A Drive-By Wedding
Terese Ramin
HIS HIJACKED WIFEAllyn Meyers was inexplicably drawn to the jogger running alongside her car even before he hopped in and kidnapped her at gun-point. But dangerously handsome Jeth Levoie was no ordinary carjacker. He was an undercover agent who'd just risked everything to save a child's life. And the only hope Jeth and the infant had of staying alive now was if Allyn would become his wife! But when Jeth sealed their temporary pack with a soul-shattering kiss, Virginal Allyn was drawn to him like a moth to the flame. And Allyn somehow knew that fate–not chance–had brought them together. Could she turn their drive-by-wedding into a real-life trip down the aisle?
What a choice: rock, hard place, deep end of the ocean, Jeth thought.
He opened his eyes and sighed. “Okay. I probably need my head examined, but okay. Wife.”
“Husband,” Allyn confirmed, then wrapped her hands around his wrists and stood on tiptoe to seal the pact with a kiss.
If he hadn’t recognized it previously, that was the exact instant Jeth knew he was lost. And knew he had to walk away from Allyn.
So he kissed her back with feeling, an early goodbye, with all of himself poured into it. With longing and desire, but mostly with need.
“Wow,” Allyn murmured, dazed, when he lifted his head. “Wow. That was—that was—” She blinked. “Can we do that again?”
Jeth smoothed back her hair with his thumb, more than a little bemused himself. “Yeah, definitely,” he muttered, cherishing her mouth, her being.
And therein lay both salvation and destructive flame.
Dear Reader,
Happy New Year! Silhouette Intimate Moments is starting the year off with a bang—not to mention six great books. Why not begin with the latest of THE PROTECTORS, Beverly Barton’s miniseries about men no woman can resist? In Murdock’s Last Stand, a well-muscled mercenary meets his match in a woman who suddenly has him thinking of forever.
Alicia Scott returns with Marrying Mike… Again, an intense reunion story featuring a couple who are both police officers with old hurts to heal before their happy ending. Try Terese Ramin’s A Drive-By Wedding when you’re in the mood for suspense, an undercover agent hero, an irresistible child and a carjacked heroine who ends up glad to go along for the ride. Already known for her compelling storytelling abilities, Eileen Wilks lives up to her reputation with Midnight Promises, a marriage-of-convenience story unlike any other you’ve ever read. Virginia Kantra brings you the next of the irresistible MacNeills in The Comeback of Con MacNeill, and Kate Stevenson returns after a long time away, with Witness…and Wife?
All six books live up to Intimate Moments’ reputation for excitement and passion mixed together in just the right proportions, so I hope you enjoy them all.
Yours,
Leslie J. Wainger
Executive Senior Editor
A Drive-By Wedding
Terese Ramin
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
TERESE RAMIN
lives in Michigan with her husband, two children, two dogs, two cats and an assortment of strays. When not writing romance novels, she writes chancel dramas, sings alto in the church choir, plays the guitar, yells at her children to pick up their rooms (even though she keeps telling herself that she won’t) and responds with silence when they ask her where they should put their rooms after they’ve picked them up.
A full-fledged believer in dreams, the only thing she’s ever wanted to do is write. After years of dreaming without doing anything about it, she finally wrote her first romance novel, Water from the Moon, which won a Romance Writers of America Golden Heart Award in 1987 and was published by Silhouette in 1989. Her subsequent books have appeared on the Waldenbooks romance bestseller list. She is also the recipient of a 1991 Romantic Times Magazine Reviewer’s Choice Award. She hasn’t dreamed without acting for a long time.
For all those who are just learning to claim
their power as a woman
and for
All those who are old enough to have claimed theirs.
May you all seek what you find.
To my own best beloved, Bill,
guardian angel to children and little old ladies
everywhere.
And to Ann Leslie Tuttle,
whose patience should be named Legion.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 1
The sight of the jogger’s tush stopped Allyn Meyer’s meandering thoughts on a dime, swiveled her attention a hundred eighty degrees.
Whoa, baby! her libido breathed. Never in her life had she seen anything to match it—or at least anything like it that had caught her attention. Perhaps it was the brief black shorts that gave her such a perfect view of where she suddenly and uncharacteristically wanted to place her hands. Or perhaps it was the length of muscular thigh and calf visible beneath, or the narrow waist and the expanse of broad, heavily bronzed, sweaty, shirtless back above, the straight shock of hair above that as black as his shorts, that took her breath and turned her cave woman enough to state without question, He’s mine.
Or perhaps it was simply that omniproblematical twin thing, that telepathic—for want of a better term—connection she and twin sister Becky had always had; that thing that had made Allyn feel it when Becky burned her hand on the frying pan or gave her morning sickness before Becky even knew she was pregnant.
That thing that had caused Becky to experience the sensation of drowning the time Allyn actually had been during a freak mishap with a faulty tank during one of Allyn’s research dives. Or that caused them to call each other to share in the good news before the one who was getting the news even knew there was some.
That thing that had forced Allyn to build psychological walls that were high, steep and thick enough to prevent her from, er, feeling some of the things Becky shared with her husband, to allow her sister privacy.
Or made them choose to take two completely separate paths, then suddenly wind up with the same seven-year itch and the desire for sudden and drastic change.
Anyway, perhaps it was only that coupled with Becky’s ever unruly hormones, blending with Allyn’s, mixing Allyn up and turning her into a lust-starved woman she didn’t recognize. Even though her love life had ever only included her husband, it was Becky who’d allowed herself fantasies enough for the two of them—then told her best friend-confidante-sister Allyn about them so that Allyn would be indirectly forced to use her imagination on something besides a life spent researching dolphins, whales or some as yet undiscovered reef fungus or freshwater mollusk.
Whichever, for the first time in her life, Allyn knew without doubt she’d finally spotted a man who majorly kick started impulses she’d never before entertained, and here she was driving on by and never going to meet him ever even once in her life. And all she’d seen of him so far was the rear view.
Lord, she’d led a spinster’s life, hadn’t she, getting hot and bothered over a guy in running shorts with a tight rear? Maybe Becky was right. Maybe it was time Allyn left academics behind for a while and explored the lustier side of the world. At least let herself find out what it was like to flirt a little.
Just a little.
A very little.
Smiling derisively at her penchant for equivocation, Allyn pulled ahead of the jogger, slowing for the light that turned yellow then red in front of her. Unable to help herself, she sneaked a peek in her sideview mirror to see what he looked like from this angle. No disappointment there, either. Every inch she could see of him—and the black shorts didn’t conceal much—was bronze and sculpted, gleaming with sweat.
Funny how good the sweat looked on him when she’d never particularly cared for the sight of it on herself or anyone else before in her life.
She pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes and wondered exactly what was going on inside her this morning. Lord love us, she hadn’t even looked at his face yet, that’s how bad this libido thing was. And Allyn believed firmly that what was in a person’s face the first time you looked into it said everything about him. A naive viewpoint, perhaps, if her stepfather, Gabriel, a former deep cover FBI agent, hadn’t spent as much of the last seven years as possible teaching her what to look for in a person’s demeanor that could spell good or ill to a woman on her own. Summed up, Gabriel Book’s theory of life for stepdaughters went something like, Trust everyone, but a little bombproof glass never hurts.
Allyn grinned wryly and refocused her attention on the man jogging alongside her car. His body still intrigued hers mightily, but now that she got a real look at his face, she could see there was something dark, distinctly dangerous and unmistakably formidable about him. Also intense, a trifle skittish and more than a little wary. Almost as though he wasn’t running for pleasure or health, but running from someone or something instead.
The heavy-looking bag and the sweatshirt he shifted from one hand to the other while she watched seemed to confirm rather than deny the impression.
Allyn sighed, disappointed and relieved at once. Definitely not her type, then, regardless of what her body said. She’d get over never meeting him. Her mind was a lot brighter and more self-preserving than her body would ever be. Still…
Firmly Allyn grabbed hold of her wayward hormones and shifted her attention to stuffing a Prairie Home Companion tape into the tape player. Let Garrison Keillor take her mind off of—
The passenger door opened suddenly, the seat was slung forward, and the jogger’s duffel bag crossed her vision on its way into the back seat. The car filled with the overpowering scent of salt, musk and man.
“Wha—”
Startled, she looked into the jogger’s beautiful but expressionless, and therefore infinitely frightening, face. Lord love us. An uncommon car jacker. She’d broken the cardinal rule of traveling alone by car in the city: bombproof glass doesn’t do squat if you leave your doors unlocked.
She pulled her hands off the steering wheel, held them up and open, pacifying. “Here,” she said, “take it. I’ll get out. I’ll leave the keys.”
She reached for her door handle, but he shut his door, grabbed her arm and hauled her back with a terse comment, “Uh-uh. Stay here. Drive.”
“But—” Idiot, idiot, idiot, the terrified half of her mind screamed at her. What are you, arguing with a madman? While the calm and collected, FBI-stepdad-trained half of her said, Stay alert. Do what he says until you can find a way out. You can find a way out. “But if you have the car, you don’t need me. You’ll only make things worse for yourself if you take me, too. You can have my purse, my cash—half my bank account’s in there—just let me get out—”
The gun hidden by his sweatshirt made a swift, hard impression beneath her ribs. She looked at him. His eyes were flat, his voice low and intense, terrifying. “Drive,” he said. “Now.”
Allyn swallowed. Becky, she thought, I’m in trouble. Can you hear me?
Sweet mother of God, she hoped Becky’s twin radar was in tune now, the way the two of them had always been tuned to each other’s frights in the past—and that her sister would somehow be able to focus in on where Allyn was, then figure a way to convince their overprotective stepfather to respond that didn’t involve calling out the National Guard.
Eyes never leaving the car jacker’s face, Allyn swallowed again and nodded. “Where?”
Mental note, she advised herself furiously, detours to visit friends in Baltimore don’t pay.
Jeth “never-call-me-Jethro” Levoie took his first look at the person he’d decided would be his and his burden’s salvation and knew without doubt he’d made the biggest mistake of his life.
The woman who’d left the doors of her dusty Saturn unlocked as if in open invitation to him viewed him through eyes filled with a shock and fright that was quickly replaced with an intelligence that bore just the right amount of fear to make her both careful and dangerous. She would do what he told her only as long as it suited her before she figured out how to dump him unconscious on his head in the nearest ditch and go for help. And then she’d do him as much damage as possible.
