that.”
She pushed past him back into the room, wishing right now for nothing more than that he would go away and let her sleep for about a week. Hopefully she would then wake up recovered from whatever lunacy had seized her, making her look at him as she had while he slept, imagining a softness that wasn’t there, a need for comfort he would scorn, and a pain he would no doubt deny to the death. But the memory of his face when he’d talked of his mother, about stealing a car to save her a long walk in freezing rain, had settled somewhere in a corner of her mind and refused to leave.
She went into the bathroom. She looked at the louvered window above the counter, considering opening it to let in a blast of cold air from outside. But instead she turned on the tap marked C, and splashed water liberally onto her face. It was chillier than usual now due to the abnormally cold weather, and was reviving, clearing away some the weariness, although doing nothing to help her mixed emotions.
With some idea it might help further, she reached for her toothbrush in the travel bag that sat on the sink. Maybe she’d even take a shower, wash her hair; it would feel good after a night spent in her clothes. She reached back into the bag and pulled out her shampoo.
“Not planning on staying long enough to unpack?” Jason said from the doorway, gesturing at the boxes and bags she’d brought in from her car but left untouched.
She gave him a wary look over her shoulder as she fished out the brush, then picked up the tube of toothpaste. She was using the supplies she kept ready for traveling, never having known when Aaron might decide at the last minute to jump on a plane to just about anywhere. Up until his last illness, he had had the energy and stamina of a man half his age, and Kendall had more than once had to plead her own exhaustion to get him to rest at all.
“I’m used to living out of a suitcase when necessary.”
“This is a big change from that fancy house. Quite a comedown.”
She turned to face him then, her fingers tightening around the thin plastic handle of the toothbrush. “I lived in seven different foster homes from the time I was eight years old. I’ve shared rooms with three other kids, five cats, an incontinent dog, and the occasional cockroach. I’ve slept in an attic, a laundry room, and a garage.” She gestured at the motel room with a sweeping motion driven by anger. “This is paradise. So for once in your life, why don’t you just shut up about things you know nothing about?”
“Well, well, well,” Jason said, brows raised as he grinned at her. “The lady has teeth.”
Kendall gave him an acid look. “And I’m going to brush them. In private.”
With great satisfaction, she slammed the door in his face. And locked it.
JASON WAS STILL chuckling as he pulled open the rental car’s door and slid into the driver’s seat. He had finally stirred her to outright anger, had gotten her mad enough that she didn’t try to hide it, or rein it in because it would interfere with whatever her purpose was.
He started the engine to turn on the heat, then sat there for a moment, considering. He needed to make a call, but his cell got lousy reception here. All over Sunridge, for that matter. Except at the airport, where there was probably a cell tower nearby. He’d head that way, he decided, and check the bars on the phone as he went.
He nearly laughed out loud when he caught himself looking for a white sedan like the one he’d seen last night.
“You’re paranoid,” he muttered ruefully.
Unless, of course, the sedan that had been behind him since the motel really was the same one, having been painted brown overnight. He grinned at himself, and shook his head. Still, he looked twice when, after the bars on his phone jumped to three, he pulled into a convenience store lot and the brown car pulled in after him. But it parked a couple of slots away, and the driver, a man with blond hair that was almost white, got out and went in.
Still chuckling at himself, Jason shut off the engine and made his call. The deep voice he’d expected answered the private number.
“Mike?” he asked.
“Who else? You still goofing off, boy?”
He smiled at Mike McKenna’s gruffness, which he knew masked a caring heart the man took great pains to hide.
“Yeah. Just lazing around,” he said.
“Hmpf. Figures.”
Jason’s smile widened; he knew McKenna knew that lazing around wasn’t in his vocabulary. “What’s going on there? Things holding together?”
“Hmpf,” McKenna repeated. “You may think you’re indispensable, boy, but you ain’t. We’re all just fine.”
Jason laughed then. “I know you’re worth ten of me. But humor me. What’s going on?”
The man gave him a rundown that proved what he’d said had been true; they weren’t missing him at all at home. Not yet, anyway. As he listened, he caught a glimpse of the blond man, standing at the counter inside the store, and smiled wryly again at his own paranoia.
“Okay, I believe you. I’m expendable,” Jason said when McKenna finally ran down. He paused, wondering how to phrase the next question so as not to worry the man. “Anything else I should know about?”
“Nah. Things are purring like a well-tuned diesel. Oh, there was some guy who called, talked to Donna in the office. He was asking about you.”
Jason’s grip tightened on the receiver. “Asking what?”
McKenna’s tone was the equivalent of a shrug. “Just general stuff. Where you were from, that kind of thing. Said he was looking for somebody for a class reunion.” McKenna chuckled. “Donna told him he was looking for the wrong guy.”
