Borrowed Angel

by Heather Graham

  She was in jeans, just as he had suggested. And in a soft pink long-sleeved and tailored shirt with mother-of-pearl buttons. He hadn’t seen the outfit worn in a long time. Not in over four years. He hurt for a second. And for another second, he wanted her to look horrible in it. Her hair should have clashed with the pink. Elizabeth’s hair—black as ebony, straight, lush—had been beautiful over that pink.

  But he couldn’t remember his wife’s face at that moment, not as he was looking at Ashley there. Her eyes emerald bright, she was pale but resolved, calm and almost stoic, awaiting his next words.

  He glanced to the side table. The emerald earrings and bracelet were still there. He snatched them up and shoved them into his pocket.

  Was someone after the Tyler jewels? Or were they after Ashley?

  Or had someone come to settle an old score with him? He just didn’t have the answers.

  “Come on,” he told her, reaching for her hand.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To Wendy’s. I told you before, Brad is with the DEA. Maybe he’ll have some idea what’s going on.”

  “But what—what if someone’s out there?” Ashley asked.

  Eric shook his head. “Whoever it was is gone now, and it’s going to be almost impossible to reach us if we’re moving in the swamp. Here, take this.”

  He thrust the gun at her. He was afraid that she would jump back or refuse to take it, but she closed her fingers over the handle. “It’s loaded.”

  “You just saw it fired,” he said.

  She nodded.

  “Do you know how to shoot?” he asked her.

  She nodded. “Yes. Not well, but I’ve been at a range a few times.”

  “That’ll do,” Eric told her. He gripped her free hand and drew her along the hallway with him. He paused in his office for the shotgun and to close the shutters. Ashley winced. He glanced at her with a frown.

  “I’m afraid I’ve got longer feet than…than your wife,” she said softly.

  He didn’t reply but took her out the front door.

  “Eric?” Ashley asked him quietly.

  “What?”

  “How did your wife die?”

  She searched his features. No anger touched his eyes or tightened his face, but he didn’t answer her, either.

  “It’s too long a story for now,” he told her. “I want to get moving.”

  “But what if someone is out here?” she demanded.

  “No one’s here.”

  “But how—”

  “I would know,” he assured her. Looking at him, Ashley fell silent. She knew that he was telling her the truth.

  He led her around the back to the large shed. He went in but left her standing outside. She heard the loud hum of the generator and saw him walk toward a large airboat.

  Ashley determined to keep silent. It was hard. She was terrified.

  Almost as frightened as she had been when she had watched the one figure plunge a knife into the chest of the other. What was happening? How had she been traced to Eric’s? How could anyone find her here? They had seen her…and they had seen Eric, too. They had seen him sweep her up and take her away, and they had only waited for the storm to abate before coming for her.

  She heard a startling clang. Eric had opened the back doors and pulled out a ramp, and the airboat was clattering its way down the ramp to the grass. He reached for her hand. She frowned. “Don’t we need a canal?”

  “That is the canal,” he told her.

  “Oh!”

  Despite the danger, he smiled. And she smiled, too.

  She was glad of the boots she wore, even if they were too small, because she sank ankle deep into muck as he led her to the airboat. She saw that he was right, that they were on a canal. But it was swollen with grass, and it was very hard to tell what was supposed to be water and what was supposed to be land.

  “Have a seat,” he murmured to her. “And keep that gun ready. Just in case we need it.”

  He turned to start the motor, but then he paused, looking toward the land. Ashley started to shiver, not knowing what he heard. Then she heard it, too. A certain rustling through the grass.

  “Eric?” she whispered.

  “It’s all right,” he told her.

  “All right?”

  “It’s just Baby.”

  Ashley swallowed hard as she saw the big cat come bounding out after them. Neither muck nor grass nor water seemed to bother Baby. She headed toward the airboat full speed. Ashley felt her heart rise to her throat. The cat suddenly leaped off the ground, landing almost on top of Ashley.

  She fought hard not to panic as she stared into the panther’s huge tawny eyes. Baby stared at her, then shoved its silky soft head against her shoulder.