“Turn right,” he said, refusing to swallow, to reveal his own suddenly increased, cotton-mouthed fears. Heck, he was the one with the gun here, after all. What did he have to be dry-mouthed about? “Don’t wait for the light. Then floor it. Take the first left. Drive until I tell you to turn. Do it.”
Damn, what had he done?
The only thing on Jeth’s mind this morning when he’d eased his way out of the row house had been to get the toddler now sleeping in his duffel bag out of the crack house where the boy had been kept for the two weeks since his mother had sold him to her dealers in exchange for a cleared debt and two days’ worth of fixin’s. And now Jeth had this.
The possibility of stealing a two-year-old and car jacking a civilian hadn’t even entered his mind when he’d accepted the assignment to go undercover. The Baltimore prosecutor’s office had wanted him to look into allegations of corruption among the Drug Enforcement Agents working a major operation in Baltimore’s interior.
For one thing, Jeth didn’t do kids, and he’d considered civilian women of any age off-limits big-time since the day his youngest sister was killed three years ago by some goons looking for him. He’d tried, in fact, with everything he had to put that particular incident behind him and go forward with the knowledge of innocent blood staining his hands.
He’d used Marcy’s death to keep himself sharp and focused, to make sure innocence never tainted his hands again. But today he’d figured that, just for a minute, in these extreme circumstances and for the protection of the toddler for whom he’d assumed responsibility, a civilian woman, an unwary traveler alone, would be his best option for getting away clean—or as clean as would be possible under impossible circumstances.
For better or worse, he’d figured that maybe there would be some way to convince a woman to keep quiet, appeal to her maternal instincts where the child was concerned, but this woman… Hell, by choosing this woman he’d screwed up big-time, he could feel it in his gut.
His gut had rarely ever been wrong.
Damn, he was stuck now. No real good way to get this woman to drop him off so he could car jack a more likely prospect—or even simply steal a car. Besides, he was in too much hurry to waste time trying to find a car to steal. Not to mention that carting a kid about in a duffel bag—even a kid as tiny and undernourished as this one—didn’t exactly make the auto-theft option easier or safer to consider anyway. Nope, he was just flingin’-flangin’-flaming stuck.
The Saturn moved through traffic at a rapid pace, but not at a speed or in any other way that would draw law enforcement attention. Jeth blew out a mental breath; there it was, his worst suspicions confirmed. If this woman was a novice in the art of being car jacked, she was a damned smart one.
He eyed her profile, took in the tightness of her jaw, the determined set of the half of her mouth he could see—the length of curly chestnut hair French-braided from the top of her head to the nape of her long neck to keep it out of her way, then left hanging in carefree abandon from there—and something long ignored inside him tightened. If he’d seen her in a bar, a supermarket, the park, anywhere but here, he’d go out of his way to hit on her, and that was a fact.
No, actually, since hitting on her only implied doing some mild flirting that a guy hoped might lead to a night’s romp in bed, Jeth was pretty certain he’d go out of his way not to hit on her. He’d go out of his way to start a conversation, get to know her and head hip deep and sinking into the quicksand of starting a relationship with her. And if he wound up in over his head, he had the awful sense that he wouldn’t even care.
Judas, he was out of his mind. He didn’t even know her name. He was making use of her like some macho, chauvinistic PI in some old dime novel. And he wanted to slide his hand up along her ribs and let it replace where his gun was.
He blinked. Oh, for the love of… He’d snapped. Totally, completely. So far this morning he’d stolen a kid, blown his cover, car jacked a woman he’d never met but now was contemplating how to go about having a relationship with. What came next? Doing his damnedest to coerce her into a convenient marriage so she couldn’t testify against him when he was inevitably caught and tried for whatever the DEA could come up with and make stick even marginally because he’d fudged up their case?
Providing, that is, that she was single.
He caught himself checking the ring finger on her left hand and cursed himself silently, roundly. Oh, man, he was tired. Had to be it. He’d never be so stupid otherwise. Too much on guard recently…too little sleep waiting for his chance to rescue the kid from hell…the constant talk of women and sex that went on around him combined with a nonexistent love life… Yeah, it all added up. He was a fool. A worn-out, double-lived, paranoid fool.
But at least he could label himself.
He felt the Saturn slow slightly, hesitating.
“Turn here?” the woman asked, glancing at him.
Jeth forced himself not to note the all-too-evocative huskiness of her voice or the unnerving depths of the one green, one blue eye looking at him, and nodded. “Drive. I’ll tell you where to turn next.”
God bless the universe, Jeth swore. Where in Satan’s hell had he mislaid his mind?
Trying to keep her mind clear and focused, Allyn drove automatically, noting pedestrians and traffic signals, paying only enough attention to where she was to make sure she wasn’t passing any of Baltimore’s police precinct houses. Finding a spot with a lot of cops around seemed like a promising way to dump this situation.
Or maybe not. A lot of cops around meant the possibility of a lot more casualties than just her. She’d never particularly thought of herself as either noble or heroic, but the idea of bringing a man desperate enough to car jack her at gunpoint into an arena of even more weaponry suddenly didn’t appeal as strongly as she’d supposed it might. She didn’t want anyone shot or killed. And she knew, because it was one of the things Gabriel had taught her, that minimizing a situation like this was not only possible, but plausible.
She let her eyes flick carefully toward the rearview mirror where she could glimpse only a small portion of her kidnapper. Her lungs were tight, the muscles in her throat contracted to keep from breathing him in. He still had the gun in her ribs, but a significant portion of her mind was traitorously occupied with the taste the scent of him left on the back of her tongue. Never in her life had she inhaled anything that matched him.
Probably fear, the incorrigible half of her brain said, and snorted. His and yours.
The thought, unexpected as it was, caused Allyn’s mouth to quirk sideways, made her relax. So she liked the taste of fear—or was it adrenaline—did she? Well, that was something she wouldn’t have thought of herself.
Always before she’d considered her life a matter of choosing the safer path: ordered, straight, narrow-paved and without potholes. Now all of a sudden she’d hit a totally unforeseen and rather dangerous chuckhole, and she found it terrifying but interesting.
And downright exciting.
Mentally rolling her eyes at herself, Allyn risked another glance at her abductor. His face was turned mostly away from her while he did something to adjust the bundle in the back seat. There was strain in the set of his shoulders, obvious strength in the cord of muscles along his arm and neck when he struggled one-handed with the duffel bag. She heard the light whishk draw of a well-soaped zipper, felt rather than saw the man beside her strain harder for a moment before relaxing slightly. His left arm remained stretched over the seat, apparently to keep his bag propped upright.
Curious, Allyn stretched her neck slightly to see what divided his attention. A bag full of ill-gotten cash? Drugs? Some rare and priceless artifact? Or maybe it was—
A baby.
Her heart caught, slammed upward into her throat and started to pound. Her foot reflexively pressed the gas pedal, hands stuttered on the steering wheel, and the car veered sideways toward a power pole. A baby. Oh, holy mother. Oh, sweet merry Christmas. However unwillingly, she was aiding and abetting someone whose picture would wind up on a milk carton alongside somebody else’s baby’s. She couldn’t let him do this, couldn’t let him threaten a child. She had to do something, she had to—
“Watch it!”
In one swift move the man beside her jerked, dumped his weapon and grabbed the steering wheel, forced the car away from the pole, out of the line of oncoming traffic and into a side street lined with houses, cars and scraggly trees. Tires squealed as the Saturn swerved back and forth, jockeying a none-too-straight path down the street. A lone, early morning cyclist swiveled hard between two parked cars and over the curb to avoid them.
Allyn’s captor swore and reached for her clam-digger-clad knee. “Get your damned foot off the freaking gas,” he ordered, yanking the steering wheel so they skidded into the empty school parking lot at the end of the street.
“Quit telling me what to do, you baby-stealing bastard,” Allyn retorted. With a furious twist she wrenched control of the Saturn back. Nobody who kidnapped kids for a living was getting away with it on her watch.
She spun the steering wheel hard, sending the car into a controlled sideways skid over the parking lot gravel, gave the wheel a second tug and stamped on the brakes. Unbalanced by trying to keep the duffel-bagged toddler safely on the rear seat, the man rocked back and forth across the seat, then banged forward into the dashboard before winding up on the floor. Momentarily stunned, he waited a fraction too long to regain control of the situation. Before he could react, Allyn did something she’d done only once before in her life—and that was at her stepfather’s insistence when he’d taken her to the shooting range to teach her how to handle them. She picked up her captor’s weapon. Then she got out of the car and did something she’d never before done: pointed the gun at a human being and threatened him with it.
“Get out of my car,” she told him flatly.
Chapter 2
Jeth viewed her, stunned, trying to decide whether or not she’d actually use the weapon. Hard to tell. He couldn’t read her eyes from here, but she certainly held his Browning properly.
Like she knew exactly how much kick to expect from it.
Damn.
Her weight was well balanced, two-handed grip classic and firm. Nuts, the functioning half of his brain thought. One of the new breed of women who believed in handling their own affairs—and being responsible for their own safety in all ways. Her mother was probably a member of the women’s lib generation. Damned do-it-yourself bra burners had a lot to answer for. Blasted woman probably believed in the turkey-baster school of procreation, too.
Good grief. Jeth shook his head lightly, checking for dizziness and nausea. Where had that come from? Must have hit his head harder than it felt like to even bring that thought up at a time like this. Especially when he had greater things to worry about.
Like if anybody from this neighborhood saw her with the gun, witnessed this standoff, they were well and truly cooked.
If the local cops got involved in this so, undoubtedly, would his own chain of command which, at the moment, included the FBI as well as the DEA and a few other agencies he wasn’t particularly comfortable with. Because whichever one got hold of him first would not only put his head in a basket, but they’d take the kid from him and put the baby—Sasha, Jeth thought that’s what he’d heard the boy called—back smack where Jeth had found him. And that, above all, was not going to happen. Because even if the locals were willing to take Sasha into protective custody, Jeth had seen politics win out too often to be willing to risk Sasha’s life anywhere but with him.
A tad arrogant, perhaps, to think that he could protect Sasha better than an entire unit of cops, but it was his experience that the fewer people in on a plan, the fewer places for leaks to pop up. And since he was currently the acting Dutch boy with his finger jammed into the dike, that made him Sasha’s best chance for survival.