As he disconnected a few moments later, Jason acknowledged that he wasn’t surprised someone had still been nosing around, asking questions about the origins of Jason West. He hadn’t expected it to stop just because he’d shown up here. For now they’d been stalled, but Jason knew the reprieve would only be temporary; sooner or later somebody was going to put the pieces together.
What he didn’t know, he thought as he walked back to his car, was whether that particular somebody was working for Alice Hawk or Kendall.
Kendall.
He smiled again as he started the car and pulled out onto the highway, remembering Kendall’s flash of temper. It was nice to know that she was capable of erupting if pushed hard enough. People who had too much control made him nervous. He preferred those you could prod to erupt the way you wanted.
The way you wanted.
A sudden image of Kendall Chase out of control in an entirely different manner shot through his mind. Naked. Writhing. Wanting. Reaching for him. Clawing at him. He tried to fight it off, making himself remember how angry she’d been at him when she’d slammed that door. But that only brought on a flood of images as hot and steamy as the water that was no doubt pouring over Kendall’s naked body right now. Visions swept over him, images of her silken skin glistening, her curves providing intriguing paths for rivulets of water, her nipples tightening as they were caressed by the stream of—
Need hi
t him like a blow to the belly, exploding in a burst of heat and sensation that nearly doubled him over. His body clenched fiercely, and he nearly swerved off the road onto the shoulder.
He took in a deep breath. Or tried to; no matter how much air he tried to pull in, it didn’t seem to be enough. He’d never felt anything like this sudden, raw, pure need in his life, and he didn’t like it. Sexual desire was like any other itch; you attended to it if you could, with a willing woman who played by the same rules, and if not you ignored it. That’s the way it had always been, and that’s the way he liked it. Either way, it eventually went away.
It didn’t hit you like a runaway boom on a sailboat.
So why was he sitting here like this, barely able to drive because his body was cramping with a hunger beyond any he’d ever known, for a gray-eyed, barefoot waif in a pair of worn-out jeans? A woman who, at least in her present mood, would probably slap him silly if he tried anything? A woman whose motives he hadn’t figured out yet, but whom he didn’t trust any more than he ever trusted anyone?
A woman who had quite possibly been his own father’s mistress?
What air he’d managed to suck in left him in a rush. The image that went through his mind then nearly doubled him over again. Kendall and his father? Nausea welled up in him, a reaction that stunned him even as it made him furious. Shaken, he pulled to the side of the road.
What the hell was wrong with him? When had these sloppy feelings gotten such a grip on him? He never reacted emotionally to such things. He assessed them, examined them, determined whether they could be of any use to him. He’d done it with this, in the beginning, assessing the relationship he presumed had existed between this woman and his father, analyzing the possibility that it might be a tool for him, the knowledge that Kendall had been sleeping with Aaron Hawk.
No.
His mind screamed it as his body shivered with rejection. He didn’t believe it. He couldn’t believe it. Not anymore.
And that shook him more than the image of Kendall and Aaron together had.
His jaw clenched; he fought for some semblance of his normal control, his usual calm. Even anger would do, he thought. Anything to shake this sudden inexplicable desire to believe that Kendall was just what she appeared to be, a loyal, courageous woman who would risk everything to carry out a dying man’s final wishes. He closed his eyes, willing himself to picture again Kendall and Aaron together, intimately. What came instead was that other vision, of himself with her, vivid and hot and painfully arousing.
You damn stupid fool, he swore inwardly, slamming his fist against the steering wheel, hoping the impact would vent some of these asinine feelings and jar his brain back into working again. It didn’t work. He leaned back in the driver’s seat, rubbing his hands over his face, then letting them fall to his sides in weary frustration.
His knuckles brushed something warm and solid. His eyes snapped open. Impossibly, the book lay open and facedown across the console between the seats, just beside his right hand. His instinct was to jerk his hand away, but the connection was somehow reassuring. As if an old friend had his arm around his shoulders comfortingly. It reminded him of the feeling he’d had when he’d first picked up the book, that feeling of unexpected peace. Experiencing it now, when just seconds ago he had been in a near frenzy, should have made him uneasy, but he couldn’t seem to summon up the feeling. Nor could he summon up that sense of panic at the impossibility of the book having appeared here when he knew damn well he hadn’t taken it from the room, and he’d never left the vehicle. Instead, he reached for it, turning it over, wondering what part of the story it was rewriting now.
He sat staring at it for a long, silent moment. It was open at the first picture, opposite the first page of the graceful writing. He looked at her again, this woman with the incredible eyes, this woman of legend, who had lived in a time so old even the date of her birth was unknown, this woman who had found a miracle for her people in the man who stood beside her. Jenna Hawk, he read. The first of the recorded Hawks. And together she and her warrior had begun a dynasty that would last for centuries.
