A Marriage To Remember @page { margin-bottom: 5.000000pt; margin-top: 5.000000pt; } His bead was pounding Letter to Reader Title Page Also by About the Author Dedication Prologue 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 Copyright His bead was pounding He had no real idea who he was. He had no idea where he was going, or who the guy with the gun was. He didn’t know what he was going to do next. He was damn near naked. His ribs felt as though they’d been jammed together by someone who hadn’t been following the instructions properly. That was the bad news. On the plus side, he was still alive. And so was Jayne. He remembered seeing a gun leveled directly at Jayne, and his stomach came into his throat. If they’d been a split second slower getting through that door...if the shooter had been just a little more skillfui... At the moment it was his clearest and worst memory. And he wasn’t anxious to repeat it. Forcing himself to push past the pain, he concentrated on what was important. And that was keeping Jayne safe. Dear Reader, I hope you’ve got a few days to yourself for this month’s wonderful books. We start off with Terese Ramin’s An Unexpected Addition. The “extra” in this Intimate Moments Extra title is the cast of characters—lots and lots of kids—and the heroine’s point of view once she finds herself pregnant by the irresistible hero. The ending, as always, is a happy one—but the ride takes some unexpected twists and turns I think you’ll enjoy. Paula Detmer Riggs brings her MATERNITY ROW miniseries over from Desire in Mommy By Surprise. This reunion romance—featuring a pregnant heroine, of course—is going to warm your heart and leave you with a smile. Cathryn Clare is back with A Marriage To Rentember. Hero and ex-cop Nick Ryder has amnesia and has forgotten everything—though how he could have forgotten his gorgeous wife is only part of the mystery he has to solve. In Reckless, Ruth Wind’s THE LAST ROUNDUP trilogy continues. (Book one was a Special Edition.) Trust me, Colorado and the Forrest brothers will beckon you to return for book three. In The Twelve-Month Marriage, Kathryn Jensen puts her own emotional spin on that reader favorite, the marriage-of-convenience plot. And finally, welcome new author Bonnie Gardner with Stranger in Her Bed. Picture coming home to find out that everyone thinks you’re dead—and a gorgeous male stranger is living in your house! Enjoy them all, and don’t forget to come back next month for more of the most exciting romantic reading around, right here in Silhouette Intimate Moments. Yours. Leslie Wainger Senior Editor and Editorial Coordinator Please address questions and book requests to: Silhouette Reader Service U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269 Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3 A MARRIAGE TO REMEMBER CATHRYN GLARE Books by Cathryn Clare Silhouette Intimate Moments Chasing Destiny #503 Sun and Shadow #558 The Angel and the Renegade #599 Gunslinger’s Child #629 *The Wedding Assignment #702 *The Honeymoon Assignment #714 *The Baby Assignment #726 A Marriage To Remember #795 Silhouette Desire To the Highest Bidder #399 Blind Justice #508 Lock, Stock and Barrel #550 Five by Ten #591 The Midas Touch #663 Hot Sthff #688 *Assignment: Romance CATHRYN CLARE is a transplanted Canadian who followed true love south of the border when she married an American ten years ago. She says, “I was one of those annoying children who always knew exactly what they were going to be when they grew up,” and she has proved herself right with a full-time career as a writer since 1987. “Being a writer has its hazards. So many things that I see—a car at the side of the road, two people having an argument, a hat someone left in a restaurant—make me want to sit down and finish the stories suggested to me. It can be very hard to concentrate on real life sometimes! But the good part of being a writer is that every story, no matter how it starts out, can be a way to show the incredible power that love has in our lives.” A girl’s best friend is not a diamond but a husband who can fix a plot when it breaks. This book, with much gratitude, is for Fred. Prologue There was a year’s worth of stale air clinging to Nick Ryder’s body. He leaned back in the passenger seat of the car and tried to exhale some of it. How long would it take, he wondered, before he was free of that jailhouse reek of cheap disinfectant and cigarette smoke and too many frightened men? “Bet it feels good to be out.” Ryder closed his eyes. It was the third thing the kid had said to him. And the third dumb thing, too. He was grateful for the ride. But that didn’t mean he felt like making inane small talk, especially with somebody so obviously new to the business that he hadn’t figured out yet which end was up. Ryder needed fresh air. He needed to sleep for a week. He needed a pair of gentle hands on his skin, and a soft, husky voice at his ear telling him everything was all right now. He grunted and sat up a little straighter in the seat. At the moment, he was going to have to settle for fresh air. And maybe a blast from the open car window would chase away his futile dreams about that husky voice, too, along with the lingering staleness caught in the folds of his clothing. The flat Florida swamplands didn’t offer much in the way of scenery, but at least the sky was clear and the wind was brisk. If he hadn’t been leaning over to open the window, he might not have seen them in the side mirror. And once he had seen them, all thoughts of that throaty voice and the luminous violet eyes that went with it vanished. “How long has that white minivan been back there?” he asked abruptly. The young driver glanced in the rearview mirror. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Why?” Ryder stifled a groan. Where the hell had they dug this kid up, anyway? Didn’t he know anything? “How about the blue sedan?” he demanded. The driver shrugged. “A while, I think,” he said. “But he’s just—” “I know what he’s doing.” The blue sedan was passing the white van and then settling in ahead of it. Trading places, in effect. It was a standard technique for two vehicles tailing a third. “Try speeding up,” Ryder said. “A lot.” “Why don’t we—” “Just do it, junior, all right?” Ryder slammed his open palm against the dashboard. He’d never felt less like arguing. Every bone in his body was telling him there was something not right about those two vehicles behind them. They zipped ahead for a mile or two without losing the pair. When they’d slowed to well under the speed limit and the white van and blue car were still with them, Ryder knew his instincts had been right. “You didn’t ask for reinforcements, I’m assuming,” he said. The kid was finally starting to look worried. As he shook his close-cropped head, Ryder could see his fingers closing tighter around the steering wheel. “Well, then, I’d say we’ve picked us up some unfriendlies.” Damn it, this wasn’t supposed to be happening. The tough part was supposed to be over by now. Around him, the soft South Florida twilight was just beginning to settle into night. The sky was a pastel glow of orange and blue. The highway was straight and smooth, heading due south toward Miami. For the first time in a year Ryder wasn’t hemmed in by concrete walls and iron bars. He was a free man. He’d planned to savor the feeling, slowly, the way he’d savored the fine Cuban cigars Jimmy Trujillo had managed to sneak into the prison for his occasional late-night parties. And instead— He leaned over to look in the side mirror again. The two vehicles were still there, too far away for him to see the drivers’ faces, too close to be a coincidence. The wind coming in the open window buffeted him, swirling his hair around his face. He’d let it grow in prison because it suited the impression he’d been trying to make. Now, though, the too-long dark blond strands were starting to bug him. A haircut was one of the first things on his list for when he got back to the real world. If he made it. There was a bridge up ahead. Ryder could see the slow swirl of water in the waning light, snaking lazily down from Lake Okeechobee to the ocean in one of the canals that intersected this part of Florida. His mind noticed the landscape automatically, storing away the information as he started trying to come up with a stunt that might shake off their pursuers. He didn’t register the third car until it was too late. It came screaming over the bridge with no warning, cutting across two lanes of traffic with reckless speed. The young driver shouted something panicky and unintelligible, and cranked the wheel around hard. It wouldn’t do any good, Ryder thought grimly. With a sick certainty, he knew exactly what the two vehicles behind them would be doing. He heard horns blare as they went to work. The white van screeched alongside, carving a huge gash in the rear quarter panel. Ryder saw the kid’s foot jump to the brakes. It was the wrong move, but there wasn’t time to say so. If Ryder had been driving, he’d have had the nerve to keep his foot on the gas, shooting past the head-on challenge of the car that had been waiting for them on the far side of the bridge. But the kid didn’t know how he’d been set up. He was too young, too green. He was reacting blindly, trying to get out of harm’s way without realizing that the only way out of it was straight through. So the only thing Ryder could do was curse and hold on. It didn’t help to know this was his own damn fault. If he’d been watching his back, instead of reveling in his freedom and imagining the velvety sound of Jayne’s voice and the soft magic of her hands on his body— The thought of the woman he loved was still with him as the car crashed over the side of the bridge and plummeted toward the lazy silver surface of the canal. He had just enough awareness left to unsnap his seat belt as they hit. And to realize that even if he did manage to survive the next couple of minutes, his problems were only just beginning. Chapter 1 It was the middle of the night. And the phone was ringing. Jayne Robards shook her head, pushing it farther into her pillow. Even half-asleep, she knew who it would be. And she didn’t want to answer it. No more last-minute phone calls. She’d said it just last week, standing with her hands on her hips in the middle of the always-chaotic office of the Miami Bulletin. No more sudden brainstorms. I’m getting too old for this stuff. And Chris Jimenez, the paper’s staff editor, had nodded solemnly and assured her he understood. She might have known he hadn’t meant it. The phone was still ringing. Jayne groaned and lifted her head out of the pillow. It took a few seconds for her sleepy eyes to focus on the bedside clock. When they finally did, it wasn’t good news. Six a.m. That son of a gun was calling her at 6:00 a.m. “I know what this is about.” Her voice was groggy and annoyed as she struggled to wake up. “I already told Arnie I didn’t want to cover the tall ships sailing into the harbor. I don’t care how good a picture it’ll make. I don’t even care that he is the boss. I’ve got to get some sleep, damn it. I’ve got a life apart from that newspaper, in case everybody’s forgotten.” It was the defensive edge in her words that dragged her all the way into wakefulness. Did she have a life apart from her job these days? Recently, she’d been starting to wonder. Which was why she was absolutely, positively, no longer going to let Chris Jimenez railroad her into taking on extra assignments with no advance warning. And if Chris hadn’t grasped that yet, she would have to find language that would make it clear, that was all. She rolled over, reaching for the phone. And realized she’d done it again. She’d gone to sleep last night with the two extra pillows stacked neatly and impersonally on the other side of the queen-size bed. Now the empty side was wrinkled, as though she’d migrated over there in her sleep. And the two spare pillows had migrated, too. Instead of being lined up against the headboard, they were in the middle of the bed. Pretty much exactly where Ryder had once slept. The phone stopped ringing. The sudden silence was startling. It felt just like the hollow ache that was forming inside her chest as she looked down at the rumpled pillows. When was this going to stop? “It’s been a year, for pity’s sake,” she said out loud. Immediately she wished she hadn’t spoken. Her voice sounded small and forlorn in the little room. And she couldn’t ignore the quiver in it, the telltale sign that she wasn’t nearly as strong and sure of herself as she liked to pretend. Even after a whole year there were parts of her that couldn’t quite believe Ryder was never coming back. Believe it, Jaynie. She kept the words silent this time, pushing past the little spurt of pain she felt at the thought of the nickname nobody but Ryder had ever used. It’s definitely over. She made herself think of the way Ryder had buried himself in his work for the last few years of their marriage. He’d used it as a reason to avoid anything and everything that was going wrong between them. She reminded herself of his glib words on the day of their wedding. You’re the family I’ve been looking for my whole life, he’d said. He’d talked movingly of children, of sharing their love with sons and daughters of their own. And then he’d seemed to forget all about it. He’d gone out of her life a stony-faced stranger, hands manacled behind his back, his world in tatters, his handsome face hiding secrets he’d refused to share with her. How could their marriage not be over, after that? Then why couldn’t she get through a single night without the pretense—the useless, ridiculous pretense—that he was still here with her? She was going to get rid of those two extra pillows, and convince herself, one way or another, that she and Nick Ryder were history in all but cold legal fact. He was due to get out of jail any day now, and once he did— The phone started to ring again. Lost in her thoughts, Jayne jumped at the sudden sound. “All right, Jimenez,” she muttered as she reached for the receiver a second time. “You’re really asking for it.” But it wasn’t the staff editor. It was a voice she didn’t recognize, apologizing for waking her up, and asking if she was Jayne Robards. “We thought you’d like to know as soon as possible,” the woman