  Ashley almost screamed. She gritted her teeth and looked up at Eric. “Nice kitty. Nice, nice kitty.”

  Eric grinned. “She likes you.”

  “Wow.”

  He laughed, then started the motor. He must have kept it in good repair, for it burst to life almost immediately.

  Baby sat down at Ashley’s feet.

  Eric crawled up to the seat and took the wheel, steering the craft over the canal. Ashley leaned back, feeling the wind on her face. They went faster for a moment, but then Eric slowed down. Ashley looked around in dismay, feeling as if she had dropped off the face of the earth. She had never seen anything so forlorn. It seemed that destruction was everywhere. Branches and whole trees were in the water. The airboat could glide over the long grass easily enough, but she had a feeling that the endless tangle of fallen branches and shrubs was harder to negotiate.

  She looked up to find him studying her. She tried to smile, but he didn’t smile in return and only continued to watch her.

  “How do you know where you’re going?” she shouted against the roar of the motor.

  “It’s just like New York when you get used to it!” he said.

  “How!”

  “Well, we’re on Fifth Avenue now. But we’ll have to start taking the little side streets soon!”

  She laughed and looked down at the cat. Tentatively she placed a hand on the panther’s head. Baby closed her eyes, delighted as Ashley stroked her ears. A pet, huh? She’d heard of the “love me love my dog” type, but this…

  This was more, she realized suddenly. To love Eric, a woman would need to love his world. It wasn’t that he wouldn’t accept another, it was just that he would always need to come back here. It wasn’t simply the swamp, or his family, or even his people, it was the whole way of life. It was the choices he lived with, the solitude and the independence. Even if he said that he would give it up, he most probably could not. He wasn’t a crusader, but he was a link between the old world and the new, between progress and heritage. He would never let one go for the other; he was always open to both.

  She rested her chin on her hands and closed her eyes, and she wasn’t afraid. No one could reach her as she was soaring across the swamp. She didn’t need to be afraid.

  It wasn’t circumstance, though. It was Eric. No matter what he chose to do, she would feel safe with him. She would believe in him.

  She swallowed hard and wondered what had happened to her in the past few days. She couldn’t help but think what it would be like to stay. She found it hard to remember New York City, harder still to remember that her goals had centered on her business, and even harder still to think of dressing up in silk for drinks at the Plaza.

  She’d always loved the city. It had its own magic, its own dangers, its own pulse and personality. But she didn’t want to return. Instead she wanted to pretend that a bullet had never shattered her dream world and that she could go back into Eric’s bedroom and lie with him….

  With her Tyler jewels and his primitive earth.

  The wind blew hard on her face again and she set the gun down to wind her hair into a knot. Baby settled her head on Ashley’s lap. Then Eric lowered their speed once more. Ashley looked around her. A thick mass of wild orchi
ds clogged the way before them. The water was strewn with logs. Then she realized that one of the logs came equipped with eyes. Beady, dark alligator eyes. They stared at her and she shivered as the alligator’s nose moved into the water. Farther along the embankment she noticed a second alligator. Its mouth was wide open. The endless rows of teeth were fully visible, along with the creature’s tongue and throat. It waited, Ashley realized. It waited dead still for its dinner to come along and walk right in.

  She sensed he was looking at her again. Ashley looked up and grimaced. “Cute!”

  He didn’t reply, but his dark lashes fell over his eyes, and she thought that he hadn’t been too disappointed in her response to the creatures. She hadn’t gone completely with instinct. She hadn’t screamed hysterically and begged him to get her far away.

  She shivered, then set Baby’s head on the deck. She stood, coming close to Eric. “They’re horrible-looking things,” she told him.

  After a moment, he placed an arm around her shoulders. “But as you might have noticed, Miss Dane, the deadliest creature in any jungle is still man.”

  “I noticed,” she said softly.

  He pointed ahead. “There, up there. See the hummock?”

  She didn’t, at first. Then she did see the large island and the spot of color just beyond the trees. A house. A home. Life in the midst of wilderness.