The way it should have made him Marcy’s. He forced the thought aside. Now if only he hadn’t gone and screwed things up by choosing the wrong car to hop into.
Focus, babe, he commanded himself. Don’t let it get away from you. Probably ought to be glad the damned woman hadn’t chambered a round before she’d drawn down on him. Take it slow and easy. Don’t spook her. Gotta check the kid.
He held up his hands, offering appeasement. “Be careful with that thing, okay? I just want to get up and see if the kid’s all right.”
“He’s still in the bag on the back seat,” she said, as though he were an idiot to think otherwise. “Get out of the car and spread it across the hood. I’ll make sure you haven’t done him any permanent damage.”
Spread it across the hood? Jeth’s eyebrows crooked, and a startled grin trickled through him. He controlled the almost amusement before it reached his face. God almighty Moses, what had he gotten himself into? Sheesh, she probably carried a badge and handcuffs, too. And wouldn’t that just be super.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“The person with the gun gets to say what happens next,” she said coolly. “That’s me.”
He stared at her, disbelieving.
She shrugged, less a movement than an attitude. “You made the rules. I’m following them.” Then, when he still didn’t move, she motioned with her chin, not taking her eyes off Jeth. “Go on, back out that side.” She slid her thumb up to make sure the safety was off the nine millimeter. “Move,” she ordered softly, calmly, in a tone he’d have been foolish to ignore. “I’ve got a kid to look at.”
Oh, yeah, she was dead serious—or he was about to be. His gut was right on about this one—too late to do him any good, true, but right on nonetheless. She was afraid, but not so much that the fear had stopped her from thinking—or acting. Which meant he was deep in it now. Better come up with a way to make this work—for her sake as well as his, and to his and Sasha’s advantage, and fast, because if she found a way to take off with the kid but without him and the guys he was running from found out and caught up with her… Well, he didn’t want to think what that could mean.
His brain was full of the vivid images of what that could mean. Not nice people, these guys he’d rescued Sasha from. Cannibals and headhunters had better manners. So even did the men who’d killed Marcy.
“Look,” he said, sliding onto the seat and reaching behind him for the door handle. “I know what this looks like, but it isn’t what it seems. Well, it is, but there’s a reason for it. A good one.”
She looked at him over the top of the car as he rose out of it at the same time she reached inside and flipped the driver’s seat forward. “You’ve got a good reason for car jacking, kidnapping and baby snatching? Don’t tell me, let me guess. Ex-wife, ex-girlfriend, current girlfriend doesn’t want your child but has full custody and hates you enough not to let you see him. Or she wants your child, has full custody and won’t let you see him. Or she has full custody but is abusive and you snatched the baby for his own good. Or you’re gay and you didn’t find out until after your marriage ended and your ex won’t give you access—”
Startled once again, Jeth snorted. “I’m not gay.”
He thought he heard her mutter good before she said, “Fine, you’re straight. Pick one of the other scenarios, then.”
“Scenarios?” he asked, incredulous. Who talked like that? “How much TV do you watch?” Only FBI agents and people who watched too many FBI shows on TV, maybe a few corporate executives with delusions of danger talked like that. And he had the distinct feeling she wasn’t among either of the latter. Judas, she couldn’t be with the bureau, could she?
He could almost feel the grave opening at his feet ready to welcome him.
“How ’bout I pick E as in none of the above?” he asked.
“How ’bout you spread your legs, stretch out across the hood of my car facedown and lace your hands behind your head?” she returned.
Oh, yeah, Jeth thought, reluctantly doing as he was told. Deep in it and getting deeper all the time. Much as he hated to do it, he was going to have to tell her the truth.
He only hoped she’d believe him.
The car hood was hot against his chest, stuck to his skin in itchy patches full of sweat. Even minute movement was painful, but move he had to if he wanted to see what she was doing. Carefully he raised his head. She sat in the back seat, Sasha spread limply across her lap, and stared at Jeth through the windshield, coldly furious. Fear circulated through him. Something more was wrong here than the circumstances.
Ripping himself upright, he swung around the Saturn’s open driver-side door without thinking about the weapon she’d taken from him. It lay in quick pieces, bullets scattered in the well of the passenger floor, clip tossed empty on the back seat beside her, gun wide-open and clearly harmless, wedged neatly under her foot where he obviously wasn’t going to get at it easily even if he wanted to.
He didn’t.
“What’s wrong?”
He stooped in front of her, automatically reaching to touch Sasha’s throat, feel for the pulse. She slapped his hand away and gathered the toddler protectively against her.
“What the hell have you done to him?” she asked.
“Nothing,” Jeth assured her—or tried to. Tried to assure himself, too. “He was like this when I took him. It’s why I took him.”
“He smells bad and he’s too small,” she said, paying no attention. “What is he, two? He doesn’t weigh anything. They sleep hard at this age, but not like this. He’s malnourished, he’s probably sick and he needs help.” She aimed a swift but awkward kick at Jeth that he blocked with a forearm. Damn, she was going to be a handful, and he was stuck with her now. Her eyes were bright; anger and something more painful, more accusing—and, unaccountably, disappointed. It was an odd thing to feel, but he didn’t want to disappoint her. “Why aren’t you helping him?”
“I am helping him—I did help him. I got him out of hell. I found you. You’re going to help me help him.” The hair on the back of his neck stood on end: a caution he knew to heed. They weren’t far enough away from the house he’d removed Sasha from to stop for any length of time. He felt naked and vulnerable, weaponless thanks to his stupidity and her, and now he had more than a tiny child to protect; he had her. A school parking lot in a populated neighborhood was not the place for long explanations—especially not this explanation.
“Look,” he said, and she did. Looked him straight in the eye and waited for him to lie convincingly to her. He swallowed. Who needed falsehood when the truth would suffice? “Look,” he repeated, “I wish I could let you go, but I can’t. I wish I didn’t need your help but I do. I wish you’d turned out to be somebody else, some other kind of person—” what was he saying? He didn’t know what kind of person she was “—but you know what they say about wishes.”
“If wishes were kisses all frogs would be princes,” she said. “Or were you thinking of the one where all beggars would ride?”
Animosity was palpable. So was the sudden and out-of-the-blue desire to find out if he could become a prince if she kissed him. He wanted to taste her, that was sure.
The hair on his arms fuzzed to attention. God, he was an idiot. If he kept on letting her make his mind wander, they were dead.
He tightened his jaw. Whatever it took, no kids or strangely fascinating women died on his watch ever again. Especially not because of him. He drew a breath and focused his whole attention on his…captive.
“We have to get out of here,” he said. He reached out to stroke Sasha’s head. “I promise you I don’t mean you or him any harm. I want to get this little guy whatever help he needs, but it has to be far away from here. If we stay here discussing what’s right or wrong about what I’ve done so far this morning, we put him and ourselves at more risk than I can tell you. That’s the truth.”
She had no reason to believe him, but she studied him seriously nevertheless; held herself perfectly still and assessed him with those strangely colored eyes. It was almost a cop’s stare, flat and unyielding, guaranteed to make the guilty look away first. Well, he might be guilty as hell, but he’d be damned if he looked away.
Time passed, a minute, two, before she dropped her chin in the merest fraction of a nod. Then she inclined her head toward the keys still sitting in the ignition.
“You drive,” she said.
He took great pains to belt her and the little boy securely into the rear seat before he grabbed the padded duffel bag, pulled a black T-shirt out of it and mopped himself off with it before sliding it on. Then he climbed into the car, repositioned the driver’s seat to fit his height and did as Allyn suggested. Gravel spit out from underneath the tires when they pulled out of the parking lot, punctuating the urgency with which he drove.
The sensation of power shifting and balancing uncomfortably between them was almost overwhelming.
Allyn did her best not to look at him, not to watch his face in the mirror. The accidental touches when he’d wrapped the shoulder belt around her had been wholly impersonal but nonetheless a challenge to ignore. She liked the smell of him, the taste of him, the muskiness that lay heavy in her lungs. The very thought scared her to death.
He scared her to death.
Of course, being afraid of him only made sense, but there was no way on earth she planned to let him know it.
Reluctantly, Allyn turned her attention to the child in her arms. She’d held a lot of little ones in her lifetime; she was a fair bit older than most of her cousins, and then there were Becky’s kids. All in all, in a family as closely knit as her mother’s, it added up to experience. Experience told her that this youngster was not at all in the shape he should be.
He was dressed in a toddler’s dirty undershirt and a pair of cotton training pants, underneath which he wore a soggy disposable diaper. His hair was blond, skin white to the point of translucence, threaded with the blue and lavender of veins; the light pulse at his throat was visible. Aside from the occasional twitch of eyelids, the pulse was the only movement she could detect in him. And while outside it was hot, he felt cold and clammy to touch; instinctively she wanted to bundle him tight, to warm him. She twisted as best she could to reach behind her for the blanket she kept on the car’s rear window shelf.
“What are you doing?” her captor queried sharply.
“He’s cold.” She met his gaze in the rearview mirror, noted the color of his eyes for the first time: midnight blue. Concerned, but about as genial as a hawk’s. “I’m wrapping him up.”
“Good.” Then, almost apologetically, “There weren’t any blankets where he was. There wasn’t much of anything. I’m not even sure he’s worn clean clothes in the past couple of weeks. Or had a bath. Or eaten much, or done anything kids do. I couldn’t do anything for him where he was. I had to take him.”
Again he met her glance in the mirror. Truth and something more were there where she didn’t want to see either of them. She dropped her gaze first, stroked the child’s hair.
“Do you really mean to help him?” she asked finally, quietly.
“Yes.” Succinct, ferocious. A man who’d found himself in an untenable situation he’d no control over and who’d decided to change the circumstances to appease his conscience—even if it meant forcing his ends to justify his means.
And that included abducting Allyn and stealing her car.
She glanced at him again, considered the simplicity of his yes, the shape the child was in. And for the second time in her life made an abrupt and rash decision—and never mind that she’d currently been in the process of regretting the first quick decision she’d ever made. She decided to throw caution to the winds for the sake of a child. Doing so didn’t mean rashly trusting the guy driving her car, after all. It simply involved making sure that the baby got cleaned up, got help, got home—or got someplace that would make him a good home. In which case, if they were going to spend any time together—if she was going to help him help the toddler—she’d need a name for both of them.
“Okay.” For the second time she offered the man in the front seat a clipped nod. “I won’t do this for you, but I’ll help him. Understood?”