said, “I’m afraid your husband is in the hospital.” Jayne blinked. “The hospital?” she repeated. “At the prison, you mean?” “Prison?” They sounded like two parrots, Jayne thought, echoing each other’s words. “No, he’s at Dade County General. He’s been in a car accident. Most of his injuries are minor, but—well, he‘seems to have lost his memory.” The light in the small bedroom was always dim, filtered through the live oak tree in the backyard. Shortly after they’d bought the house, Ryder had carried her in here on a lazy Saturday afternoon. He’d murmured, as he’d undressed her, that the pearly light made her skin look like silk. For a long time after that, Jayne had thought of this softly filtered light as the light of dreams, of passion. And then of impossible fantasy. And now, as she struggled to collect her thoughts, it seemed to her that there was something hallucinatory about the dim predawn glimmer. It was an illusion, like her marriage had been. A mockery, a ghostly mirage. The woman seemed to take her long silence for shock. After a few seconds, she went on, “We found your address in his wallet, of course.” Of course. Ryder had no other home, not yet. His old address—their address—would still be on his identification. And she was still listed as his next of kin. “We wanted to wait until he was fully conscious before we called you. But now that he is, and now that it’s clear he has no recollection of what happened to him—” “What did happen to him?” “The police aren’t sure yet. It looks as though your husband was a passenger in a car that went into a canal just north of the city.” The prison was north of the city. Had Ryder been on his way back to Miami? Was he legally free? What was going on? “There are some witnesses who think maybe a car was trying to pass too close and forced your husband’s vehicle off the road,” the woman explained. “The driver is—well, they’re still trying to recover the body. They went off a bridge, but apparently they hit something on the way down. The whole driver’s side was crumpled. Your husband was lucky.” Jayne started to shake. Her eyes moved inescapably to the wrinkled surfaces of the pillowcases she’d had her arms wrapped around just before she’d been wakened by the phone. If Ryder hadn’t been lucky—if the other side of the car had been crumpled— It was too awful to imagine. She thought about Ryder’s taut, tanned skin, the lean, strong body she’d always loved. “He wasn’t wearing a seat belt,” the woman continued. “That was probably what saved him. He was jolted around a bit—that’s how he got the bump on his head, apparently. But a couple of’ people saw the car go over the edge and were able to pull him out in time.” Ryder always wore his seat belt. He’d seen too many grisly accidents in his fifteen years as a cop to get into a car without buckling up. The seat belt was one question too many. Jayne frowned and tucked the receiver under her chin as she shimmied over to the edge of the bed and got to her feet. There was something nightmarish about Nick Ryder resurfacing in her life like this, she thought. But nightmarish or not, she needed to know what was going on, and why. “Tell me which ward he’s in,” she said as she pulled open the top drawer of her bureau, “and I’ll be there in a half hour.” The pattern of the cars in the hospital parking lot should have been calming. It wasn’t. They’d told him to stay in bed, but he couldn’t. Something about the smell of the place was driving him crazy. It was sharp and institutional and almost—almost—familiar. With every breath, his body was yelling at him to get on his feet and get the hell out of here. He’d tried roaming the hallway, but a nurse with a no-nonsense voice and shoulders like a first-round NFL draft pick had ordered him back into his room. “We’ve called your wife,” she told him. “She’ll be here in a little while.” None of it made any sense. He tried to connect with the idea that he had a wife. He couldn’t do it. He tried staring at the driver’s license that had been in his wallet. Nicholas James Ryder, it said, right next to a picture that was anything but flattering, but was obviously of himself. The dark blond hair, high cheekbones and wary expression were the same ones he’d seen in the mirror when he’d stumbled into the bathroom after waking up. His hair was longer now than when the picture had been taken. In fact, he’d asked one of the nurses for a rubber band to pull it back. He was getting tired of shaking it out of his eyes. And the bandaged welt on his forehead was new—brand-new, the nurse had said. “That’s where your memory went,” she’d told him. “Stop agitating yourself, now, and with luck things’ll gradually start to come back to you again.” It made sense, as far as it went. But he still couldn’t get any of these random facts to connect with any kind of a bigger picture. Beyond knowing his name and the reason he was here, everything was a blank. A gigantic, frustrating, ominous blank. He slammed a hand against the wall next to him, and glared out at the parking lot. For the past half hour he’d been trying to ignore the dull thudding in his head, the ache in his midsection and the feeling of panic deep down in his gut by concentrating intently on the cars lined up outside his window. His room was on the fourth floor of the hospital complex, giving him a clear view of the parking area. It was almost 7:00 a.m., and the empty spaces were starting to fill up. He watched as a white pickup truck with red and maroon pinstriping pulled into a spot at the end of the row closest to the building. Damn it, why could he recognize a pickup truck when he saw one, and a pinstripe, when his own face seemed strange to him? Why could he remember how to tell time, when he had no recollection of anything that had happened to him yesterday? He growled and turned away from the window. And realized he wasn’t alone. The woman in the doorway wasn’t a nurse. She wasn’t wearing the right clothes, for one thing. Her flowered skirt and short-sleeved lavender sweater were nothing like the stark white uniforms he’d been seeing since he’d first opened his eyes sometime in the middle of the night. It wasn’t just her outfit that was wrong, though. It was something in the way she held herself. She looked half-hesitant, half-defiant, as though she’d steeled herself to step into the doorway, and was now fighting the urge to turn and walk away again. He could see the silent struggle in the set of her shoulders and the stubborn tilt of her fine boned chin. Whoever she was, she was beautiful. Her dark brown hair was cut short. It made her eyes seem enormous. They were dark violet, luminous, seeming to shine with a light of their own. He thought he could see a pale sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of her nose. And a taut determination in the way she’d curled her fingers around the strap of the big purse that hung from her shoulder. “Well.” Her first word was abrupt, almost angry. “It really is you.” Her voice sounded as though it had been made to murmur quiet secrets in a man’s ear. Its throaty undertones undid the bluntness of her opening line. “Is it?” Politeness was beyond him at this point. “At least this makes sense to one of us.” “I didn’t say it made sense. I just thought—I wondered whether there’d been some mistake. I wasn’t sure you were even supposed to be out.” She’d been standing her ground in the doorway, assessing him with those amazing violet eyes. As she finished speaking, though, she finally stepped into the room. Like her voice, her walk aimed for briskness and ended up being disconcertingly sexy. Ryder found his eyes drawn to the gentle sashay of her hips as she crossed the linoleum floor and dropped her large shoulder bag on the foot of his bed. Was this his wife? Was it possible that even the most enormous bump on the head could have chased away the memory of what it must feel like to hold a woman like this close against him? To kiss the soft lips that were pursed so seductively as she appraised him? To run his hands over skin that looked as soft as swansdown? He shook his head. Damn it, he was wearing nothing but a flimsy hospital-issue johnny. And if he let his thoughts run on in this direction, his body was going to start reacting in ways that a single layer of too-often-laundered fabric wouldn’t be able to cover up. He crossed his arms over his chest and forced his attention back to her last phrase. I wasn’t sure you were even supposed to be out. Now, what the hell did that mean? “Out of where?” he asked her. “What are you talking about?” Her eyes narrowed slightly. They really were the most incredible eyes, he thought, as deep and brilliant as amethysts, and fringed by a set of impossibly long dark lashes. He was so caught up in the violet dazzle of her gaze that her answer caught him completely off guard. “Prison,” she said matter-of-factly. “You were supposed to be in prison, the last I heard.” He laughed. “You’ve got to be joking.” Her face told him she wasn’t. “Why was I in—” He stopped the question midway, waving the rest of the words away with an impatient gesture. “Never mind,” he said. “Let’s back up a bit here. You can at least confirm that my name is Nicholas James Ryder?” “Nick Ryder.” Her voice sounded a little huskier as she said it. “That’s your name.” It didn’t feel like his name. But it sounded so good to hear her say it in that throaty voice that he was willing to go along with the idea that it was his. “And you are...” He let the sentence hang. “Jayne.” Her fine chin tilted up again as she spoke. “Jayne Robards.” “We have different last names.” “Yes.” “But I thought—” He was surprised at the strength of his own disappointment. He frowned, and tried to ignore it. “The nurse said she had called my wife.” “She did.” She gave him that narrowed, assessing look again. “We’ve always had different last names. I’d established my professional career before we got married.” “As—” “A photojournalist.” And then she added quickly, as though she wanted to get it over with, “But we’re not really married anymore. That is, we’re separated. We’re getting divorced. Damn it, Ryder, I can’t believe you don’t remember any of this.” This time the stab of disappointment that went through him was stronger. He knew it was absurd. There was no reason he should have his heart set on being married to a woman he’d only just laid eyes on. But there was nothing he could do to stop the feeling. He had no memories of Jayne Robards, not exactly. But he felt some connection to her—something deep down, something he couldn’t explain. Maybe any red-blooded male would have responded this strongly to a woman with eyes like a moonlit sea and a voice suggestive enough to make a man’s blood simmer. Maybe he was only reacting this way because she was the first person he’d seen since waking up who seemed to know anything at all about him. He couldn’t be certain why she made him feel this way. And his own frustration made him curt as he answered her. “I don’t know anything about any of this,” he said. “Not how I got here, not where I was before I woke up in this room. You might be making this up, for all I know.” “Well, I’m not.” Her eyes flashed purple fire at him. “Unfortunately, it’s all real. Which leaves us with a heck of a mess to sort out.” She stepped closer to him, heading for the telephone on the bedside table. His eyes followed the purposeful sway of her flowered skirt as she moved. “What was I doing in prison?” he asked. “Two to five years for theft, the last I heard.” “How long had I been in?” “A year.” Something in her face tightened as she leaned over and picked up the phone. “You were supposed to be eligible for parole after a year.” Her fingers were tapping out a phone number she obviously knew well. He could hear the faint electronic tune from the receiver she’d tucked under her chin. “So I might be out legally.” “Yes.” “What did I steal?” “Money.” Her eyes met his briefly, then glanced away as she spoke into the phone. “Hi, this is Jayne Robards calling for Madeleine Murphy. I know it’s early, but I wonder if you could pass a message to her for me.” “Who are you calling?” he asked. “The same people you apparently stole the money from.” She looked back at him, and he could see some kind of struggle going on in her eyes. But her voice was level enough as she added, “The Miami police department.” He was on the move before he knew he was even contemplating it. He shoved himself away from the windowsill and took two long steps toward the bed. He had just a brief impression of Jayne Robards’s eyes widening in surprise as he reached her. She didn’t quite move in time. She leaned toward the bedside table, but he. got there first. A split second later his left hand hit the button on the cradle of the phone, severing the connection. Chapter 2 “Hey!” Without thinking, she grabbed his wrist. “What do you think you’re doing?” She might have known it was a waste of time. Ryder looked terrible—he was leaner than she’d ever seen him, with a pallor to his skin and a near-panicky expression in his deep blue eyes that was unsettling, to say the very least. But he was still strong. She could feel the whipcord resilience of his wrist as her fingers closed around it, making short work of her efforts to move his hand away. She could feet the familiar warmth of his skin, too. It made her heart beat a little faster as she struggled against his grasp on the phone. “Damn it, Ryder, you can’t just—” He cut off her words as forcefully as he’d cut off her phone call. “Talking to the police is a bad idea,” he said. “How do you know that, if you can’t remember anything?” He shook his head, then stopped abruptly, as though it hurt to move. “I don’t know how I know.” He sounded angry. “I just—it’s not exactly a memory. Just a feeling. A strong feeling. The moment you said ‘Miami police department,’ it was like somebody punched me in the gut.” He looked as though someone had done exactly that. Jayne took in a shaky breath and let go of his wrist. It was too disturbing to be this close to him, to feel his skin under her fingers and the tension in his body communicating itself to her as though their nervous systems had been wired together. They had been, once. Once, they’d had a rapport so instinctive and so strong that sometimes they’d been almost eerily aware of each other’s