  “Your sister-in-law’s?” she asked.

  “Yes!”

  Ashley tried to smooth back her hair, but the wind wouldn’t allow her a pretense of tidiness. Even as they came around the last bend and Eric cut the motor completely, the breeze tossed around tendrils of her hair. The airboat slowly came toward something like a dock, heavily laden with bracken and brush, as everything else was. She could see the house then. It was neat and storybook perfect, and a lot like Eric’s. The front door burst open and a small blond woman came running out. A tall, broad-shouldered and dark-haired man followed her more slowly, a grin on his face.

  “Eric!” the woman called. He leaped from the airboat to the mucky shore, and she hugged him fiercely. “You’re all right? Any damage? I thought that you were going to try to come back. But then everything picked up so suddenly, didn’t it? I was anxious—”

  “Wendy!” the man interrupted her softly. “He’s not alone.”

  Eric turned around, reaching out a hand to help Ashley to the shore. “Ashley, Brad and Wendy McKenna. Brad, Wendy, this is Ashley Dane.”

  “But we know that already!” Wendy said, her voice soft and musical and touched with a pleasant laughter. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

  Shaking hands with the woman, Ashley frowned. “You’ve been waiting for me?”

  She nodded, looking over her head at Eric. “Your friends are here. Didn’t Eric tell you?”

  Ashley looked back at Eric and smiled sweetly. He shrugged. “I didn’t know if they were still here or not. You were going to try to get them into town, Brad.”

  “I couldn’t get them into town. It was too late and too much was happening.”

  “What are you talking about?” Ashley asked.

  Then the door slammed open again and she heard her own name called. “Ashley! Thank God you’re all right!”

  Tara came running out and threw her arms around Ashley. They almost fell. Ashley hugged Tara in return and realized that there was something very different about her friend.

  “The baby!” she cried in alarm, stepping back.

  “The baby is inside and just fine,” Brad said. “And Wendy, don’t you think that you should get your patient back inside?”

  “Yes, we should all get inside,” Eric said.

  Ashley saw that Brad cast him a quick glance, and she knew that Eric had managed to convey a sense of their danger with those few words.

  “We should all get inside,” Brad agreed. He lifted a hand, indicating that the women should precede him. Anxious to see Tara’s baby and Rafe, Ashley started walking. But then she paused.

  She looked back at Eric. He stood some distance from her, but he was watching her.

  She shivered suddenly, because his glance was cold. And he seemed very distant.

  His lashes fell, and he shrugged at her questioning gaze. What had been between them was over, she thought desperately. He had delivered her here, and that was that to him.

  “Shall we go in?” he persisted.

  She turned around blindly to follow Tara, praying that she wouldn’t cry, then determined that she would never do so.

  CHAPTER 7

  There were several moments of confusion after they entered the house, and Ashley didn’t realize that Eric and Brad had not followed them in. Rafe was there, sitting on a sofa with a bright-eyed toddler on his lap, and watching the tiny infant who slept in a crib created from a bureau drawer. He stood quickly, throwing the little boy onto his hip. “Ashley, thank God!” He gave her a fierce hug, with the little boy pressed between them looking on in wide-eyed wonder.

  Wendy rescued her son, saying, “This is Josh. Josh, this is Miss Dane. Get your sticky fingers out of her hair.”

  Ashley laughed and untangled her hair from the beautiful little boy’s fingers. He couldn’t have been two years old; his coloring was his mother’s, his handsome features were his father’s. He would grow up to be a heartbreaker, she thought. “You can pull my hair whenever you like, Josh,” she told him. “And you can call me Ashley.”

  He gave her an enchanting grin. “‘lee!”

  Wendy smiled, shrugging ruefully as Josh reached out again for the bright hair. “It’s the color, I think. Oh, that sounds so rude! But it’s just beautiful—”

  “Please, it is red!” Ashley laughed, bending down to study the baby clad in a long sack gown. “A girl or a boy?” she asked. The infant had a head full of dark hair. Rafe’s hair, certainly not Tara’s.