Allyn thought she saw him swallow a grin of relief. “Got it.”
“Don’t get cocky,” she advised him. “Nobody’s home free.”
Astounded, he glanced over his shoulder at her. “Don’t get cocky?” he asked. “Who are you? Who the hell do you think planned this expedition? Cocky, my left little toe. I get cocky, all three of us get killed.”
This could involve all three of them getting killed? Allyn refused to gulp. “As long as we understand each other,” she said—with a great deal more serenity than she felt. But heck, he didn’t need to know that. “And by the way?”
“What?”
“I don’t think you planned this expedition at all well. In fact, I think your planning stinks. The shape this baby is in stinks. Literally. We need to get him cleaned up and find out what’s wrong with him.”
“I saw an opportunity, I grabbed it,” he told her—a trifle huffily, truth be known. “I intend to get Sasha cleaned up and to a doctor as soon as we’re out of the city and I can find someone who’ll accept cash for silence.” He paused. Then, “I suppose you’d have planned things better?”
“Well, I wouldn’t offer cash for silence, that’s for sure,” she said tartly. “Says you’ve got something to hide. No.” She shook her head. “I’d go to someone I trusted and—”
“No.” Refusal was flat and unnegotiable. “Last time I did that my baby sister was killed.”
Killed? Startled, she looked at the mirror, trying to see his face. His gaze remained resolutely on the road in front of them, telling her everything and nothing. “Oh, so you thought kidnapping a perfect stranger would be safer for both your emotional psyche and the stranger?” Her hold on the baby—Sasha, was that what he’d said?—tightened involuntarily, and for the first time a thin cry erupted from the child. She looked at him; his eyes remained closed, but there was some movement in the thin frame, the flop of an arm, the fisting of a hand. She loosened her grip slightly and cuddled him closer, bundled the blanket more securely around him. “I don’t think so.”
“Neither do I.” Denial was savage. “That’s why I have the gun and I’m not letting either you or Sasha out of my sight. I need to figure out who to trust who won’t either get killed or turn on me, and how to let you go safely.”
Silence was abrupt and complete. At the fringes of their concentration on each other and the moment, cracks in the pavement thudded beneath the car’s tires; intermittent traffic whooshed and receded. Allyn broke the silence first.
“I’m sorry about your sister,” she said.
“Me, too,” he agreed tightly. “So,” he asked when the moment had passed. “Any other better ideas than the ones I’ve got?”
Sarcasm fairly dripped from the question. But there were things he didn’t know about her, either. Like the story behind the beginning of her mother’s relationship with her stepfather. She thought of how her mother and Gabriel had pretended to be lovers, pretended to know each other well in order to hide him in plain sight.
About how pretense had become reality.
She shook the thought away. Or rather, she almost shook it away. Something in it didn’t want to leave. “We should probably exchange names,” she suggested. “Make it look like we know each other. Then maybe you should tell me who’s out to kill you—and why, don’t leave that out—and therefore by default me and…did you call him Sasha?”
The grin came this time before he could stop it, wry—and a mite sardonic. “Yeah, I did. That’s what his mother called him when she sold him to her dealer. I was there. Jeth Levoie. Special Investigator for the Tucson prosecutor’s office.”
“Tucson, Arizona?”
“Yeah. You want some ID?”
She ignored the irony in favor of keeping her wits from deserting her. Daughters’ lives were not supposed to parallel their mothers’, they really weren’t. But here was hers apparently paralleling the single deciding event that had happened seven years ago in Alice’s right down to the finding a man at the side of the road and the you-just-happenedto-be-there-and-I’m-from-out-of-town-and-need-your-help coincidence of it. “Please.”
Muttering something about her being a piece of work, Jeth rummaged around in his bag until he found the flat leather case that contained both his picture identification and his badge and tossed it to her. Allyn inspected it carefully, trying not to let her face betray her while her heart thudded hard against her ribs and her breath went short. Unless it was an elaborate fake—and really, since she’d had her nose stuck in her books and lab work for the best parts of the past seven years, how would she know?—he really was Jeth Levoie out of the Tucson prosecutor’s office.
She flipped the case into the front seat. “Allyn Meyers,” she said. “You’re a long way out of your jurisdiction, Jeth Levoie.”
“Hopefully not for long,” he said grimly. “And anyway—” he slanted a glance over his shoulder at her, giving her another glimpse of a profile she’d have really enjoyed looking at and meeting, getting to know and perhaps flaunting at Becky under other circumstances “—what do you know about jurisdictions?”
She made a face. The subject was at least as distasteful to her as being kidnapped by him. Or rather, actually, as often as she’d heard Gabriel fume over the subject of “co-operative efforts between the jurisdictions,” it was more disagreeable than being abducted by Jeth Levoie. “More than enough to fill a thimble, but not much more. Enough to know that Tucson and Baltimore are a long way apart, and I don’t just mean geographically. So what are you doing here?”
“Exchange program. Nobody knows me here. Same with the guy they sent to Nogales to work undercover in my place down there. You know anything about the Russian Mafia?”
“No.” Thank God. Or maybe not, since it appeared she was about to learn more than she ever wanted to about it.
“What about drug cartels?”
Allyn felt herself blanch. “This is about drug cartels?”
Jeth nodded unhappily. “Yeah, indirectly. Mostly it’s about territory. The Colombians have it, the Russians want it. There’s a war on. Sasha’s mama stuck him in the middle of it. Her ex is with the Russians. Courts gave her full custody in the divorce, but Daddy wants his heir. Her addiction of choice is Colombian cocaine. Her dealer found out who Sasha’s daddy was, sold the information to his source, who instructed him to offer Mama a deal. Sasha in exchange for clearing up the debt from her habit and a few days’ worth of highs. She took it. Sasha’s a hostage. His daddy’s supposed to trade for him, but everything goes kerflooey, and my guys tell me to get Sasha out. Only then I’m told they’ll be the ones exchanging Sasha to the highest bidder for information. I tell ’em no way I can live with that, I’ve seen the shape the kid’s in, so they pull me.”
“But you didn’t stay pulled,” Allyn said.
“No.”
Something warm and unexpected fuzzed through Allyn. Maybe the body matched other things she’d wanted to see in him, after all. “Good for you.”
He snorted. “If you say so.”
“Hey,” she told him flatly, “I was brought up by practically the Good Samaritan of all Good Samaritans and her sisters and mother and other relatives. I don’t think a whole lot of the way you involved me in this, but I can appreciate the sentiment big time. Accept a compliment when you get one. I bet it doesn’t happen often. Now when are we going to stop and take care of Sasha?”
A chuckle, dry and unwilling, spilled from Jeth. “You don’t quit, do you?”
“Stubbornness is, like, one of my worst features,” Allyn agreed tongue-in-cheek, reverting to the Valley speak practiced in one of her favorite movies. If Sasha was all right, she might actually discover she was enjoying herself—except for Jeth Levoie’s assertion of danger waiting in the wings, of course. “Now when are we stopping? I think he’s starting to wake up. When he does he’s probably not going to be happy to be wet and cold. If he’s sick… I don’t know if you’ve ever traveled with a cranky two-year-old before, but I have. It’s not pleasant.”
“Was it your two-year-old?” Jeth wasn’t sure why it made a difference—except from the standpoint that he didn’t want to deprive another child of its mother. But it was also more than that. It was that ringless left hand niggling uncomfortably at the back of his mind.
Whether this was the time and place or not.
“Not mine, no. Single, never married, no kids.” Then wickedly, because in her estimation he deserved the dig, “Just lots of relatives who’re expecting me to show up in Kentucky sometime tomorrow or the next day. You?”
He heard the denial with a sort of peculiar relief that fastened in his mind on many fronts: no child awaited her return, and neither did a husband. That made her fair game. Reaction to the part about relatives awaiting her arrival was delayed, made his gut wrench when he heard it. No way could he let her go tomorrow or the next day. The only place he felt certain Sasha would be safe was deep in the Grand Canyon reservation where Jeth had grown up, and where tourists needed to schedule visits well in advance and where there was only one real access open to non-natives. It was a place where those who didn’t belong were noticed at once, and where tribal members were friendly but closemouthed and didn’t encourage contact between themselves and the outside world. All of which meant that he had over twenty-three hundred miles to travel before he could even begin to feel Sasha might be safe, and public transport of any sort was out because it was too damned easy to trace. A car, a family off on a summer vacation, that was the way he’d intended to play this, and paying cash all the way. But if she had family that’d be looking for her…
Nuts. He didn’t even have a car seat for Sasha, nor much in the way of clothing for either himself or the baby. Grabbing opportunities when they arose didn’t leave a lot of time for the kind of planning traveling cross-country with a toddler required. He needed this blasted woman he’d stuck himself with—a trace of something soft and elusive swirled around his senses, and he felt himself tighten suddenly—in more ways than he cared to admit.
A lot more ways.
He couldn’t go with her to meet her family. He knew nothing about her, and they sure as hell wouldn’t be expecting their darling Allyn to turn up with a strange man and a sick baby in tow. Not unless they hadn’t seen her in a while, which he doubted, because that wasn’t the way his luck was running today.
But he couldn’t exactly just avoid the issue, either, now, could he?
Damn. You’re tired, but no falling apart. Sort it out, he ordered himself. Take it one thing at a time. You’ve bought a few hours, at least, before anybody figures anything out. Stop for food, clothes and a phone book with a list of free clinics. Make the rest of your plans from there.
He drew a breath. “There any place we can get clothes, food, diapers and a car seat all in one stop?” he asked.
Allyn rocked the beginning-to-whimper Sasha and shook her head. “This is your temporary stomping grounds. I’m just passing through.”
“Pig whistles,” he muttered.
Allyn swallowed the beginnings of a grin. She didn’t think she’d ever heard that particular expression before. “Excuse me?”
“Had to pick a damned out-of-towner. No use whatsoever.”
“I didn’t ask to be picked, you know.”
He grimaced. “True.”
She waited a few beats. “Where have you shopped while you’ve lived here?”
“Corner liquor store, corner grocery store, corner pharmacy.”
Allyn cleared her throat, trying hard not to laugh at how disgruntled he sounded. “I see.”
“I doubt it,” he assured her darkly. Then he sighed, checked the Saturn’s side mirrors and switched lanes, zigzagging through the city toward the expressway where he hoped to find an exit labeled Shopping.