thoughts and feelings. But those days were gone. And she couldn’t let herself forget it, just because Ryder had. “Well, that shouldn’t come as a big surprise,” she said, taking a step back from him. “You and the police department didn’t exactly part on the best of terms.” His blue eyes turned wary again. “What do you mean?” he asked. “You used to work for them.” “As what?” “You were a detective. A police detective.” And a good one, or so she’d thought until the night two of Ryder’s colleagues had turned up on the doorstep to arrest him. He’d never said a word to her to explain or refute the charges against him. She’d been caught, ever since, between her belief in his integrity and her realization that the man who’d gone out of her life so stony-faced and silent was not the same man she’d loved and married and hoped to spend the rest of her life with. He was anything but stony-faced now. She could see him trying to put all this together in his mind. And the struggle showed clearly in his features, in his direct blue gaze and the long, uneasy slant of his eyebrows. His eyes looked haunted. His hair was longer than she’d ever seen it. He’d pulled it back in a tight ponytail. It accented his high cheekbones—testimony to some Indian blood bootlegged into the Ryder family generations ago, he’d told her on one of the few occasions he’d ever talked to her about his family. She couldn’t tell whether his hair still glinted blond on top. The ponytail was too tight, the morning light too dim for those golden highlights to show. she could tell that his deep tan hadn’t survived the year in prison. He looked as though he’d barely seen the sun since she’d watched him walk out of the courtroom to start serving his sentence. The impression wasn’t helped by the stark white bandage across his forehead. She’d never seen him look worse. And he was still one of the most beautiful men she’d ever set eyes on. “So... I was a cop, and I stole money from the police department,” he was saying, frowning as he spoke. “That’s about the size of it. At least, that’s the official version.” “Are you saying there’s another one?” Jayne hesitated. He was asking the question that had tormented her since the night he’d been arrested. She was no closer to an answer now than she’d been then. Was Ryder guilty of the crime he’d been sent to jail for? Had he changed so much that he’d been able to do something he once would have found unthinkable? How could she answer his question without touching on all the feelings that had gotten so badly bruised in the whole long process of their marriage’s disintegration? Ryder had changed in the thirteen years they’d been married—there was no doubt about that. But she didn’t really want to explain all that to him now. While she was still trying to figure out a way around it, she heard a knock at the open door behind her. She turned to see a lanky, bearded man hesitating in the doorway. “Mr. Ryder?” The stranger was looking past Jayne. “Tad McMaster, Miami Herald. I wonder if I could interview you about your experiences yesterday.” “Interview me?” “Yes. You are Nick Ryder, aren’t you?” The man stepped into the room, setting down his bulky shoulder bag on the unoccupied bed next to Ryder’s. His black hair and beard looked as though birds had been nesting in them. “And are you Mrs. Ryder?” He turned to Jayne, looking at her from under thick black eyebrows. “She’s my wife.” Ryder said the words slowly, experimentally, as though he wasn’t sure they were true. “Jayne Robards,” he added. Jayne felt an unexpected tightness in her throat as he said her name. She’d heard that tone before, but not for a very long time. When they’d first fallen in love, he’d spoken this way—tentatively, almost reverently, as though their love was a miracle he couldn’t quite bring himself to believe in. As though too blunt a word might shatter it. There’d been plenty of blunt words since those early days. And it had turned out Ryder hadn’t believed in the miracle of their love, after all. Not enough, anyway, to let it grow into the family Jayne had wanted so fiercely—the family he’d once told her he wanted, too. She swallowed past the unwelcome lump in her throat and made herself focus on their visitor instead of the old hurts Ryder’s voice had called up. Wasn’t it a little odd that she’d never heard of Tad McMaster? Or that he’d apparently never heard of her? Miami was a big city, but the members of its journalism community tended to know each other’s names. “Are you new at the Herald, Mr. McMaster?” she asked him. “You bet. Just signed on last week.” He pulled a steno notebook out of his bag. “I’m not new to the business though. Been a journalist for ten years, back home in the Midwest.” Well, that answered her question. But there was still something odd about the man’s manner, something Jayne couldn’t put her finger on. He was reaching for the pen in the pocket of his windbreaker. “Now, if we could—” “I have nothing to tell you.” Ryder’s slow voice cut him off. Tad McMaster scratched his head, disordering his hair even more. “Boy,” he said, “if I had a nickel for every time I‘ve—” Once again Ryder didn’t let him finish. “I mean it.” he said. “I have no memory of anything that happened more than eight hours ago. I literally have nothing to tell you.” “Oh.” For a moment McMaster seemed nonplussed. Then he smiled. “Well, I guess that’s a story in itself, isn’t it?” He plucked the cap off his pen. “It’s got to be quite an experience, losing your memory. Why don’t we start from there, if Mrs. Robards doesn’t mind giving us a few minutes in private—” Something wasn’t right about that, either. First of all, a good reporter would want to include the wife’s angle, if only because she’d be bound to have information her amnesiac husband wouldn’t know. For another thing, Ryder’s accident was news. But his memory loss wasn’t. It was a human-interest story. And in Jayne’s experience, a brand-new reporter at a major daily paper wouldn’t be the one deciding what kind of piece he was going to file. Maybe Tad McMaster just wasn’t a very good reporter. Still, something about him made Jayne uneasy enough that she didn’t want to leave the room just yet. “I’ll stay, if it’s all the same to you,” she said. McMaster scratched his head. “Actually, Mrs. Robards, I do better when I can talk to my subjects one-on-one, without distraction,” he said. “So, if you don’t mind—” Ryder was starting to look uneasy now, too. Or rather, his uneasiness had refocused itself on the black-haired reporter. It was hard not to contrast the two men. Everything about McMaster was disheveled, fidgety. Across the room, Ryder was smooth, slick, as hard and lean as a sculpted athlete, as watchful as a predator waiting for his prey. Except Ryder wasn’t a predator now. If anything, he was the vulnerable one, stripped of everything—clothes, weapons, even his memory. Jayne felt unexpectedly protective as she looked over at him. He was obviously trying to sort out his own reactions to what was happening, and not having much luck doing it. Physically, he looked as powerful as ever. That lightweight hospital shift did a lousy job of covering him up. Ever since she’d come into the room, she’d been having a hard time keeping her eyes away from the muscled line of his thighs where they showed at the flimsy hem, and the familiar masculine angle of his shoulders under the thin green fabric. It was almost possible—although she’d been doing her best to avoid the temptation—to make out the long outline of his torso, and that washboard-flat stomach that had always turned her own belly soft with longing. She felt the dangerous echo of old desires as she looked at him. But she shook it off, and reminded herself that there were a lot of things physical strength couldn’t protect a man from. And until she was certain the enigmatic Tad McMaster wasn’t one of those things, she wasn’t happy leaving Ryder on his own with the man. “Who assigned you the story for the Herald?” she asked as casually as she could. “Margo Addison.” The reply was quick, and just as casual. Jayne knew that name, at least. But before she could ask another probing question, McMaster went on, “And I’m due back in with this story by ten. If you know Margo, you’ll know she hates missing a deadline. She wants this piece for tomorrow’s paper, and I’m a new enough kid on the block that I don’t want to let her down.” By now Jayne was certain there was something wrong about Tad McMaster. The Miami Herald didn’t go to press until after midnight. McMaster would have the whole day to file his story in time for tomorrow’s paper. Why send him out so early? It didn’t make sense. Ryder had been following the exchange intently. Jayne could feel his dark blue gaze flickering from her to McMaster and then back again. Now he crossed his arms over his chest and said, “What is it you don’t like about this guy, Jayne?” That was Ryder—jumping straight to the point. It was a style that had made him a good cop. It might have made him a better husband, too, if he’d been that plainspoken about his own feelings. Once again she pushed those useless thoughts out of the way. Things were over between her and Ryder—they’d decided that already. She had no desire to go through the whole process again. She was just helping him out of a problematic situation, that was all. And Tad McMaster looked more and more as though he might be a part of that problem. “I just think it would be interesting if Mr. McMaster told us who he really is,” Jayne said. Ryder was nodding before she’d even finished speaking. For a brief moment, she could feel the old intuitive tug that told her he’d been following her thoughts all along, half knowing what she was about to say. Ryder was moving away from the bedside table, crossing the room so he stood between Jayne and the supposed reporter. Was he shielding her, or just getting a better look at the man? It was probably some of both. Obviously his policeman’s instincts had surfaced from somewhere deep in his mind. “How about it, McMaster?” he was saying in that slow, deliberate voice she remembered so well. “The lady thinks there’s something funny about you. And so do I.” “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” McMaster raised his hand from his side, and Jayne saw Ryder tense at the gesture. McMaster was only reaching up to run his fingers through his unruly hair, though, leaving it sticking even farther out from his head. “I came here to do a job. I’m not used to being interrogated by my subjects.” “You’ll forgive me for being cautious,” Ryder told him. “It’s been a rough day already. How about showing us some ID, just to set our minds at rest?” McMaster looked affronted as he recapped his pen. Jayne watched him put it away and fold up his pad. He stuffed the steno pad back into the bag next to him, muttering something about paranoid ex-cops and letting someone else handle the next amnesia interview. And then Jayne saw the gun. At first it was only a glimpse of something metallic buried in the mouth of the bulging bag McMaster was reaching into. But it was enough to tell her that her gut reaction about this guy had been right. “Ryder!” Her voice was sharp with alarm. Ryder was standing so close to the stranger. If he wasn’t on his guard— He was. He’d seen the weapon, too, and as Tad McMaster pulled it out of the bag, Ryder was already moving, launching a flying tackle at the bogus reporter that brought them both down onto the hard linoleum floor. Jayne heard Ryder’s grunt of pain and McMaster’s angry snarl. They landed half-under the unoccupied bed, screened by the overhanging blanket, and she couldn’t see who’d gotten control of the gun. “Jayne, get out of here!” Ryder’s voice sounded tight, as though he was having trouble getting his breath. “Get a security guard.” “Do it and you both die, instead of just him.” McMaster sounded strained, too, but as she dashed around the bed to where they were wrestling, Jayne could see that he’d managed to pin Ryder’s body under him. Ryder had one strong hand clamped around the other man’s wrist, holding the gun at arm’s length. But from the look of pain on Ryder’s face, he was going to have a tough time making use of his momentary advantage. She recalled what the nurse at the duty station had told her. He has a couple of bruised ribs. she’d said. It’s painful but manageable, unless he wants to start playing football right away. What he’d just done was as rough as any scrimmage, and a whole lot more dangerous. Jayne winced as she recalled the thud of Ryder’s big body hitting the floor. She had to do something to help him, and fast. She could yell, but it could still take minutes for help to arrive. Surely there was something closer to hand... She saw it in the same instant the thought formed in her mind. McMaster—or whatever his name really was—was trying to push the yellow hospital blanket out of his face so he could get a better grip on Ryder. If she could reach past him and yank the blanket back around his head... She’d put on a pair of low leather-soled pumps to go with her sweater and skirt this morning. They were pretty, but they didn’t give her much purchase on the slippery linoleum floor. She nearly lost her balance as McMaster jolted her left leg—had he figured out what she was up to, and wanted to stop her? She didn’t want to take the time to check. Lurching forward, hands in front of her to break her headlong fall, she grabbed the neatly tucked-in edge of the yellow blanket and stripped it back off the empty bed. It was even harder to keep her feet under her as she hauled the blanket away from the mattress. The hospital corners were stubbornly efficient, and McMaster was definitely trying to knock her off balance. She felt him slam sideways against her again, and scrambled for a foothold as her heels skidded against the polished floor. It was the thought of Ryder that kept her moving. If he was hurt—if he was too close to that damned gun... She was already falling backward as she dragged the blanket clear of the bed. But it didn’t matter now if she stayed upright. In fact, the force of her fall helped pull the blanket tightly around Tad McMaster’s face. She heard him squawk as he was enveloped in the yellow cocoon. Her right knee felt numb, as though she’d landed hard on it without realizing it. She forced herself back