And they had earned the promise that it would always be so. Given by a man apparently with the power to keep that promise.
Jason shook his head, trying to fight off the compelling urge that seemed to be overtaking him as he read. The urge to believe in this nonsense, to believe that somewhere back before recorded time a woman had saved the life of a wizard, and had thereby won eternal life for her bloodline. The urge to believe in the impossibility of this book. The urge to read every story here, to study every branch of the intricate family tree, to know of each Hawk who had come before. And most ridiculous of all, the urge to believe himself part of it. To have a connection to them all.
He flipped the book closed. Or tried to. The cover seemed oddly stiff, and he only succeeded in making a few pages turn. He found himself staring down at another of the impossibly detailed pictures, of a man whose resemblance to himself could not be denied; Hawk blood, it seemed, ran very true and very strong. Matthew Hawk, this one was, according to the header that began his story. The first Hawk to come to America. Whose family had died on the long journey, leaving him as the last surviving Hawk, and thereby to be visited by the book.
Only when a truck rumbled loudly by did he realize how long he’d been sitting here, reading story after story. Each similar, in that they were tales of the last bearer of the Hawk name, yet each different because each was his own man, strong in character and personality. And each of them, he noted wryly, had fought believing in the magic of the book, as he was fighting it now.
And it had, if the book were to be believed, done them no good at all.
He looked back at the page the book was now open to, the steady if irregular sound of passing traffic providing an oddly comfortable normalcy to the hallucination he seemed to be living in at the moment. He stared at the picture of Joshua Hawk, still more than a little stunned; it was like looking at a recent photograph of himself.
And he felt an unexpected kinship with this man, not only because of the startling resemblance, but because this man had, of all the Hawks he’d read about, resisted the entire ridiculous process longer and harder than anyone. Jason could relate to this man; Joshua had been a tough, practical-minded cynic, a rather grim realist who had survived on his wits and the speed of his reflexes in a time when that was enough to build you a reputation you could never quite leave behind.
It was rather entertaining to think that he had an apparently celebrated gunfighter as an ancestor. Assuming, of course, that any of this stuff was for real.
But his own story was real enough. Accurate enough. His mouth tightened. Impossible enough, you mean, he muttered to himself.
He tried to shut the book again. And again it seemed to resist. He released it, letting it fall back onto the console. Pages riffled. And stopped, on the last page of the graceful writing, the page that marked the end of his own entry.
He looked away. He couldn’t read it, couldn’t make himself go over yet again what seemed to be an ever-growing chronology of his life, with dates, times, and now written pieces of his history that no one should know. Things that couldn’t be here, yet were, just bits and pieces appearing seemingly at random. He couldn’t read it again; it would only make him crazier. He’d given up wondering how she was doing it, how she was making the changes without his knowledge, even given up wondering how she’d found out the things that kept appearing here. What he couldn’t quite give up was wondering what Kendall was really up to, what she hoped to gain.
He reached to close the book again, determined this time. But the last entry caught his eye, for it was yesterday’s date. As if the book had finally caught up with him. He stifled a shiver at the absurd idea. But he couldn’t stop himself from looking.
He sat staring at the words on the page before him.
> Words he’d never seen before.
Words that had not been there last night.
And then, as he read the last entry, he was suddenly sure for the first time what Kendall was really after. An unexpected sense of disappointment filled him, and either possible cause—that he had hoped either Kendall or the book was for real—was unacceptable to him.
He started the car, turning the key with much more force that was necessary. The tires barked a protest as he sent the car darting back out into traffic. He was back at the motel in much less time than he’d taken leaving. The door was as he’d left it, closed but unlocked. When he went inside, the bedroom was empty, the bathroom door still closed, even though he’d been gone for more than an hour. As if she’d wanted to be sure he was gone before she came out.
And now he thought he knew why.
When she did come out, dressed in a trim, charcoal-gray pants suit that darkened her eyes to the color of Puget Sound on a rainy day, he was sitting at the table. The book lay beside him, still open to the page that had made everything so very clear to him.
He watched as she retrieved a pair of black pumps from her open suitcase in the closet alcove and set them on the floor. She began pulling her hair back, and tying it with a silk scarf in several shades of gray as she walked back into the room. She came to a halt when she saw him. Her gaze flicked to the book, then back to his face.
He leaned back in the chair, swung his feet up onto the bed, and clasped his hands behind his head, in a purposeful return to his earlier nonchalant manner. He kept his eyes on her steadily.
“I know it’s a lot of money,” he said easily, “but don’t you think marrying me to get it is a bit extreme?”
Chapter Eleven
“I DON’T BELIEVE IT.”
“You’re the one who’s been doing the hard sell on this thing,” Jason said, nudging the book with one hand. “Now are you saying it’s a fake?”
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