Chapter 3
They stopped fourteen miles from Baltimore at a super-store in Ellicott City.
After a fair amount of negotiation over who would go in, Allyn bundled Sasha into the smallest zip-front sweatshirt she had with her. Then all three of them went into the store.
This was what he’d wanted when he’d started out this morning, wasn’t it? Jeth thought. A woman whose mother tiger instincts would come straight to the fore once she took a look at Sasha? He simply hadn’t bargained on finding one who was quite so…uniquely qualified to hand him his head and stir up his senses at the same time.
Or quite so enthusiastic about helping him shop.
As Jeth watched, Allyn spent a fair amount of his cash on hand with a certain flair he found both impressive and frightening—as though she’d been trained by a take-no-prisoners master in the art of procurement. Other than for staples, he shopped as infrequently as possible.
But when she headed into the men’s department, Jeth had the most disturbing sense that he was doomed.
In the parking lot, she’d ransacked his duffel bag, then her suitcases in search of something to diaper Sasha in. What she found had made her roll her eyes and tsk disgustedly at him.
“What?” he’d asked, feeling a certain impatience and paranoia to be moving—and also feeling suddenly daunted by the fact that she found his wardrobe wanting.
She’d blinked at him. He looked at her eyes and was suddenly more afraid of her than of the people from whom he’d retrieved Sasha. Because what he saw there told him better than anything she’d yet done that she was not some timid flower he’d plucked on a whim; she was the wind that blew the flower.
“These all the clothes you’ve got with you?”
“Yeah. You got a problem with it?” Oh, good, be belligerent. Show her the tough guy. Intimidate the hell out of her.
Yeah, right. As if. Instead of being either intimidated or impressed, she’d offered him exaggerated patience.
“How far do you plan to travel with me ’n’ Sasha?” A two-beat pause, then she did a little fishing. “Or at least since you’ve already said you don’t trust me, I presume you’re not planning to let me go until this thing of yours comes to some sort of resolution?”
He bit down on his temper, at once wanting to strangle her and, surprisingly enough, kiss her until she couldn’t speak.
He gritted his teeth against the unwanted impulse. Blast, in one way or another this entire trip was going to be hell, he just knew it. “As far as it takes to make sure I can keep him safe. And no, even though you’re the most annoying woman I’ve ever car jacked, I’m not letting you go any time soon.”
“You’ve car jacked other women?” Innocent. Unremittingly interested.
God save him, he was definitely going to kill her. “No.” The patience he had to exert in order to say it calmly was galling. “You’re my first and my only.”
“Oh.” Clearly, if cheekily, charmed. “What a nice thing to tell a girl.”
Understanding for the first time that the only way to win here was to remain silent, Jeth crossed his arms and stared at her.
She pursed her lips and stared back, giving him a look that stated as clearly as words, You’re behaving like a child. Cut it out. You’re the one who kidnapped me so I could help you—now don’t give me dense. “You do have a destination in mind?”
“Yes.” The paranoia of his experiences of the past several weeks caused him to glance about, looking for enemies, to not want to tell her more than he had to. He hadn’t really intended to tell her anything at all; she was simply to have been a tool. Not to mention that the less she knew, the safer she’d be.
“Jethro,” she said patiently, mildly.
“Jeth,” he snapped. “I don’t care how much my mother liked Max Baer. I’m neither a Beverly Hillbilly nor a Clampett.”
Her turn to stare at him somewhat nonplussed but waiting, tapping her fingers on the car door. As though he was the one wasting the time here, not her.
“Fine.” He shut his eyes, unwillingly granting her another win. “I’m taking him home.”
“Tucson?” she asked.
“Close enough.”
“Family on vacation?” she guessed, taking his plan a step further than he’d taken it himself.
Surprised at how easily she made it fall into place, he’d nodded cautiously.
“Okay.” She’d pursed her lips and nodded. “Okay. Now we know you’ll need stuff, too, and I know how to shop.”
And that had been that. They had two shopping carts full of toddler supplies that were certain to deplete his hastily scraped together escape fund, and she was off to buy him clothes, too. When he tried to talk her out of the extra purchases, she canted her head and eyed him with more of that apparently trademark patience.
“We’re a family on vacation?” she’d repeated, automatically rearranging the sweatshirt around Sasha while she looked at Jeth.
Just somebody’s mom discussing something mildly irritating with somebody’s dad.
Jeth’s jaw tightened with the unsought observation. No, hell, no. He was playing a role, and she’d done stage work in college maybe, understood theater, too. And yet…
Deliberately he ignored the sensation of rightness that scurried through him with the mom-dad-baby image, instead gladly noting that Sasha seemed to be responding to whatever it was Allyn was doing for him and was more with it than before. Marcy would have liked her. If Marcy could have met her. “That’s the idea.”
“Well, then,” Allyn said, as if that explained everything. When she saw that it didn’t, she elaborated, “I have a full two weeks’ worth of luggage, Sasha’s now outfitted for travel, but you look like you’re on the run. How safe will any of us be if people don’t see what they expect to see?”
Jeth paled, once again jolted by her seemingly instant insights. “What?”
“How safe—”
“I heard you. Where’d you learn that?”
“It’s true, isn’t it?”
“What undercover school did you go to, and where’s your badge?”
“Don’t have one.” She smiled, a flash of slightly crooked teeth in a small mouth bordered by dimples. He found himself suddenly and dangerously captivated by her mouth, fascinated equally by its shape as by what came out of it. “I just listen to my mother and read undercover non-fiction a lot. Makes a break from studying sharks and coral reefs and things like that. Now, what kind of underwear do you like, boxers or briefs?”
At that, and in spite of himself, Jeth nearly lost it. Before Marcy’s death and even before he’d arrived in Baltimore his sense of humor had been excellent, but lately it had been a tad…lacking. Obviously such would not be the case for long with Allyn Meyers around—regardless of the circumstances under which he’d forced their meeting.
“Boxers,” he managed to say, strangling on laughter. Lord, yes. Marcy would have had a ball with her and so would the rest of his siblings. The thought almost made him sober; the kidnappee with the odd sense of humor didn’t offer sobriety a chance to take root.
“Ah,” Allyn said, plainly pleased, leading the way to the section of apparel in question. “A man who intends to have children—unless you already have children?”
Laughter wheezed out of him, astonishment edged with painful humor. God, she was killing him, and the worst of it was, he was pretty sure he’d be more than happy to let her.
Especially if she continued to go about it like this.
“No. No children,” he said when he could speak. “No wife. No anything.” And no intention of ever having either, of getting close enough to anyone who could be taken away from him again.
“Probably a good thing,” Allyn said. “I can already see where you might be hell on a relationship of that sort.”
He should have been beyond amazement by now, but he wasn’t. “Do you always talk to strangers like this?”
“Only those who car jack me,” she told him, at the same time she supervised him to make sure he added an adequate number of boxer shorts to her cart. “Then I find it’s mandatory not to let them think they’ve ever got the upper hand. Take them by surprise, that’s what my stepfather says, keep them off balance, make them think you’re one with them. Makes it so much easier to get away when they won’t listen to reason and just take your car without you in it.”
With which pronouncement she left Jeth standing openmouthed in the aisle behind her while she sashayed ahead of him to men’s jeans.
He had to admit that, bust-him-in-the-chops personality or not, she had one hell of a spectacular sashay.
She floored him only once more during their shopping expedition. She stopped in front of the jewelry counter, looked at the wedding rings, then leaned into him for all the world like an excited wife who’d gone too long without and whispered for his—and the sales clerk’s—ears only, “It’s been almost three years since we eloped. We can afford them now, can’t we, honey?”
Torn between mirth and total disbelief, Jeth could only nod. Even as briefly as he’d known her, he should have realized that if she’d decided to play the part of family on vacation, she’d play it to the hilt, wedding rings and all.
With the two thoughts, Talk about one-stop shopping, and Judas, what have I gotten myself into?—which seemed to be his mantra of the day—he helped Allyn choose slim silver rings formed into Celtic knots, then on his own chose a small but lovely sapphire engagement ring that surprised genuine delight out of her and fit very neatly on her finger atop her wedding ring.
When she turned, raised herself on tiptoe and planted a shy kiss on his cheek, it was all Jeth could do to maintain his rather shaky equilibrium.
Allyn’s obvious giddiness over the unexpected addition of the engagement ring not only dumbfounded Jeth—who wanted to ask her about it then and there, but managed to refrain—but seemed to tickle the salesclerk, who mouthed, genuinely pleased for them, “Nice,” at Jeth over Allyn’s head, then offered them both congratulations and best wishes, and told them the rings would be waiting for them at the service desk when they were through shopping.
In the checkout line it appeared to be all Allyn could do to wait to get her hands on the rings once again—especially the sapphire—and Jeth could only watch her animated face and hope that maybe this trip he’d inadvertently arranged for them wouldn’t be complete hell after all.
When the cashier rang up nearly a thousand dollars’ worth of merchandise, he paid without any reluctance whatever.
Allyn couldn’t believe he’d thought of adding in the sapphire on his own.
More than that, she couldn’t believe she’d kissed him over a darned ring. For God’s sake, the man had stolen her, scared her, made her angry and ruined her vacation plans barely a couple of hours ago, and she’d kissed him?
His cheek was warm and bristly beneath her lips, with a slightly salty aftertaste—the result of his jog, she guessed. She’d liked the feel of it.
She’d also liked the feel of him when she’d leaned into him, stretched against him to kiss his cheek. That visceral recognition she’d experienced when she’d first seen him running at the side of the road was there in the flesh, enticing, hot.
And more than a little electrifying. And she knew all this because of one small, oval-cut sapphire circlet that now perched snugly on the third finger of her left hand.
She couldn’t help it. For reasons she could neither fathom nor have expected, Allyn saw Jeth differently than she had earlier. Perhaps that was normal. They’d spent a little time together. They’d shared an argument or two. They shared a single goal in the life of a lost child. But none of that really accounted for this.
When she’d paused at rings and considered the silver ones, she’d done so because silver wasn’t as expensive as gold, the idea of having matching rings had a practical side, she’d always loved playacting, and this little car jacking of Jeth’s was turning into her idea of theater of the finest kind. Also, her mother’s stories of how she had met Gabriel and forged a life with him had taught Allyn that sometimes desperate people did scary things for the right reasons. And although Allyn found herself having difficulty imagining Jeth’s alleged pursuing dangers as reality, she was having a grand time with everything else.