to her feet, anyway, tugging the blanket tighter, wrapping it all the way around McMaster’s head and shoulders. “Ryder, come on!” She could see him struggling to get out from under the gunman’s weight. His face was almost as white as the bandage across his forehead, and she knew she’d been right about how hard he’d fallen on his already-bruised ribs. But he was clamping down on whatever pain he was in, staying grimly silent as he took the hand Jayne extended toward him. By the time McMaster had started to unwrap the blanket that was hampering him, Ryder was out of his way. But not out of danger. “We’ve got to get out of here.” His grip on Jayne’s hand tightened as he pulled her with him toward the door. She’d seen the silencer on the end of the gun when McMaster had raised it in their direction. What saved them was that the blanket still kept McMaster from aiming with any accuracy. Jayne heard the quick, muffled bite as he pulled the trigger, and then she and Ryder were out the door and sprinting down the hallway. “My bag—” “Leave it. How the hell do we get out of this place?” Jayne scanned the long corridor. She’d come in from the other direction, but the nurses’ station was too far away for them to reach before McMaster would be at the doorway. “There!” She tugged Ryder toward the nearest exit sign. An orderly gave them a startled glance as they hurtled past him, and Jayne thought she heard someone yelling “Hey!” in protest. There wasn’t time to see who it was. Ryder was pushing the door open—she saw him wince as he did it. Out of the corner of her eye, she was aware of McMaster stepping out of the hospital room and looking in their direction. Someone screamed, and Jayne saw people in the hallway flattening to the floor. She had just enough time to think, Please, God, don’t let him hit anybody before she was through the exit door after Ryder and pelting down the concrete staircase behind him. There wasn’t time to talk. Jayne wasn’t sure either of them had the breath for it, anyway. She clung tight to Ryder’s hand and followed the trailing strings of his green hospital johnny. The gaps in the flimsy garment left long stretches of his body exposed. She could see the small of his back—and more—as he grabbed the railing with his free hand and swung around to the next flight of steps. The sight made it even harder to catch her breath. Ryder had always been lean and rangy. She’d loved that about him—the hardness of his stomach and thighs, the strength in the way he moved. Even now, with a murderous stranger on their heels and a thousand unanswered questions swirling in her head, it was impossible not to follow his long strides with her eyes as he pulled her across the next landing, impossible not to feel the hot steel of his grip where his hand closed over hers. “Where—are we going?” She could barely shape the words around the thudding in her chest. “Out.” His voice was clipped and tight. “Got any ideas how to get there?” The sharp creak of a door opening above told her their attacker must have seen where they’d gone. In the echoing concrete stairwell, they’d be an easy target if they didn’t get out of the way in a hurry. “How about here?” They were down to the next floor by now. They must be nearly at ground level, Jayne thought, grabbing the door handle on the landing they’d just reached. “Sounds good to me.” Ryder was right at her side as she stepped out of the stairwell, pausing only long enough to keep the door from banging behind them and giving them away. “You think we’ve lost him?” She tried to slow her breathing, but her heart was still banging in her chest, and her words sounded breathless and unsure. “Don’t know.” Ryder seemed to be trying to do the same thing, with even less success. He looked drained and pale, his eyes dark and wild. “And I don’t want to stand around wondering about it too long, either.” Jayne couldn’t have agreed more. She felt glaringly exposed, painfully vulnerable. What if the gunman had seen which door they’d taken? If he had, they could be under fire again at any second. “There.” She pointed to the lobby at the end of the crowded corridor they’d found themselves in. “We can get out that way.” Fear told her to keep running, but Ryder’s grip held her to a walking pace as they threaded their way through the staff, patients and visitors who thronged the busy main lobby of the hospital. “Slow down,” Ryder muttered at her ear. “We don’t want to attract too much attention.” She knew he was right. Any kind of disturbance could tip their pursuer off about where they were. And Jayne wasn’t sure she really wanted to explain why she was walking out of the building with a patient who obviously hadn’t been officially discharged. They made it almost to the exit before it happened. Jayne was already stepping forward into the automatic revolving door when she heard a voice behind them calling, “Hey, sir! You with the bandage—wait a minute.” “Keep walking.” Ryder stepped into the revolving door next to her, acting as though he hadn’t heard the summons. “Maybe we should let him catch up to us.” Jayne glanced over her shoulder as she reached the sidewalk in front of the hospital. “We could use some help.” “Not that kind.” Ryder was propelling her forward again, sliding one arm around her waist and heading for a row of vehicles parked by the curb. “If that guy was crazy enough to shoot in broad daylight with witnesses standing around, he’s crazy enough for anything. He wants me dead, and he doesn’t seem to care if anybody else gets in the way. We’ve got to get out of here, or nobody’s safe.” “How are we going to get away? My car keys are in my bag, back in your room.” Ryder didn’t hesitate, just kept moving forward, as though he’d already taken the loss of her keys into account, as though the pavement of the parking lot wasn’t gritty and hard under his bare feet, as though people weren’t staring at them from all sides. As though he wasn’t in serious pain. Jayne knew better. She could feel his labored breathing where she was tucked against his side. His arm was trembling with tension where it was wrapped around her waist, and she half wondered whether he was using her to hold himself up. There wasn’t time to ask him. People were calling out to them now, but Ryder ignored them. He kept a straight course for the row of cars by the hospital entrance. There was a big blue sedan with its driver’s door standing open. And its engine running. “We can’t do this.” Jayne finally realized what he was planning. “Ryder, you can’t steal somebody’s car.” “I’m not stealing it. I’m borrowing it. Get in.” He didn’t leave her a choice. Despite the shaking she could feel in his arm, he had enough strength to muscle her into the front seat through the open door before sliding in himself. Jayne heard a shouted challenge from the sidewalk—the car’s owner, no doubt—but the sound disappeared as Ryder slammed the door shut and reached for the gearshift. And then, quite slowly and deliberately, he pulled away from the curb and left the hospital behind them. Chapter 3 His head was pounding. He had no idea where he was going, or who the guy with the gun was. He didn’t know what he was going to do next. In two minutes the police would probably be on his tail. And the only thing he did know was that he didn’t want anything to do with the police. He was damn near naked. His ribs felt as though they’d been jammed together by someone who hadn’t been following the instructions properly. That was the bad news. On the plus side, he was still alive. And so was Jayne Robards. His heart started to thud all over again when he remembered that moment in the hospital corridor just before they’d ducked into the stairwell. He’d seen that gun leveled at Jayne’s body, and his stomach had seemed to come all the way up into his throat. If they’d been a split second slower getting through that door—if the shooter had been just a little more skillful... At the moment, it was his clearest and worst memory. And he wasn’t anxious to repeat it. Forcing himself to push past the pain in his head and ribs, he concentrated on driving the car. For the moment, all he cared about was keeping Jayne safe. As far as Ryder was concerned, that meant getting as far away from her as possible, as soon as possible. Unfortunately, she seemed to have other ideas. “We have to call the police,” she was saying as Ryder turned left at an orange light and tried to look in the rearview mirror at the same time. The streets seemed quiet—was this a weekend? He had no idea. But he wasn’t about to let anything lull him into a false sense of security. Quiet or not, the city was still a dangerous place at the moment. He wanted to make damn sure they weren’t being followed. And now he had to argue with Jayne, as well. “No police,” he said bluntly, slowing for another traffic light. “Ryder, that’s crazy.” She half turned toward him on the seat. Her velvet-smooth forehead had puckered into a frown. “Don’t tell me you seriously think the Miami police had anything to do with that guy trying to kill you.” “I have no way of knowing that they didn’t.” She shook her head. They were in the shadow of the tall building to their right, but even in the dim light he could see how glossy her brown hair was. It looked as though it would feel like satin against a man’s fingers, soft and thick and smooth. And there was a decidedly angry motion to it as it resettled around her head. “I’m not talking about involving the entire police force,” she said. “I’m talking about making one call, to someone I know and trust—” “Do I trust him?” He hated having to ask the question, hated not knowing one single thing about the mess he was in. Frustration made his voice abrupt, and something in Jayne’s face seemed to close down at the sound of it. “As far as I can tell, you don’t trust anyone,” she said. “And this isn’t a he I’m talking about, it’s a she. Madeleine Murphy.” She paused, as if she was hoping he might recognize the name. “She works in the public affairs office. She should be able to find out what we need to know.” Ryder could feel his gut tightening again. “It just feels wrong to me,” he said. “I don’t like getting the police into this. I don’t like getting you into it.” “Too late for that.” Then she looked away, leaving him feeling strangely alone. Why was it that the simple fact of her violet gaze made him feel as though there might be some hope in the bleak, memoryless world he’d wakened into? Her next words weren’t exactly hopeful. “You did your best to shut me out of all this when we were married,” she was saying. “And it worked. I don’t know any more than you do about what’s going on now. But if you think I’m capable of walking away and leaving you when you don’t have any money or anyplace to go or even any clothes, for heaven’s sake—” She turned to look at him again. This time her gaze was focused on the part of him that was only barely covered by the green hospital gown. Ryder felt his whole body heating up as she scanned his torso, his belly, his thighs. He knew he looked like hell. He felt like hell. And the bruised ribs that had taken a second pounding back in his hospital room were the very least of it. But somehow, Jayne Robards’s searching gaze made all of that recede into unimportance. In its place he could feel a warming that was part sexual, part something else, as though this woman could restore something to him that he couldn’t even remember having lost. It was frustrating on too many levels. And the longer she looked at him, the more insistently his body was responding to her scrutiny. Given the flimsy fabric of the hospital johnny, that was going to start creating problems in just a few more seconds. Fortunately she was turning away again, quickly, almost as though she’d sensed his reaction and didn’t want to know where it might be leading. Her words were rushed, too. And Ryder thought he detected a slight breathless sound to them that didn’t do anything to calm him down. But she was clearly trying to sound matter-of-fact. “Well, anyway, if you think I’d leave you on your own, you really have forgotten everything you used to know about me,” she said. “The light’s green, by the way.” He’d forgotten all about the traffic light. Muttering to himself, he stepped on the gas pedal and tried to concentrate on the road ahead. It was hard to do, when his body was stirred and tantalized and his mind was flooded with contradictory images and impulses—to keep her safe by getting as far away from her as he could, to take her in his arms and hold her close until the ache of frustration and powerlessness inside him went away. For several blocks neither of them spoke. Ryder had no clue what was going on inside that close-cropped head of hers. Was she frightened, or furious, or both? There’d been a moment, just before all hell had broken loose in his hospital room, when he’d felt a sudden certainty—fleeting, but powerful—that he knew what she was thinking. It was as though his own misgivings about the bogus reporter had traveled to Jayne Robards silently, through the air. Or maybe it was her doubts that had communicated themselves to him. It didn’t matter—the point was, for that one brief moment, it had been like seeing straight into someone else’s mind. It had been inexpressibly comforting, in the midst of all the blank spaces in his own mind. Now, though, he had no idea what she was thinking, or feeling. Her eyes were fixed on the road, not on him. And that powerful sense of connection was long gone. But even without it, their thoughts were clearly still running on parallel tracks. “What made you suspicious of that guy, anyway?” she asked. Ryder considered his answer. “His hair,” he said finally. “There was something wrong about it. Something fake.” She nodded. “You’re right,” she said. “It was too theatrical—like a wig and fake beard. And the way he kept worrying at it—” She cut herself off. He could tell her agile mind had jumped ahead a pace or two. “If we don’t call the police, what are we going to do?” she asked. It was a good question. Ryder would have given almost anything to have had a good answer. “I was hoping you wouldn’t ask that quite yet,” he said. “Right now I’d settle for some idea of where we’re headed.” That proved remarkably easy to decide. Jayne pointed out a freeway entrance in the next block, and they