  “Amy,” Rafe told her proudly.

  “Amy! Oh, she’s just beautiful, too. But how? When? Shouldn’t you be in a hospital, isn’t—”

  “Ashley, everything went beautifully!” Tara swept her arms around Ashley’s shoulders and sank to the couch with her. “Wendy used to be a nurse. She was wonderful, I’ll never be able to thank her enough.” She flashed a grateful smile to Wendy, who flushed and shrugged.

  “It was nothing, really.”

  “It was everything,” Rafe said softly. The McKennas had a friend for life, Ashley thought.

  “Wendy doesn’t think that Amy is really premature. She thinks that I miscalculated, which is possible, I suppose. The sonogram readings always were a bit off.”

  “And I’m glad!” Wendy admitted. “We would have had to take some drastic measure to reach a hospital if the baby had needed an incubator. But—” she paused, grinning again “—by the meat scale in the kitchen, Amy Elizabeth Tyler was born at a good eight pounds, one ounce.”

  “Ready for the world,” Rafe commented. “Although her mother deserves a good talking to.”

  “Rafe, I promise I’ll never, never do anything like it again.”

  “You’re right. When we have another child, I’ll lock you up in a tower for the last two months.”

  Wendy laughed. “You’re not supposed to talk about another child when your wife isn’t even a week past her introduction to labor pains, Rafe Tyler. Ashley, how about a glass of wine?”

  Ashley glanced at the door. Eric and Brad were still outside. Eric must be telling Brad about the shots, and surely about the murder she had witnessed. She should feel relieved. The police would have to be notified. She was aware that the DEA and the regular homicide department were not the same thing, but she was also aware that drugs poured into south Florida from South America, and so the murder might be in Brad’s jurisdiction after all. They would all believe her now. Eric’s house had been shot up.

  “Ashley?” Wendy said.

  “Yes, I’d love some wine. Let me help.”

  “No. You sit and watch the baby. I think that Tara was more worried about you than she was about her la
bor pains. I told her that you’d be okay since we sent Eric back to make sure that everyone had gotten out.” She gave Ashley a dazzling smile, and Ashley smiled in return. “Brad can help me.” Then Wendy frowned. “Where is he? Out with Eric still? What can they be doing?”

  Ashley looked at the baby. Amy was so tiny and perfect, and she slept so peacefully. Tara was radiant and everything seemed to have come out so very well.

  Thanks to Eric.

  Wendy, holding a bottle of white wine in one hand and balancing Josh on her hip with the other, looked at Ashley worriedly.

  “I’ll call in Eric and Brad—” Rafe began but broke off when Ashley jumped to her feet.

  “Eric is telling Brad…what happened.”

  “And what happened?” Rafe asked, frowning.

  “We…were shot at. In his house. And I think it’s because I saw a murder.”

  “A murder?” Rafe echoed.

  Wendy was very still. Tara stiffened. For several seconds, they looked at one another, and then at Ashley. Rafe walked over to her and took her gently by the shoulders. “A murder? Where? When? What are you talking about? There was the storm—”

  “Rafe!” Ashley loved her best friend’s husband, but at the moment she didn’t like the tone of his voice. “I’m telling you the truth and you know that I don’t imagine things.”

  “But, Ashley—” Tara began.

  “All right, tell us about it,” Rafe said. “Wendy, let me help you with the wine. I’ll have a scotch myself, if it’s handy.”

  “Of course,” Wendy murmured politely.

  “Come on, Ashley, talk,” Rafe reminded her gently.

  She shook her head suddenly. “I shouldn’t have come here! Tara is here with the baby, and Wendy has her little boy, and I shouldn’t have—I shouldn’t have taken any chances!”

  “Tara and Amy are going to be fine,” Rafe assured her.

  “Ashley, will you tell us the story, please!” Wendy said, and she smiled with serene assurance. “Trust me. We can deal with it.”

  Ashley hesitated just a second, then started to tell her story. After she described everything that had happened, they all stared at her.

  “Ashley, are you sure about what you saw?” Rafe demanded.