Of course, if Jeth had turned out to be a really badly dangerous guy…well, she was up hell’s creek. But at the moment she was going to fully enjoy the first ring any man—or even any boy—had ever chosen and given her. She’d cross hell’s creek when she came to it.
Now if only Sasha was all right.
She’d wanted to find a doctor for him first, but had settled for the shopping spree instead because, as she’d suggested to Jeth, if Sasha was cleaned up and they looked like a normal family on vacation, then they could visit any pediatrician and be found unremarkable in the extreme.
Unless, as Jeth pointed out darkly, the little boy was suffering from some extreme illness, or drugging, or abuse other than malnutrition that neither of them could see.
Which made it Allyn’s turn to point out that Jeth reminded her of her aunt Edith, the family disaster-monger. With Jeth’s black hair and looks and her brown hair and obvious Irish ancestry, it was quite apparent Sasha hadn’t actually been born to either of them. In which case he had to be adopted, recently and directly out of Russia.
Which meant, in Jeth’s estimation, that any doctor they saw in a small town in Maryland was sure to remember them clearly.
Unless, Allyn argued, they only told the story if they had to.
Since Jeth was equally as concerned about Sasha as she was, he conceded the round—reluctantly. Then he elicited a promise from her that if it began to look like they were going to have to tell a story, she would follow his lead, just in case he came up with something a whole lot less memorable on the spur of the moment. Because he, after all, was the one who’d come up with the rest of this…whatever this was on the spur of the moment and look how well it had worked so far.
His self-congratulatory tone made Allyn snort inelegantly, but keep her peace when he eyed her a dark admonishment of yeah, yeah, get over it and don’t remind me.
After a quick stop to pick up traveling grocery staples, they started searching for a doctor. Since it was Sunday, a doctor was difficult to find.
“Why don’t we ask someone?” Allyn said finally.
“Ask?” Jeth countered, teasing, continuing to drive. “For directions?”
“Cut the guy comedy,” Allyn told him firmly. “You don’t know where you’re going, and it’s for the good of the baby. Besides, we have to stop somewhere anyway so I can wash Sasha up and change his clothes so he looks like somebody cares about him.”
The moment the words were out, she wanted to take them back; Jeth looked unaccountably stung. “I care,” he muttered.
“I didn’t mean you,” she told him truthfully. “Or at least not since you let me buy all that stuff for him—and you.”
Ah, there it was, Jeth reflected ruefully. One of the benefits of shopping with a woman like there was no tomorrow: guys didn’t do it unless they cared.
Allyn returned full swing to her original conversational path. “Not only could Sasha use a bath, but a little soap and water wouldn’t hurt you, either. Fear and jogging don’t mix very well in a small car. Which means if we stop, everybody gets clean, you and I get some breakfast and coffee, you ask for directions…”
“Or you can ask for directions.”
“I don’t have any problem asking for directions,” Allyn said. “You’re the one who’s afraid I’ll tell someone you kidnapped the baby and me at gunpoint and they’ll call the police and it’ll all be over.”
“You won’t tell anyone anything,” Jeth said flatly. “You’ve decided you don’t mind being in this situation because it’s exciting and not your ordinary life, whatever that is, and you don’t believe anything could really happen to any of us, that this is some great fluke of an adventure that’ll work out just fine for all of us. I just hope you’re right.”
Allyn swallowed and stared at him. It was okay for her to take him by surprise, but not for him to have figured her out so easily. Heck, she couldn’t even usually figure herself out that easily. If she’d thought about it, the sense of familiarity between them, the idea of feeling comfortable with him after so short a time and under such circumstances would have scared her a lot more than the gun he’d pressed against her ribs earlier.
“Say you’re right,” she said carefully. “Then what?”
Something in the way she asked made him smile. “Then we stop at a fast food place for a quick cleanup and some breakfast and you ask for directions.”
Allyn viewed him suspiciously. “Does that mean you’ve decided to trust me or that you’re keeping your ego intact?”
Jeth merely grinned at her and drove.
After changing, breakfasting and asking for directions, they found what they were looking for in a twenty-four-hour ambulatory emergency care center.
Though still pale and groggy, Sasha looked like a different child, one who had someone looking after him.
Even half out of it as he was, he clung to Allyn’s neck and sobbed when the nurse and physician on duty tried to look at him, so neither thought to question her maternity; it was clear to whom Sasha belonged. While Jeth stood in the background, out of the way, Allyn rubbed the youngster’s back and held him gently so the doctor could look in his ears, at his throat and nose and probe his neck, abdomen and listen to his breathing.
“How long has he been like this?” the doctor asked, motioning for Allyn to hold Sasha up so he could use the stethoscope against the whimpering child’s back.
“A couple of days,” Jeth said, before Allyn could think of a response. “We’re on vacation, and he came down with a fever. We stopped at a clinic in Maine. Even though they gave him some medication and us a prescription for him, he’s been like this ever since. We’re on our way home, but we’ve still got a ways to go, and he’s not improving.”
The doctor nodded. “Probably a combination of a high fever, some dehydration and something in the other prescription he was allergic to. Do you have it with you?”
“No,” Allyn said quickly, “I’m sorry, I didn’t think of it.”
The doctor made a sound of disapproval. “Hard to prescribe something new for him if I don’t know what he’s already got in his system.”
“He hasn’t had any medication since yesterday morning,” Jeth said positively. The look he turned on Allyn said, I know this for a fact, I watched him. “Does that help?”
“Should. Anything he had is probably pretty much out of his system by now.” He probed Sasha’s ribs and stomach. “Has he been eating?”
Jeth shook his head. “Not much. Hard to get anything into him.”
Allyn looked at her make-believe husband with approval. For a guy who didn’t seem to know anything about kids, he spun a pretty good story.
“We’ve tried Popsicles, ice cream, anything we can think of,” she said, “He just shoves it away.”
“Well,” the doctor said, “we should be able to take care of that. The nurse will give him a little something that should perk up his appetite, but you’ve got to get fluids into him or your next stop will be a hospital to get him IVs. You folks have insurance?”
Again Jeth shook his head regretfully. “Not yet. Headed into a new job. Old insurance cut out, new one hasn’t picked up yet.”
The doctor nodded, wound his stethoscope and put it in his pocket. “I’ll give you some samples of the medication I want you to give your son for the next few days. Don’t worry, I think he’ll be fine, but have him checked by your own physician when you get him home.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” Allyn said gratefully.
“No sweat. Go ahead and get him dressed. The nurse will be right in with his shot.”
Jeth and Allyn waited until he left before giving vent to sighs of relief.
“He’ll be okay,” she said, hugging Sasha.
Watching her, Jeth understood for the first time that morning how fortunate he’d been. Somehow, some way, and pushing aside all Allyn’s stubborn oppositeness, he’d been guided to car jack the right person to help him help Sasha. “He might not have been if we hadn’t stopped.”
She looked at Jeth, a simple glance with eloquent thoughts behind it. “But we did.” Impulsively she held out her newly beringed hand to him; he hesitated, but when she didn’t drop it, allowed himself to cover her hand with his. “Thank you,” she said.
Inside Jeth’s chest, something tightened and made it hard to breathe. What kind of woman thanked the man who’d car jacked her—even if he had done so for real, if unthought out, reasons?
“I—” He paused, uncomfortable. “After the morning I’ve given you, I don’t know what to say to that.”
She laughed, the sound warm and rich, wholesome and unbelievably intimate within the confines of the examining room. For the second time that day she reached up and planted a kiss in the vicinity of his chin. “Say you’re welcome,” she advised. “It’s all the response you’ve got.”
Her mouth hovered dangerously, easily close to his. Sliding his arm around her waist, hauling her into him suddenly seemed the most natural thing in the world to do. “You’re welcome,” he whispered—and dragged himself from the brink of sure disaster only at the sound of the examining room door sliding into the wall and the nurse stepping into the room.
“Sorry,” the nurse said, clearly amused.
“Not necessary,” Jeth said quickly. He stepped to the door. “How ’bout I go settle up out front while you finish in here?”
He didn’t wait for Allyn’s response before he left.
“Big baby,” Allyn said affectionately for the nurse’s benefit as well as to cover her own confusion. Gee, holy crikey. She’d kissed him again. She’d practically invited him to kiss her. What on earth was going on inside her today? “Can’t stand the sight of needles near his son.”
The nurse grinned. “It’s always the strongest-looking dads who go weak when their kids get sick.”
“Weak is not quite the way I’d describe him,” Allyn managed to mutter before her attention was switched irrevocably to Sasha, who started to scream at the sight of the needle.
It wasn’t the first time Allyn discovered exactly how strong short humans could be—especially short humans who were only half-awake. She’d been so fortunate as to help Becky take her toddlers to the pediatrician on more than one occasion. She hadn’t been crazy about the results then, but this was the first time she’d ever really felt the child’s fear on a personal level. Nails on a blackboard didn’t begin to describe a toddler’s shrieks on the willies-down-the-spine scale.
Maybe it helped if you weren’t their primary caretaker.
Still, she survived, and so did Sasha. As a matter of fact, although he was still sobbing, sniffling and clinging to Allyn for dear life, by the time they left he was also awake enough to accept a red sucker from Jeth who’d managed to find a basketful at the admitting desk. Jeth had a purple sucker tucked into the corner of his mouth. The one he offered Allyn was green. She crooked an incredulous brow at him.
“I don’t believe you,” she said. “You’re supposed to be on the run from everybody in the world, but you stop for a sucker?”
He pulled the lollipop out of his mouth and shrugged. “Got a sweet tooth, what can I say?” He waggled the candy at Sasha. “Whaddya think, huh, kiddo? Good, huh?”
Sasha buried his face in Allyn’s neck and drooled red into the fabric of her shirt. She rolled her eyes at Jeth and gave him an exaggerated, “Thank you sooo much.”
Jeth grinned and swept her a bow. “My pleasure,” he drawled, and it really was. Because for all that Sasha clung to her, it was Jeth who’d found the youngster something he’d eat.
Chapter 4
They didn’t discuss the almost-for-real kiss that hadn’t taken place in the examining room. They looked at each other when they thought it was safe to do so and wondered what if, but they didn’t talk about it. The possibilities were far too idiotic even to contemplate.