agreed that putting some distance between themselves and the hospital was a good idea. Once they were on the highway that ringed the downtown area, though, Jayne’s question hung uneasily in the air between them. It wasn’t the only thing making Ryder uneasy. “Why do you keep looking in the mirror?” Jayne asked as Ryder slanted his eyes upward yet again. “Is there somebody back there?” “I don’t think so. I just—” Damn it, why couldn’t he answer even the simplest question? “Something about this road just makes me nervous. That’s all.” He could feel her watching him, but this time he didn’t meet her eyes. The urge to keep looking over his shoulder was driving him crazy, and he couldn’t afford the distraction of Jayne’s violet gaze and the warmth it kept kindling down low in his body. “You were on a highway when the accident happened,” she said. “Was I?” Did that explain the tightness in his gut, and the constant feeling that. there was something outside the car he needed to pay attention to? Jayne shook her head. He caught the frustrated motion of it out of the corner of his eye. “There are just too many things we don’t know,” she said. “You don’t remember what happened to you yesterday—I’m in the dark about everything that’s gone on in your life for the past year—for longer than that—” “I guess you didn’t make a lot of visits to the prison to keep my spirits up.” “We’d decided to call it quits before you were even arrested.” Her brusque tone told him there was a lot more to it, but she didn’t go into detail. “I haven’t seen you since the day you were sentenced.” “So my being arrested wasn’t the reason we were getting divorced.” “No.” She cut off his next question with an emphatic wave of her hand. “Ryder, this is getting us nowhere. We should be deciding what to do next, not talking about old history.” But somewhere in that old history is the answer to why I’m being shot at now. He wanted to shout the words, but he tightened his grip on the wheel and forced himself to stay calm, or as close to it as he could manage. He knew Jayne was at least partly right: they couldn’t just keep driving around aimlessly. Even if the gas tank had been full—which it wasn‘t—they needed to decide pretty soon what their next move was going to be. “Neither of us has any money,” he reminded her. “Or any way to get money.” “I know.” “And there’s no way we can go to wherever you live. That’s the first place anyone would check, if they were looking for us.” Without really meaning to, he found himself saying we and us as though he’d come around to Jayne’s way of thinking that they were in this together. He hadn’t intended to do it—the thought of endangering her still made him nuts. But he couldn’t see a good way around it for the moment. “I know. I thought of that, too.” She paused, and he saw her raise one hand to the collar of her pale purple sweater. “I have—there’s a piece of jewelry I can sell. To get money, I mean.” “You have it with you?” She nodded, and he realized what her raised hand meant. She had a thin gold chain around her neck—he remembered seeing it when she’d first arrived in his hospital room—and she was fingering it now. “It‘s—well, it should be worth a few hundred dollars,” she said. “And it’s not as if—” She seemed to be having trouble maintaining her usual straightforward manner. Ryder frowned as she added, “I was trying to figure out what to do with it anyway. This seems as appropriate as anything else I could come up with.” It hit him with sudden certainty. Her wedding ring. She was talking about selling her wedding ring. The ring wasn’t on her finger. That made sense, since she’d told him the marriage was all but over. But she was still wearing his ring on a chain around her neck. Now, what the hell did that mean? The possibilities buzzed disturbingly inside him. He could feel the same treacherous warmth pooling in his belly again, dragging his attention away from practical questions, whispering to him of unshared secrets, of unimagined pleasures. But after her halting suggestion about the ring, Jayne seemed to be all-business again. She let go of the gold chain at her neck and said, “In a couple of hours the stores will be open. We can find a jeweler, or maybe a pawnshop. That’ll take care of our money problem. Once we’ve done that, we can buy you some clothes. Arid that just leaves the small matter of calling the police.” He didn’t give in without a fight. They argued about it until they’d left Miami behind and were cruising north toward Fort Lauderdale. They were still arguing when Jayne spotted a big mall with a long strip of stores next to it just off the highway. Ryder agreed it looked like a good bet. The mall parking lot was huge, with a couple of quiet corners where they could park unobtrusively until the mall and the nearby stores opened. But he still wasn’t happy when Jayne pointed out that there was a pay phone right in the middle of one of those unobtrusive corners. “You’re sure this Madeleine Murphy is reliable,” he said for at least the third time. “She’s as objective as they come—never takes sides.” “Not even about my arrest?” “She wasn’t around for your arrest. She was hired just after you went to jail.” That seemed safe enough. Whatever he was afraid of at the Miami police department, surely a newcomer in the public relations department wouldn’t be a part of it. But still... “Don’t tell her where we are.” He had to fight against the churning in his gut as he parked the blue sedan in the shade of a row of trees. “Ryder, for heaven’s sake—” “Just tell her you’ll call her back in an hour. We need information, not a bunch of cops swarming all over us.” He could tell by the set of her mouth that she disagreed with him. But she seemed willing to settle for the compromise he was offering—and half-afraid he might change his mind at any moment. There was an urgency in her movements as she unbuckled her seat belt that told him how eager she was to enlist some help. He turned to watch her grappling with the buckle, and realized why she was having problems. She’d fastened the thing in a hurry on their way out of the hospital parking lot, and her flowered skirt had gotten tangled in the strap. “Here,” he said. “This is stuck.” As he leaned over to help her, he caught the faint, sweet smell of her skin and hair, like an echo of remembered laughter. He stopped when he saw the hole in the fabric. “Was that there before?” he asked sharply. “Was what there?” She hadn’t noticed it yet. But Ryder couldn’t take his eyes off it. He took a handful of the filmy material and spread it out against his palm. There it was, clear as daylight and twice as deadly: a clean, circular hole at Jayne’s thigh level. If he was right about what had made it, there would be a corresponding one somewhere else on the skirt. He could feel his heart rate escalating as he started looking for it, ignoring her pointed, “What are you doing?” He found it almost immediately. And realized he was shaking so badly he couldn’t hold his hands still. Jayne’s quick intake of breath barely registered on him. “The silencer—” Her words sounded very far away. “When he came after us in the hallway—he must have fired at us.” Ryder nodded. He couldn’t speak. The bullet had been mere inches from Jayne’s body, puncturing the folds of her skirt. Another three inches to the right, and she would still be back at the hospital, perhaps fighting for her life. And Ryder would probably be dead. Inescapably, illogically, his mind was flooded with images of Jayne’s naked body, of the soft, erotic curve of the thigh the bullet had passed so dangerously close to. He thought about her lying on that hard linoleum floor in a pool of her own blood—thought about himself bending over her, calling her name—imagined McMaster stepping up behind them and blowing away the fragile connection that was Ryder’s only tie to the rest of humanity at this moment. He thought about losing Jayne, and felt his whole body shudder in protest. Nothing about his response was rational. He knew that. But he couldn’t seem to control it. His nerves and muscles had taken over, and they were telling him—screaming at him—to hold on to this woman, to keep her safe, to keep her his own. “Jaynie—” The word felt torn out of him. He saw her amethyst eyes open wider at the ragged sound of his voice—or maybe she was still reacting to the bullet hole in the skirt she was fingering so cautiously. He knew he should stop to explain. But he wasn’t sure he could explain. Need was going through him like a wave, an overwhelming need to hold her in his arms, to keep her safe, to keep her from leaving him. He didn’t know where these emotions were coming from. But he could no more resist them than he could keep his heart from beating. He saw Jayne’s violet gaze shift to the stubborn seat belt again. Heard the quiet click as she got it open. And then, as her eyes met his, wide, uncertain, dazzlingly deep and soft, he gave in to everything that was roiling inside him, and reached out for her. There was something almost painfully right about the way she fit against him. He pulled her into his arms as though her slender frame was the only thing standing between him and total, terrifying oblivion. As though the scent of her skin—that subtle sweetness that had been twining around him since he’d. first touched her at the hospital—could save him from all the dangers threatening him. He knew it was crazy. He was the one trying to keep her safe, not the other way around. But the sheer temptation of holding her like this was driving all the sense straight out of him. Her hands came up to rest on his shoulders. Another slow shudder rolled through him with the pleasure of her touch. The gentle weight of her fingertips through the thin hospital gown was like a blessing on everything in him that was hurt and bewildered and alone. “Oh, God—Jaynie—” He turned his face against her hair, feeling the heavy silk of it against his cheek. He found himself wanting to absorb her, to devour her, to capture all the sensuality and spirit that radiated from her like perfume. He wasn’t intending to kiss her. Hell, he wasn’t intending for any of this to happen. It all just felt inevitable, like birth and death, like a dream he’d had so many times he didn’t know whether it was memory or fantasy. His lips met hers on a low moan of longing. He was already dizzy from the soft, welcoming warmth of her mouth—from the ache in his belly that seemed to be spreading to every corner of him—when he realized that he’d just heard Jayne’s throaty voice mixed in with his own. The realization threatened to tip him over the edge. She wanted him? His head started to spin faster at the idea that this overpowering hunger might be mutual. He gathered her more closely against him and groaned again as their kiss deepened. He could feel the strength in her even as she opened to his lips, his seeking tongue. Her hands were smooth against his slicked-back hair, her breath warm where it blended with his. If he could just make this moment last... If he could catch hold of the memories that were teasing him from somewhere at the very edge of his consciousness... The problem was, the edge felt like a very long way away. The only thing that mattered was the center, where his mouth met Jayne’s in a kiss that was going deeper and deeper. He felt the whole universe whirling as he drank in her honeyed sweetness and answered the slow, tentative swirl of her tongue with a suggestive caress of his own. Her breasts were a gentle weight against his chest, her body increasingly, tantalizingly familiar in his arms. He slid one hand farther down her spine. The curve of her hips had been driving him crazy ever since he’d first seen the gentle sway of her flowered skirt this morning. His mind was overrun by visions of how she would look, unclothed and eager, wanting him, ready for him. Her little gasp as he shifted his embrace told him she was eager. The thought of it made him reckless, half-wild. “Nick—” That was his name. She was calling his name. He didn’t recognize it, and yet he did. It acted on him like a siren song, like a spell he’d fallen under a very long time ago. It didn’t matter where they were, or what was happening around them. He had to know where this half-remembered passion would lead him, had to hear that eager note in Jayne’s sultry voice again. Ryder tightened his grip and pulled Jayne even closer, already imagining her legs twined with his, knowing how good it would feel to surround her with his body, to sink all his solitary fears into the warm refuge of her smile. He leaned over, starting to ease them both down onto the soft upholstery. And felt his rib cage crack apart in the middle. The pain jackknifed through him without warning. He froze, trying not to breathe. It was nearly impossible, when his heart was hammering so hard. He managed to get a hand onto the back of the seat, and felt Jayne struggling to move free of him. She clasped the headrest with one hand and backed away, taking the warmth with her, shattering the momentary dream that had engulfed him. “No—wait—” He knew it was ridiculous. He could barely get the words out past the stabbing sensation in his ribs, yet he was pleading with her not to go. She shook her glossy head. Ryder recognized the exasperation in the gesture. “This is crazy,” she was saying. “We should have stayed at the hospital. You—” “No.” It was nearly impossible to focus on her words when her voice was still shot through with desire. And his own sounded the same way. Or maybe it was pain that was roughening his tone—he couldn’t tell. “We did the right thing. We just—I shouldn’t have—” He almost couldn’t say it. His heart was still telling him, Hold on to her—don’t let her go. Illogically but powerfully, he felt as though everything might come crashing back in on him if he let Jayne slip away. He thought of the emptiness he’d awakened to in the night, his desperate attempts to call up memories that just weren’t there. He could feel himself resist letting her go, trying to stay in a place that promised pleasure and satisfaction and gentleness instead of confusion and fear. But the jangling of his bandaged ribs was telling him a different story. And he knew he should listen to it—for both their sakes. “Getting away from the hospital was a good idea,” he said finally, gritting his teeth as he levered himself upright on the seat again. “Getting carried away just now—that was a mistake. My mistake.” Her eyes flared, as though he’d touched a nerve without meaning to. He wanted to know what she was thinking. He needed to feel the sweet, certain connection between them once more. But that brief moment of certainty was gone. “Your ribs—are they—” He clamped down on the pain and frustration inside him and made his voice as definite as he could. “They’ll be all right. And anyway, they’re my problem, not yours. Your problem is getting through to that friend of yours at the police department. Maybe you should go try to do that now.” He didn’t miss the way her eyes widened again at his words, or the irony that he was now urging her to call the police, when he’d been arguing against it so strenuously a little while earlier. Then, it had seemed too dangerous even to think about. Now, the real danger seemed to be coming from his own feelings, his own buried longings. He still wasn’t wild about Jayne’s plan, but at least it offered a respite from the sexual tension filling the car in the wake of their interrupted embrace. Did she notice, as she slid out the passenger side, how aroused Ryder was under the flimsy hospital gown? Was her sudden silence a way of masking some of the same lingering desires that he was trying so hard to vanquish? He didn’t dare ask her. With luck, it would take her a few minutes to reach her friend at the police department. And by the time she came back maybe he would have himself under control again. Boy, you two are hot! Madeleine Murphy’s words echoed in Jayne’s thoughts as she held up a pair of stonewashed men’s jeans and tried to assess what Ryder’s waist size. was now. Lean and hungry were the words that sprang to mind. She shook her head and did her best to chase away the troubling image of Ryder’s long body and lean hips. She could still feel his taut skin under her fingers and hear the deep, ragged sound of his voice at her ear. She’d never seen Ryder in a pair of jeans that looked new. He’d always bought the prewashed kind and then worn them until they were practically in tatters. When she thought about the masculine, almost arrogant slant of his hips, about the way the worn denim had always creased at his thighs, about the holes she’d never even suggested patching because the glimpses of his hard, muscled legs had always given her a secret, seductive thrill— She blinked and realized she’d closed her eyes and let fantasy take over right in the middle of the store’s menswear department. She needed to get a grip on herself, and that meant chasing all these erotic thoughts about Nick Ryder back where they belonged. The first jeans she’d taken off the rack would just have to do, she decided, and grabbed a belt from the sale table on her way past, in case Ryder really was as much lankier as he looked. What do you mean, we’re hot? Her conversation with Madeleine. kept replaying itself as she paid for the new clothes. I mean, everybody and his brother seems to have heard about that shoot-out at the hospital. I’ve got press calling me already, I’ve had the chief on the line— What did you tell them? Not a damn thing, because I don’t know a damn thing. I’m hoping you’re going to fix that. She hadn’t, not really. Jayne wanted to get information, not give it out. It was only after a lengthy exchange that Madeleine agreed to dig up what she could about Ryder’s case. But you owe me, big-time, she’d said. And Jayne had promised that as soon as it was safe to talk, Madeleine would be the first person she called. She’d been careful not to give out the number of the pay phone, even to Madeleine. And she’d been just as careful to avoid getting back into the blue sedan with Ryder. She’d taken a walk to check out the storefronts along the adjacent street, and had found a pawnshop, as she’d been hoping. Once the place opened, she’d quickly negotiated a price for her wedding ring. In a bleak, joyless little ceremony, she’d pocketed five hundred dollars cash in exchange for the sparkling diamond that had once signified the kind of treasure that was beyond price. Ignoring the pang of loss, she’d headed straight for the now-open mall. It was just as hard to ignore Ryder’s silent presence in the blue sedan parked in the shady corner of the parking lot. Both his physical response to her and his blunt, dead-end words—It’s my problem, not yours—had stirred up a lot of feelings she’d honestly hoped she wasn’t going to have to face again. By the time she finished her shopping trip, it was nearly an hour since she’d left Ryder in the car. That was long enough for safety, she told herself as she emerged into the now-bright Saturday-morning sunlight. Long enough for both of them to have cooled off. Long enough to start thinking rationally, planning their next move. She was wrong. She could see him starting the car as she stepped out of the mall’s main entrance. He’d been watching for her, she thought. The dark blue sedan started crossing the half-empty parking lot, heading toward her at a sedate pace. And then, suddenly, it wasn’t. She couldn’t see what had triggered Ryder’s sudden burst of speed. She heard the sedan’s tires squeal and saw the vehicle lurch as it veered abruptly. Out of the corner of her eye she thought she caught a glimpse of movement at the end of a row of parked cars. But there wasn’t time to figure out what it was. The sedan was screaming toward the curb, and she ran to meet it, holding tight to the bags that filled her arms. The passenger door was flung wide as the car reached her. “Get in!” Ryder shouted. “And get your head down!” She wanted to ask why, but there wasn’t time. The tires were spinning again as soon as she grabbed the door handle. She was half jolted onto the front seat, and barely had time to close the door behind her before they were moving again. “I said down, damn it!” Ryder’s right hand was like hot steel on the back of her neck as he shoved her below the level of the dashboard. A second later she realized why he’d done it. She heard, rather than saw, the back window shatter. There was a sudden high-pitched noise, like angry surf against a breakwater. And then she was showered with broken bits of glass as Ryder let loose a long string of curses and jammed the accelerator to the floor. Chapter 4 “If you would just hold still—” He didn’t seem capable of it. He winced at her touch, half turning away as she started to peel back the bandage. “I really think this can wait.” His voice was tight with pain or impatience or both. His face was pale again, his teeth clenched, his forehead dotted with sweat that had finally loosened the adhesive tape around his bandage. It was lucky she’d bought a first-aid kit during her fast shopping spree in the mall. But Ryder wasn’t exactly making it easy for her to use it. “No, it can’t wait,” she told him. “If you pass out while we’re driving, there won’t be any ‘later.’ Nobody’s going to find us here in the next ten minutes, Ryder. I want to make sure nothing’s bleeding under there.” There was no blood, although the size of the welt on his forehead made Jayne wince sympathetically. How he’d managed to pull that fancy piece of stunt driving while sporting this nasty lump and a set of badly bruised ribs was beyond her. She knew it had been luck as much as skill that had saved them. Crouched by the dashboard, she’d missed most of what was happening. But she’d seen enough out the window above her to realize that Ryder had managed to maneuver them back onto the highway ahead of whoever had been shooting at them. When she’d tried to see what was going on, he’d pushed her back down out of the way. But his muttered comments—“ We’re in luck, if these two trucks are getting off where I think they’re going to”—gave her an idea what he was up to. He’d waited until the last possible second, then ducked in between two long trailer trucks at the next exit. The squealing tires on the highway above them told Jayne that their pursuer hadn’t made his move in time. Ryder had taken no chances after that, changing directions half a dozen times until he was certain no one was behind them. They’d ended up on a road leading to a stretch of state beach, where Ryder had agreed—reluctantly—to pull in for a few minutes. There were a few other people in the lot, most of them heading purposefully for the sand that started just beyond the parking area. Ryder backed the car into the shrubs in one corner of the lot, where the smashed rear window wouldn’t be so noticeable. “All right,” Jayne said when she’d rebandaged his forehead. “What the heck happened back there? How did they find us?” Ryder was reaching for the clothes she’d bought for him at the mall. He had to raise his voice over the rustling of the bag, or maybe it was something else that was making him sound so harsh. “It was your phone call,” he said. “They traced the number. It’s the only way it could have happened.” Jayne’s mind had been fighting against that possibility. Try as she might, though, she hadn’t been able to come up with any other explanation. “I still can’t believe Madeleine would do that,” she said. “She might not have.” He pulled the jeans out of the bag and held them up in front of him. “How many people in the police department know you two are friends?” “Lots.” She could see where his thoughts were headed. “So you think once the hospital reported that you’d been involved in a shooting incident—” “And that my wife was with me—” “It wouldn’t have been hard to make the connection.” “Right. Whoever’s after me must have figured there was a good chance you would call Madeleine if you were looking for information.” “Could they have gotten a tap on her phone so quickly?” “You started to call her from the hospital, remember? You left your name, just before I cut off the call. If somebody had been monitoring calls coming in for Madeleine, they’d have picked up on it.” “And been waiting when I called back later.” “With a tap on her line, which led them straight to that mall parking lot. And we were still there, like a couple of sitting ducks.” She still didn’t want to believe it. But if it was true—and she couldn’t see a good way around it—it meant that Ryder’s gut instincts had been right all along. Someone in the Miami police department did want him dead. And it didn’t seem to matter to them if Jayne got caught in the cross fire. That wasn’t the only thought troubling her at the moment. Ryder was shifting his long body on the front seat, angling himself so he could shimmy into the jeans without getting out of the car. She caught one glimpse of the long, bare stretch of his thigh, and quickly shifted her gaze. Even the terror of that bullet coming through the back window of the car hadn’t been enough to chase away the memory of everything she’d felt in Ryder’s arms when they’d first pulled into that parking lot. She wasn’t sure she really wanted to sit next to him now as he struggled out of that impossibly skimpy hospital gown. “There’s a men’s room just over there,” she told him. “You could—” He shook his head. “Too risky,” he said. “I don’t want to attract anybody’s attention. And parading around in this damn gown is a good way to do exactly that.” It wasn’t until he’d gotten his bare feet into the legs of the jeans that it seemed to occur to him he’d managed to capture Jayne’s attention in a way he likely hadn’t intended. His dark blue eyes narrowed suggestively as he added, “Why? What’s the matter? If we were really married for—how long?” “Thirteen years.” She hoped her voice didn’t sound as husky as it felt. “Thirteen years—well, hell, you must have pretty much seen all of me there is to see, haven’t you?” Of course she had. That was the problem. She resisted the impulse to clear her throat as she watched him raise his hips and pull the new jeans over them. The motion accented the length of his legs and the washboard-flatness of his belly. And this time it was impossible to tear her eyes away. How many times had her body turned liquid at the feeling of that flat stomach against hers? She’d had a hard time remembering her dreams in the difficult months since Ryder had been in jail. But she suspected—no, she knew, from the rumpled pillows she sometimes found in the middle of the bed when she woke in the mornings—that there were parts of her that had never stopped longing for the magic of his touch, the heat of his loving. All those half-buried longings had exploded vividly into life when he’d pulled her into his arms just a little while ago. And at that exact moment, someone had been on their trail for the deadliest of reasons. This was no time to be getting all breathless about the sexy slant of Ryder’s hips and the broad shoulders she could see once he’d freed himself from the hospital gown. She looked away again, willing herself not to linger over the hard curve of his upper arm when he reached into the bag on the seat between them and pulled out the dark blue polo shirt she’d bought. “I thought I’d seen the last of you,” she said as firmly as she could. “I’m just having a difficult time sorting out everything that’s going on, that’s all. I still haven’t figured out how you got one jump ahead of the guy with the gun. Did you see him before he saw you?” Fortunately, she was used to asking questions. She fell back on professional habit, hoping it would cover the fact that she’d started to quiver inside all over again as Ryder raised those strong arms over his head and pulled the shirt over his bandaged, but still beautiful, body. “I saw his truck.” He dropped the hospital gown and the bag into the back seat and turned the key in the ignition. “How did you—” “I saw a white pickup with red and maroon pinstriping outside the hospital just before you showed up this morning. When I saw what looked like the same truck in the mall parking lot, I figured we were probably in trouble.” And he’d been right. Jayne didn’t ask how he’d happened to notice the truck in the first place. Ryder had always been a demon for detail, obsessively taking note of his surroundings wherever he happened to be. Once, that had made him a good detective. And no matter which side of the law he was on now, those same skills had kept them alive, against the odds. She might still be reeling from the astonishing moment of closeness and desire that