Instead they exchanged minor information about themselves, worried over Sasha, praised him when he accepted not only a couple of animal crackers but also some water after he finished the sucker—or rather, sort of finished it. Allyn allowed him only to lick it until she heard the first slight crunch before relieving him of it—much to his fury—so he wouldn’t choke on any big chunks of hard candy. By the time he’d opened his mouth on extended protest, however, she’d popped several animal crackers into his hand and he had to stop yelling in order to see what she’d given him. When he found it edible, blessed silence reigned briefly once more.
They’d gotten only six miles farther down the Pike when Jeth spotted what he thought was a tail.
He glanced over his shoulder at Allyn, sitting in the rear seat beside Sasha, holding a straw in a bottle of Pedialyte while the little boy greedily drank.
“I think we’ve got company,” he told her grimly.
She let her head snap around to look out the window before she could stop herself. “Which car?”
“Black Mercedes on our left, three cars back.”
Rational thought returned, prompted by the fact that she didn’t believe anyone knew he hadn’t just gotten on a bus and left town that way. “How do you know it’s tailing us, Jeth?” His name slipped easily off her tongue, as though she’d known him a lot longer than one interminable morning and most of an afternoon. “How would they know my car? How would they even know you’re with me? A lot of people take the Pike.”
“I don’t know, Allyn.” The first time he’d actually used her name, Jeth realized. It felt strangely…right…rolling around in his mouth. Allyn. Lynnie. Lyn. Al-lyn. The whole thing and all its diminutives settled in his head and flowed without thought to his lips. “Call it paranoia. I’ve got a feeling. It’s been with us awhile. I think it was with us when we left the grocery store, and again after the emergency center. My belly’s crawlin’ on this one.”
“If you’re right?”
“Keep driving. See if they maintain distance. Only stop in populated areas for gas. Try and lose ’em.”
Allyn moistened her mouth. She’d been working with him as much as possible to this point for Sasha’s sake, but she really couldn’t fathom how anyone might possibly have found Jeth in her car so quickly—especially since they’d had no connection before this morning. She swallowed. What if he was just plain crazy—paranoid, as he had suggested? What if him taking, having Sasha was everything she’d first thought and she’d simply gobbled up the lines of a chemically imbalanced, albeit somewhat believable and charming hotty because he’d managed to play into her own secret, though probably momentary, fantasy of living Becky’s normal family life? She really couldn’t let him jeopardize any of them on some sort of paranoid, out-of-control whim.
“I’m not crazy,” he said quietly, reading her mind. “And I’m not out of control. Someone from the neighborhood could have seen you draw down on me in that school yard this morning. They could have called the police. Reports go out. Other agencies pick ’em up. Word gets around. Coincidences happen. I’m not taking any chances—with you or Sasha.”
Guiltily she glanced up, met his gaze in the mirror. The midnight eyes were steady and unwavering. She looked at Sasha.
“I’m sorry,” she said, equally softly, “but I don’t know you, and I can’t accept at face value that you might be right. I read a lot, but I don’t live like this. The most exciting thing I’ve done recently is go down in a shark cage with a research team to do some filming. I just held the fish to feed the sharks—”
Startled, Jeth looked over his shoulder at her and nearly swerved into a car in the next lane. Good grief, no wonder she’d taken to this business with him so easily. Far as he was concerned, anyone who swam with sharks willingly—even protected by a steel cage—was crazier than he’d ever considered being.
“—but that’s nothing like this.”
“Nothing like—” Flabbergasted as he was, words failed him. “Geez-oh-pete, woman, you swim with sharks? What the hell do you do?”
She grimaced. “Marine biologist. Doctor. Graduated this past Tuesday. Sharks are only one of the species I’ve worked with.” She made a face and shrugged self-deprecatingly. “I’ve studied a lot of underwater things up close and personal. Sharks are pretty predictable compared to this—to you.”
“Thanks,” he said dryly. “I think.”
“You’re welcome,” she responded, equally wry. “I think.”
They were silent for a moment. Then:
“So,” Allyn said, poking Jeth verbally a smidge. “Are you going to try to force their cover or something? Speed up or slow down or get off 70 or something and see what they do?”
Jeth cleared something akin to laughter from his throat. “You that anxious to know?”
“Aren’t you?” she countered. “I mean, don’t you think it’s better the devil you know?”
“Not always. Sometimes it’s better to let things ride. Especially when you don’t have more of a plan.” He should know. If he’d let things ride three years ago… No, he would not think it. He would not.
“But not this time,” Allyn suggested.
Jeth glanced at her in the mirror, read the need to know, to believe in her eyes and lost any desire to laugh. Without another word he switched on his blinker, dropped back and moved into the right-hand lane as though he was about to take the next turnoff. While Allyn watched as unobtrusively as she could, the Mercedes dropped back three cars and gradually did the same.
“It could just be coincidence,” she said, but she didn’t sound sure.
“It’s not coincidence, Lynnie.”
She eyed him sharply. “Why’d you call me that? It’s a child’s name. No one calls me that except my mother and sister.”
Use of the diminutive surprised him, too, but he didn’t apologize for it. “It fit the moment,” he said. “It’s the kind of nickname a man uses for his wife when she’s scared.”
“I’m not your wife, and I’m not scared.”
“In a pig’s eye you’re not,” he told her flatly. “Hell, I’m scared, too. I’d rather it just be chance that Mercedes is following us, but I can’t treat the situation that way. Scared is better than foolish.”
“I’ll remember that.”
“You’d better.” He cast another look her way. “And just so we’re clear—if this masquerade is going to work, I’ll call you anything that fits the moment. Got it?”
Allyn’s mouth flattened, jaw tightened. “Long as it’s reciprocal, Jethro,” she agreed.
Silence fell between them, thickened and grew unhealthily stuffy. The only sound other than the rush of the road under the tires were the noises Sasha made jabbering and playing with some of his new toys in his car seat, and Allyn reading softly to him until he started to get squirmy and unhappy. Then she put the book down and talked to him, asking if he was cold, hot, wet, hungry, et cetera. He stared at her without comprehension.
She sighed and felt his legs and arms before she hiked up Sasha’s shirt and tucked the tip of her finger down the front of his diaper. Sure enough, just as she’d suspected. Couldn’t rehydrate a kid with as many fluids as Sasha had guzzled without eventually finding him soaked.
“He needs his diaper changed,” she said without preamble. “We have to stop.”
Jeth swore under his breath. “You can’t change him there?”
Allyn glared at the back of his head until he turtled his neck into his shoulders against the weight of her glower.
“All right, fine.” Not happy. Not cordial. “Apparently not.” Decidedly grumpy. “We need gas, anyway. Let me lose the tail and we’ll stop.”
“Sooner would be better.” No, she didn’t know better than to poke a bad-tempered alligator with a stick when it was close enough to bite.
“Not at all would be best,” he snapped.
She was concerned for Sasha’s comfort as well as for the little boy’s safety—not to mention her own and Jeth’s. But that didn’t mean the good-looking, clean-shaven, libido-startling jughead in the front seat wasn’t starting to rile her temper—heck, her misbegotten Brannigan obstinance—in a major way. “Then drop me off, and you float away when Sasha’s diaper overflows.”
“And risk losing you to them?” Jeth wasn’t exactly feeling casual about their situation at the moment. “Uh-uh, babe, not a chance.”
“You could always leave the gun with me.” The retort was instant, deliberate and provoking.
Jeth snorted. Stubborn, single-minded, sweet-smelling woman. If she didn’t quit playing havoc with both his brain and his body pretty darn quick, he was going to have to jam on the brakes, turn around, reach back and shake her. “Oh, sure. That’d work.”
“You never know,” Allyn retorted. “It might—Hey!” Jeth slammed on the brakes and veered hard onto the shoulder of the highway, causing Allyn to jerk forward into her seat belt and grab for Sasha’s baby seat. “Geez, Jeth, what are you doing?”
Jeth shoved the transmission into reverse, sent them squealing and whiplashing backward down the side of the road. “Shutting you up and losing that damned tail.” Swearing, he watched the Mercedes blow past them in traffic, its driver swiveling angrily in his seat, taken unaware by his maneuver. “Judas, they spotted us. It’s the Colombians. I recognize the driver. We’ve got to get out of here, switch vehicles, find a safer route. These guys are not out to take hostages—except maybe Sasha. And even that’s only a maybe.”
“A maybe?” Panic was an unwelcome and instant companion, changing the circumstances. Allyn felt her stomach clench, her lungs squeeze, her heart pound. “A maybe?” Her voice rose and squeaked, and she hated it. “What does that mean? What the hell have you gotten him into? You think they’ll kill him if they catch us? How does that make it better for him to be here than where he was before? What is the matter with you? Do you ever think before you act?”
“What’s the matter with me?” It was difficult to carry on a knock-down, drag-out while he was driving backward and east down the edge of the westbound I-70, but Jeth managed. Hell, he might not get another chance to give her a piece of his mind if he didn’t do it now. “You, you’re the matter with me. You’re not who you were supposed to be. You were supposed to be June Cleaver, but look at you. I’m running this show, damn it, but you gotta step in, take my gun and tell me we’ve got to stop for baby supplies, stop for groceries, find a damned doctor and I take one freaking look at you and my brain takes a hike. You’ve got hair made for touching, eyes like I’ve never seen, a mouth I’d really like to make shut up, and you’re freaking ornery enough to punch all my buttons. So this, this is your fault, not mine.”
“My fault?” Somewhere underneath Allyn’s outrage a part of her recognized exactly what he’d said and tucked it away in a drawer labeled Oh, my God, now what? for later perusal. The rest of her told him what she thought of him. “You pigheaded, chauvinistic, macho hunk of beef. My fault? You car jack me, but the three of us being followed by a group of drug dealers you gelded is my fault? I don’t think so.” Fuming, furious. “God, I should have known a guy as pretty as you would have to also be a giant pinhead. I’d really like to see you try to shut me up, I really would.” Unfortunately, her body really did want to see him make her shut up.
By kissing her.
Which was just about as pinheaded a desire as they came, under the circumstances. But apparently her body liked the threat of danger a lot more than her head did. And if she hadn’t realized it when he’d stuck his gun in her ribs, she knew it for certain now: Jeth Levoie was as dangerous to her as they came—and in a lot more ways than one.
And this whole line of thought was just a bit more revealing than she wanted it to be—especially while they were in the middle of a big-screenlike chase scene. Or getaway scene. Every instinct Allyn possessed told her to do whatever it took to make this stop.