had overtaken them a little while ago. But Ryder’s tense, shuttered expression was telling her he’d managed to put it far behind him. Where it belonged. It wasn’t easy, but she followed his example and kept her eyes fixed on the road ahead of them as he pulled the car out of the park and started in search of whatever haven they could find. The Olde Maritimer Motel was at the very end of the strip, far beyond its classier competitors on the other side of Fort Lauderdale. There was a half-rotted wooden fishing boat in the front yard with a bunch of straggly-looking flowers growing out of it The grass was mostly brown, and the motel’s red-and-white sign badly needed repainting. It was exactly what Ryder was looking for. “I’ll bet the fleas here have their own union.” Jayne was looking dubiously at the sagging screen doors and rusty metal lawn chairs at each motel unit. Ryder snorted. “Probably,” he said. “But fleas don’t ask too many questions—and neither will the owners, by the look of this place.” He was right. Unlike the chain motel they’d tried a few miles back, where ID had been required even from a customer paying cash, the woman at the desk of the Olde Maritimer barely glanced up when Jayne pushed a pair of twenties across the counter toward her. Better yet, there were some small cabins behind the motel, even farther from the road. “Need your license number and make of car,” the clerk said, lifting a key off the board behind her. “Cabin number three is the one on the left.” Faced with the blank registration form and the ballpoint pen the woman had shoved toward him, Ryder had a blind, panicky moment when he wasn’t sure what to write. Making up a license number for the car wasn’t the hard part—it was the names that stopped him. Nicholas James Ryder. That was his own name, although it still felt far from natural to him. But he didn’t want to use it. And at first he couldn’t imagine what to put in its place. He stared at the form, gripped without warning by the same helplessness he’d felt on first waking up in the hospital. What if he picked a name at random and it turned out to be something significant, something that would tip off a cop who might be enterprising enough to track them this far off the beaten path? He hated feeling adrift like this, hated the emptiness that kept gaping open where his memory should have been. He could count on his gut instincts some of the time—their escape from the would-be killer back at the mall proved that. With his first glimpse of that white pickup truck, he’d known exactly what he had to do. But now he didn’t. Faced with something as simple— but crucial—as filling in his name, he was drawing a blank. And that shook him, right down to the soles of the new sneakers Jayne had bought for him. He could feel himself slipping into confusion again, the kind of swirling chaos that had threatened to engulf him at the hospital when he’d first realized he couldn’t remember anything about himself. Then, he’d hung on to reality by taking fiercely detailed notes of everything around him—the nurses’ name tags, the pattern of the carpet in the hospital hallway, the neat rows of cars in the parking lot outside his window. But now he had nothing to fall back on, except— Except Jayne. He raised his eyes to hers and immediately felt some of his tension start to ease. She was watching him, those amazing violet eyes darkened but still dazzling, even in the dim light of the motel office. Her gaze was serious, gentle. As though she knew what was going on in his mind. As though she understood She gave a quick, almost imperceptible nod, and then her pink mouth moved silently. “Smith.” The soundless syllable was enough to do it. Ryder felt the frozen panic leaving him. He relaxed his grip on the blue ballpoint pen as he started to write. John Smith. Of course—it was so obvious he hadn’t been able to see it. Probably half the couples who came to this place signed themselves in as Smiths. Hell, they probably had Smith conventions here in the off-season. He refused to let himself give in all the way to the relief that washed through him as they left the dimly lit office. He’d come far too close to letting his own nameless fears paralyze him. And that meant he couldn’t afford to start letting his guard down, even for a minute. “Thanks,” he muttered to Jayne as they walked back to the car. “I was blanking out.” “I could tell.” She seemed to be avoiding his eyes, but her voice was still thoughtful as she added, “What were you going to write, just out of curiosity?” “What do you mean?” “I mean, was anything coming to your mind? I was just thinking—” She got into the seat beside him and closed the door. “There might be some fragments of memory kicking around that you may be able to catch hold of, if you try.” “There’s not a damn thing. I have tried.” He started the engine and swung the car past the decaying boat on the lawn. He knew he’d stepped on the accelerator with more force than he needed, but her comment made him angry. He knew it was his own vacant brain he was mad at, that and the fact that he’d managed to get this beautiful and compassionate woman into deadly danger without having the slightest idea how he’d done it. “There’s nothing there,” he repeated as he pulled the car around to their cabin. “Just a big zero. My body remembers how to do things, like driving a car—” And kissing a woman. He chased off the thought and scowled at the little red-and-white cottage ahead of them. “But there aren’t any specifics,” he finished abruptly. “No dates, no events. No names.” Away from the road everything seemed quieter. The slam of the passenger door sounded loud as Jayne stepped away from the car. Ryder could hear a dog barking somewhere on the property, but its shrill yapping was distant, swallowed up in the midday stillness. Even in the quiet of the wooded area around the cabins, though, Jayne’s reply was hard to hear. Her voice had gotten huskier than ever, and she was looking away from Ryder as she spoke. “You remember some names,” she said. He frowned as he pocketed the car keys. “What are you talking about?” he asked. She still didn’t look at him. “You called me Jaynie, when we—in the parking lot at the mall,” she said. “You must have dredged that up from somewhere. No one ever called me Jaynie except you.” She walked ahead of him into the little cabin, not looking back to see how he’d taken her words. Which was just as well, he thought. Two minutes ago he’d had himself convinced that for both their sakes, he needed to stay utterly focused on keeping one step ahead of the danger that threatened them. There was no room in this nightmarish adventure for the kind of feelings that had overrun him when he’d taken Jayne in his arms at the mall. But those feelings seemed to keep surfacing, anyway. He was aroused all over again by the gentle sway of her hips as she climbed the three wooden steps into the cabin. And the soft rasp at the edge of her voice kept connecting with parts of him that remembered only too well how to respond to a woman’s gentleness—this woman’s gentleness. And he’d called her by a name no one else had ever used. It was enough to keep him rooted to the spot for several minutes after she’d walked away. He stood there, in fact, until the damn dog’s barking started to get under his skin and he found himself wanting to escape the noise. For some reason—his own too-taut nerves, probably—it sounded louder now. Every yap cut into the noontime tranquillity like a dull knife. It was irritating and intrusive. As he climbed the cabin stairs, Ryder was doing his best to convince himself to stick to the subject of the gunman who’d tried twice today to kill them. But he already knew it wasn’t going to work. The cabin was tiny. There was one double bed against the wall and barely enough room to walk past it into the bathroom at the back. Jayne was standing next to the single chair, fingertips on its arrest, looking out the window to the treed area beyond the clearing around the cabins. Against the drab furnishings—dark brown bedspread, tan carpet, walls of knotty pine—her flowered skirt and lavender sweater looked more vibrant than ever. And the filtered sunlight hitting the narrow gold chain around her neck made it impossible to remember all the sensible subjects he’d been intending to stick to. “How much did you get for your ring?” he asked instead as he pulled the screen door closed behind him. She raised a hand to the chain, fingering it gently. It looked like a gesture she had performed often. “Five hundred dollars,” she said. “Why? Are you wondering whether I got a fair return on your investment?” Something in her tone stung him, some hint of a bitterness she wasn’t quite admitting to. “I wouldn’t know, since I have no idea how much I invested in the first place,” he said. “Do you?” She shook her head. Her hair shone gold where the sun hit it, matching the faint glint of the chain around her neck. “It was a surprise,” she said. “The ring, I mean. You sprung it on me.” “Was there an engagement ring to go with it?” he wanted to know. She shook her head. “We barely had an engagement,” she told him. She was watching him again, but this time the concern in her sidelong gaze had been replaced by wariness. “Whirlwind courtship?” he asked. “No. We’d known each other for years before we got married, ever since college. And we’d been—well, monogamous about each other for a long time.” The word monogamous had sounded that bitter tone in her voice again. “Is that why we were splitting up?” he asked. “Did I—stop being monogamous?” The ache under his ribs intensified as he framed the question. He realized it was more than just his battered rib cage that hurt. Was it conceivable—could anyone who’d been married to this spirited, intelligent woman possibly have been unfaithful to her? Her face—and her words—told him it hadn’t been that simple. “In a way,” she said. “You didn’t leave me for another woman, if that’s what you’re thinking.” “What, then?” “You were very involved with your job.” It had the stale sound of a too-simple answer she’d given many times to explain a complicated situation. “We had—drifted apart.” Ryder frowned. “We’d drifted apart,” he repeated, “but you were still wearing my ring on a chain around your neck.” “Technically, I’m still a married woman.” She wasn’t able to hide the bitterness in her tone this time. “I was planning to take the ring off altogether once the divorce was final.” “Which was going to be—when?” There were a lot of questions crowding at him now. If they’d decided to split up before he’d gone to prison, why wait this long to finalize the divorce? Why hadn’t she just gone ahead with it during the year he’d been gone? Did it have something to do with the touch of possessiveness, of regret, he thought he’d seen when she raised her hand to the chain at her neck? There’d been something almost wistful in the gesture, as though she was touching something she couldn’t bear to let go of. The new hardness in her face made him think he must have been wrong about that. Her voice was very firm as she said, “It was going to be as soon as you were free. But now we’ve got other things to get out of the way first.” Her answer didn’t satisfy him, but he knew enough not to keep running at what was obviously a dead end. Doggedly, he returned to his earlier question. “Why did we get married suddenly?” he asked. And then; as another possibility occurred to him, he added, “Did we—you know, have to?” She hadn’t mentioned children. Surely she would have, if they’d had any. Or would she? Abruptly he felt he was in dangerous, empty territory again. Jayne Robards stirred him more powerfully than he could deny. But in every way that really counted, he didn’t know her at all. She was crossing her arms now, impatiently. “I really don’t want to talk about this, Ryder,” she said. Ryder crossed his arms, too, and waited. He could feel the edge of the elastic bandage where it was holding his ribs in place, and that ever-present ache just underneath it. Finally, after a long moment of silence, she answered him, “If you have to know, we got married in a hurry because one Thursday night you came over to my apartment with that ring in a little box and said you couldn’t stand not being married to me any longer. You always used to do things that way—saying nothing for ages, and then suddenly leaping into action.” And she’d once loved that about him. He could see it in her eyes, in the sadness she was trying to hide. He was about to comment on it when another thought struck him. He’d acted that way only this morning, when he’d given in to that impulse to kiss her. He’d felt everything building up inside him like a sea at high tide. And then it had all spilled over, and he’d let himself plunge headlong into a hunger so fierce it still made his heart pound to remember it. And Jayne had felt exactly the same way. The certainty of that fact was as troubling and arousing as hell. “Was it good?” He hadn’t known he was going to say the words until her eyes were already widening in response to them. “You know, what we had together—all of it—” He wasn’t sure how to finish the question. Deep down he knew what he was really trying to say was, If that moment in the car when I kissed you was anything like what we felt for each other when we were married, how the hell could we ever have broken up? But the tangle of emotions in her eyes made it impossible to sort out his feelings. And before he’d found the words he was searching for, Jayne was speaking again. The edge in her voice told him she’d shared about as many old memories as she wanted to. “It was good.” There was no mistaking her emphasis. “But it’s, over, Ryder. The only reason I’m here now is because everybody else seems to be trying to get you killed. And I may not love you anymore, but that doesn’t mean I’m prepared to stand by and watch you get shot without at least trying to figure out what’s going on.” He should have been happy about the second part of what she’d said. She was willing to help him—she wasn’t going to walk away and leave him alone and in danger. But he wasn’t happy. His whole world felt shaken by the words It’s over, and by the bleak look in her eyes as she’d said them. I don’t love you anymore—she couldn’t be much plainer than that, could she? What she was telling him was