Trouble was, how?
She’d spent the past several years learning how to think fast under conditions that most people would consider abnormal—including, once or twice, in potentially life-threatening instances—but even Gabriel’s admonitions and training aside, none of her underwater experiences compared to this.
She’d thought quickly enough in the school yard, but that had been as much luck as it had been fury. That had been before she’d understood Jeth Levoie at all, before she’d known about Sasha. Now she didn’t have the steering wheel beneath her hands, she had a cranky baby disturbing her ability to think and an infuriatingly dangerous man who liked purple lollipops making his subtle way under her skin. Her normally more-than-able mind was a blank.
Fortunately, she didn’t have to come up with a way to get them out of trouble; Jeth already had one.
He waited until he saw the Mercedes U-turn into the eastbound lanes and gather speed, then took advantage of a grouping of westbound eighteen-wheelers, let a couple of them get ahead of him, a couple to the side and a couple behind with barely enough room for the Saturn to squeeze into the pocket between them before he jerked the transmission into drive and skidded onto the highway. Allyn covered Sasha’s eyes and shut her own so neither of them would see the mega car squash she was certain was inevitable. When, after a reasonable length of time, no crunch sound occurred, she opened one eye, then the other, then took her hand away from Sasha’s face.
And flat-handed Jeth upside the back of his head with her ring hand.
“Don’t ever do that again,” she said hoarsely. If her voice had been steady she’d have made more of an impression, she was sure.
Without looking, he grabbed her hand before she could withdraw it and imprisoned her wrist. Arizona lightning couldn’t move more quickly, and Allyn knew it at once.
Lightning couldn’t crackle and burn with more electric intensity where it hit, either.
“Don’t ever distract me while I’m saving your butt,” he returned grimly. “You’ll get all three of us killed. I won’t have that.”
“You won’t—” Allyn stared at him breathless, speechless. Too aware of his fingers around her wrist, of how immediately the tension had changed, the threat had grown, of the taste he left on the back of her tongue.
Too aware of him, period.
She would not let him get to her under these or any circumstances, she would not.
“If it wasn’t for you—” The accusation was petty, and she knew it, but that didn’t stop her from making it. From wanting to verbally beat his culpability into him.
From wanting to escape her own.
“—we wouldn’t be here—”
He squeezed her wrist hard, once, and released it. “Give it a rest, Lyn. I don’t apologize for the choices I make anymore. I can’t. We’re here. Make the best of it.”
Startled, she looked at him. Not because the fire in his touch lingered, though it did. Not because his fingers had left a visible imprint on her wrist, though that was true, too. She looked because the passion in his refusal to apologize for who he was and what he did equaled her own.
And because, unlike men she knew in her field whose passion for their work left little room for a threedimensional life outside it, there was a lot more to Jeth than whatever he was doing at the moment.
She’d recognized that before—sort of—in the way he’d put Sasha’s comfort and welfare first, before himself, in his willingness to try to make her feel easier despite putting her in an unthinkable predicament, but this was the first time she’d known it. Understood it way down deep where it played havoc with the nerves that butterflied about her stomach, and in whatever emotion squeezed heart and lungs inside her chest.
Recklessness and petty accusations whooshed silently out of her, made her subside into her seat where she sat quiet and wary, watching Jeth while absently rocking Sasha’s car seat trying to hush the little boy.
In his own place, Jeth found himself trying not to scrub the distracting feel of Allyn out of his hand. The harsh imprint he’d made of her wrist in his palm lingered in the nerves beneath his skin; the tips of his fingers thrummed to the beat of her pulse. He could feel where her wrist bones had molded the ball of his thumb, the pads of his calluses.
With some new desperation, he concentrated on driving, on getting them as far away from the Colombians as possible. He shouldn’t have touched her, not like that. He should have known touching her would result in him getting burned. In fact he wouldn’t be surprised to find blisters seared along his palm. And if by some chance he didn’t have third-degree burns there, it would be sheer luck only, not because the fire wasn’t hot enough.
He glanced at her in the rearview mirror and saw his own wariness written on her face, in the green and blue eyes fastened on him. Something akin to comprehension passed between them before Jeth’s jaw clenched and they both blinked away from the connection.
In the middle of a smooth ride down southbound I-75 somewhere in Ohio on the way to Kentucky, Rebecca Meyers Catton suddenly shot forward hard into her seat belt. When she recovered her equilibrium, she rubbed her bruised collarbone and eyed her husband, Michael, in outraged indignation, then clipped him a good one upside the back of his head with her ring hand. Michael eyed her in shocked disbelief.
“What was that for?”
Quickly Becky turned to check on the welfare of the three children, ages two, four and six, carefully belted into the rear seat of their Lumina van, before rounding on him furiously. “You could have killed me or the kids, stepping on the brakes like that at this speed. There’s nothing in front of us. What’s the matter with you?”
“The matter with me? What the—” Ever mindful of little pitchers out to collect language of all sorts, Michael swallowed the expletive. “What do you mean, what’s the matter with me? What’s the matter with you? You’re going to cause an accident swatting me like that. Never should have given you a platinum wedding ring. You’re going to knock me out with that thing yet.”
“I’m going to cause an accident? I’m going to…” Anger throttled Becky’s ability to speak. “You’re the one who stepped on the brakes.”
Clarity dawned on Michael. “I didn’t step on the brakes, Beck. Ask Andy. Did you guys jerk like Daddy hit the brakes, Andy?”
Becky’s oldest child shook his blond head at his mother. “Uh-uh, but Momma jerked really hard up there, I saw her. Maybe you only hit them in the front seat.”
Michael chuckled. “I don’t think that’s possible, An, but thanks.” He glanced at Becky. “No brakes,” he said, carefully neutral. “UFO, you think?”
Becky rolled her eyes, gave him a look of withering scorn. “Yeah, right. UFO.” She tsked her tongue against the back of her teeth, then bit the inside of her cheek thoughtfully. “You know, that’s the second really weird thing that’s happened today.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah.” She nodded. “This morning I all of a sudden felt like I was being whipped around until I got dizzy, then it was like I had a gun in my hand. It was weird. I kept wondering if I could pull the trigger if I had to on a weapon that wasn’t there.” She bit down on sudden concern for her sanity. “I’ve never held a gun in my life, Mike, not even when you and Gabriel wanted to teach me, so what is going on?”
They eyed each other, and light dawned almost simultaneously.
“Allyn.” Michael said it first. He’d known his wife’s twin sister as long as he’d known Becky, after all. And although he’d never understood it, he knew about and accepted Becky’s and Allyn’s extra connection with each other, had witnessed the results of it on more than one occasion. This time, though, he didn’t particularly care for the effect the extrasensory tie seemed to be having on his wife. She’d gone pale, appeared nauseous and terrified. “Beck?”
“She’s in trouble,” Becky said, horrified. “We’ve got to do something.”
Michael hoped she was wrong. “Are you sure this isn’t just something like when she gets morning sickness when you’re pregnant?”
“She’s not pregnant,” Becky told him. “She’s never even…” She paused, aware of avid ears in the back seat, embarrassed to even think she’d know when Allyn lost—or that Allyn had probably known when she— She shuddered. Talk about your inconvenient abilities, and thank God she’d realized this one in time to put a lock on it before Allyn did…you know. “It’s nothing like that,” she said lamely. “I’d know.”
There were some knowledges better left unpursued, and Michael had the distinct impression this was one of them. “You have any idea where she is?”
Becky shook her head. “It doesn’t work like that. But she was supposed to be leaving from that friend of hers in Baltimore this morning. She told me she got a Triptik Route Map from Triple A, and I don’t think she planned any more detours.”
“She still driving that Saturn?”
“Far as I know.”
“Then Gabriel can probably get the license number and put out a description, have the staties along the way keep an eye out, pull her over and make sure everything’s copacetic.”
Becky looked at her husband, viewing him for the first time in several weeks the way she used to before the seven-year itch had come along. “You think he could do that just because I feel weird?”
Michael smiled slightly and squeezed her hand. “I think he’d do that if you didn’t feel weird. Give him an excuse to be overprotective, he’ll take it.” He picked up the cell phone between their seats. “Call him.”
Wordless, Becky stared at her husband a minute, then caught his hand and brushed a kiss across the back of his knuckles. Took the phone and speed dialed her stepfather.
Jeth gave them twenty minutes amid the protection of the big rigs before ducking off the interstate into a truck stop.
The thing about two-year-olds was that when they were sick, they were very, very sick, but when they decided they were well… Well! Keeping them down to insure their recovery was, to say the least, a joke. On you.
While Allyn took Sasha inside and changed his diaper and generally learned a little more about him—like the fact that he could not only walk, but run fast if a trifle drunkenly—Jeth emptied and rid them of her Saturn and found them a Dodge Ram as a replacement. He toyed briefly with the idea of finding some way to change their appearances, but decided against it when he couldn’t find hair dye he was sure wouldn’t do harm to Sasha’s tender scalp. He also couldn’t find wigs or anything else that he thought would be the least convincing to disguise himself or Allyn. Such was the problem of keeping a low profile on the fly between small towns and truck stops. That was why when she and Sasha met him in the restaurant portion of the truck stop, he handed her a bag with her license plate and paperwork inside, shook his head at her consternation and said, “Don’t ask.”
He had the keys to the Dodge with him, so despite a world of misgivings, she didn’t.
It was also not like misgivings were exactly new to her where he was concerned. In fact, if she’d had to name the primary emotions she felt about Jeth Levoie, they would be misgiving, uneasiness and disquiet—among other shadings of the term.
She would also have to say that, for the first time in months, due to him—not thanks to him—she felt alive.
The van was far more comfortable for family travel than Allyn’s coupe. There was room to stretch out, spread out, feed and change and play with Sasha while they were moving—although Allyn was adamant about regular stops to give the little boy a break, and Jeth reluctantly obliged.
It was at her insistence, too, that they stopped for the night at about dinnertime just inside the Pennsylvania border after shifting their direction from the straight south-westerly route that Jeth had originally planned to one that was more convoluted, varied and, as Allyn put it, “more vacationlike.” Feeling slightly henpecked by this time, Jeth nonetheless did as she requested, recognizing the wisdom in the move for Sasha’s sake—even if he wasn’t entirely convinced of its safety. He felt better when he was able to find a two-story motel with parking at the back—hidden from the road.
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