that he’d been wrong about the sadness he thought he’d seen as she’d fingered the now-empty chain around her neck. Ryder might be feeling as though he was just discovering the promise of something passionate and hopeful, but to Jayne, all that was in the past. Any joy he’d once shared with this beautiful woman was over and done with. And he didn’t even know why. He clenched his teeth and tried not to notice his body’s insistent response to her movements as she crossed the room and seated herself on the other side of the double bed. There was something head-spinningly seductive about the idea of easing down on the mattress next to her, welcoming her back into his arms. But her expression told him passion was the last thing on her mind right now. “All right,” she said, leveling those violet eyes at him and drawing her fine, dark eyebrows together in a serious line. “If we can’t call the police and we don’t know who’s chasing you, what exactly are we going to do next?” Chapter 5 The sun felt good on his skin. Ryder leaned back against the park bench and closed his eyes briefly. He knew he couldn’t let himself relax the way the beachgoers around him were doing. He needed to stay alert, on his guard. Behind him, at a pay phone next to the busy boardwalk skirting the long sand beach, Jayne was making a call that might get them a step closer to safety. And Ryder was sitting on the nearest park bench, trying to resist the warm temptation of the November sun, trying to keep a sharp eye on what was happening around them. But just for a moment, the afternoon sun on his face felt like a golden promise, as warm and seductive as the touch of Jayne’s fingertips when she’d smoothed the new bandage over his forehead this morning. He forced himself to open his eyes, squinting at the crowds thronging the beach in front of him. He couldn’t afford to think these thoughts. He had to keep his mind on the problem at hand: how to find out who was chasing him without getting himself and Jayne killed in the process. Ahead of him was a family of six setting up a blanket and beach umbrella. He watched the father head toward the bathrooms with the youngest child in tow, while the mother grappled with the umbrella stand and tried to keep the other three kids from wandering too far away. She’d dropped her purse at the edge of the blanket, Ryder noticed. It was at moments like these that he could feel what he knew must be his cop’s instincts alerting him to potential danger. He’d felt the same thing a few moments ago when he’d noticed a couple of tough-looking youths strolling the beach. They’d had rap sheet written all over them—he’d sniffed them out immediately. Just now, though, the scene in front of him was innocent enough. “Jason, Isabelle!” The woman’s voice carried clearly over the sound of surf and laughter and cars on the nearby road. “I said not until Daddy comes back.” What would it be like to lie down on a white beach like this with Jayne next to him? Ryder was half tempted to close his eyes again, to let the sun’s kiss on his weary body warm him into a vision of how it would feel to glide his palms over Jayne’s smooth, warm skin, how the tension inside him would melt at the touch of her lips. Now that he knew the taste of her mouth, the feel of her body against his, it was impossible to stop himself from wanting to know more. He could almost sense her honeyed scent wafting around him, could feel himself responding to it with a hunger that seemed to start from the very core of him. Damn it, he had closed his eyes, without meaning to. Growling, he forced them open again and went back to his scrutiny of the beach. He might be in the grip of a desire he couldn’t understand or control, but Jayne had been all-business when they’d finally gotten down to planning their next move. She’d agreed that getting in touch with any kind of law enforcement officials was too risky until they knew how things stood between Ryder and the Miami police. “And I’d suggest calling my editor at the Bulletin,” she’d said, “but the only thing he dislikes more than cops is crooked cops. He’d be more likely to blow the whistle on us than to help us out.” “Sounds like a sweetheart,” Ryder commented. “He’s a good journalist.” Her eyes had flashed sudden fire at him. “He calls things the way he sees them.” “And how do you see it? Do you think I’m crooked?” He saw the answer in her face before she spoke. She didn’t know what to think—didn’t know if he was innocent or guilty of the crime he’d served a year in jail for. Well, hell, he thought. That makes two of us. But the doubt in Jayne’s pretty face hurt him more than he wanted to let on. “I think we need a lot more information before we can answer any of these questions,” she’d hedged. She’d suggested a mutual friend, somebody who worked in the Miami city attorney’s office. Ryder had rejected the idea. It was too close to the legal system to suit him. They’d finally agreed on a compromise: one of Jayne’s colleagues at the paper who would be able to get the information they were after, but who wasn’t close enough to the editor to be biased, or close enough to Jayne that his phone would likely be monitored. Jayne had called him on his cellular phone a couple of hours ago and explained—quickly, so even if the line was tapped, there wouldn’t be time to trace the call—what she was after. Now she was calling back. And Ryder was waiting. The two youths he’d noticed earlier were coming back into view now. They were cruising like trolling sharks in the midst of brightly colored schools of smaller fish. Ryder could see them casually scanning the landscape, the way he was doing himself. He watched as they moved toward the family in front of him. The umbrella was still giving the mother a lot of trouble, and the older kids were already deeply involved in digging in the sand. Ryder sat up a little straighter. If that woman didn’t turn around pretty soon... She obviously wasn’t going to. Her attention was focused on the umbrella, not on what was happening behind her. And in ten seconds her purse was going to be history. Ryder got off the park bench just as the two guys moved in on the beach blanket. By the time the taller one was leaning toward the inviting loop of the purse strap, Ryder was running. The second thief saw him coming and shouted something to his friend, and the pair of them spun around in a flurry of sand and took off. They had the purse with them. Ryder heard the woman’s cry of dismay and the shouts of other people nearby. There were protesting yells as the two thieves cut across picnic lunches and over unwary sunbathers. Ryder stayed right on their trail, ignoring the sudden pain that wrapped his ribs like a red-hot embrace. If he got lucky—if they did something stupid... They did. Reaching a dead end at a tall concrete breakwater, they tried to go over instead of around it. Ryder saw the taller one pause to boost his shorter buddy up, and knew he had them. His flying tackle took them both down, and jolted the purse loose from the taller youth’s grasp. Ryder ignored it for the moment. He ignored the second tough’s struggle to get to his feet, too. Alone, unarmed, he couldn’t hold down two of them. But he had the one who counted, and he was hanging on like grim death. People were crowding around now. Ryder could feel his lungs burning as he tried to get enough air past the searing pain in his ribs. The shorter thief was long gone, but the woman’s purse was safe. He glanced over his shoulder and recognized the red blaze of her bathing suit as she claimed it, thanking him volubly. “God, I wasn’t thinking—if you hadn’t been so quick—” He nodded, too winded to speak. The thief he’d collared was still trying to get up, halfheartedly, but with enough gusto to jangle Ryder’s rib cage with every spasmodic jerk. He’d just managed to get his knee into the small of the guy’s back when he heard a familiar crackle from somewhere behind him. He could feel his hackles rising at the sound of a police walkie-talkie. According to Jayne, he’d been a cop for years—fifteen, she’d told him. And it was clear he still thought like a cop, and acted like one—hell, he’d even caught himself reaching instinctively for the handcuffs that should have been at his belt when he’d pinned the tall thief to the sand at the base of the concrete wall. But right now he wanted nothing to do with the police in any form. The last thing he wanted was to end up in some police log where his pursuers could find his name. He was glad enough to surrender his prisoner to the uniformed cop who stepped through the circle of onlookers. But he kept his face half-averted as the women with the purse explained excitedly what had happened. And when the cop’s partner turned to him, looking for corroboration, Ryder shook his head. “Just—being a good citizen” was all he could manage to say around the burning in his ribs. Damn it, what if the guy started asking why Ryder was doubled over like this? He didn’t want to end up with some well-meaning medic inspecting him. The cop was asking for Ryder’s name now, telling him—reasonably enough, Ryder knew—that the evidence of witnesses would help ensure the purse snatcher didn’t walk away from the charges the woman was willing to file. Ryder shook his head again and tried to think clearly. Should he give a fake name? It might work. What name, though? He could feel the black hole in his memory starting to gape open again, the way it had at the motel office. He knew “John Smith” wasn’t going to work this time. In fact, the cop was already starting to look as though he’d figured out Ryder was hiding something. “How about showing me some ID, sir?” he was saying. And then, when Ryder didn’t respond, he added, “Are you sure you’re okay?” “He’s fine.” Hearing the sound of Jayne’s voice was like stumbling across an oasis in the midst of what had seemed like endless desert. Ryder looked up from his bent-double position and saw that she’d managed to push through the crowd around him. She stepped matter-of-factly to his side and slid one arm around his waist. He could feel her warmth and strength even through the throbbing in his midsection. “He put his back out trimming the hedge last weekend,” she said to the policeman. “Although he refuses to believe it. I thought I’d gotten him convinced to come and sit quietly at a movie for the rest of the afternoon, but...” He felt her shrug, and heard a little ripple of sympathetic laughter from the spectators. “I can call a ambulance if you’d like,” the cop was offering. “What do you think, ace?” He could feel Jayne’s fingers circling his waist, smooth against the skin under the edge of the dark blue polo shirt. “You want an ambulance?” She was cool, he had to hand it to her. She must know as well as he did that any kind of official documents—like ambulance records—would be the fastest way to put that killer back on their track. But she was playing along with the scenario, acting the exasperated wife with a flair that was impressing the heck out of him. He shook his head. “I’ll be fine,” he said. “What time—was that movie?” She glanced at the watch on the wrist that was wrapped around him. As he caught the perfume of her skin, it was suddenly easier for him to drag in the air he needed. “If we’re lucky, we can still catch the previews,” she said. “Thanks, Officer. We’ll be okay now.” They escaped the circle of people before the cop could point out that he still hadn’t gotten Ryder’s name. Ryder grinned, despite the pain inside him. “Trimming the hedge?” He rasped out the words once they were out of earshot of the onlookers. “You couldn’t have had me doing something a little more dashing?” “Like tackling criminals single-handedly when you can barely walk?” She sounded exasperated and sympathetic at the same time. Ryder felt himself leaning into the strength of her grip, not so much for support as for the pleasure of hearing the half-buried compassion in her voice. “Honestly, Ryder,” she continued, “anybody would think you were trying to get into trouble, instead of running away from it.” “It was—a reflex action.” “I could tell.” “And—I did get the woman’s purse back.” She didn’t have a good answer for that one. They were both silent while they crossed the road separating the beach from the strip of motels where they were staying. Ryder kept trying to stand on his own, but the clamor in his ribs was getting worse. It seemed smarter to keep leaning on Jayne’s supporting arm. Once they’d reached the sidewalk, she spoke again. “I know you got the purse back. It was a good thing to do. It’s just—” “I know. You don’t have to tell me. If my face happens to stick in the cop’s memory—” “Right. Especially if the FBI gets out a statewide bulletin for you—” “Wait a minute. Back up.” They were passing a strip of convenience stores. Ryder put out a hand and leaned his weight on the tiled front of the nearest one, trying to make sense of what she’d just said. “What does the FBI have to do with this?” The roadway was noisy, and there was a truck parked in a loading zone downwind of them. What little air Ryder was managing to get into his lungs was half-full of diesel fumes. It wasn’t making it any easier to think. And he could tell from the set of Jayne’s mouth that what she’d learned on the phone wasn’t good news. “Maybe we should get back to the motel and—” “Tell me now, Jayne. What the hell is going on?” Jayne didn’t like the way he’d gone pale again, or the tightness of his mouth as he asked the question. But she knew from experience that there would be no budging him until he’d found out what he wanted to know. “You are out of prison legally.” She decided to start with what little good news there was. “You were officially released on parole yesterday afternoon.” She paused. “The guy who picked you up was apparently an FBI agent out of Miami.” She could see him trying to put it together in his mind, frowning with that hawklike concentration she knew so well. “Is that who was driving the car I was in? The guy who was killed when we hit that canal?” She nodded. “His name was Santiago,” she said. “A rookie, twenty-three years old.” “Rookie.” He sounded disgusted. “‘Infant’ is more like it.” “I know. Chris said—” She shivered despite the heat of the afternoon sun. They had to scrape him out of the driver’s seat with a spoon had been Chris’s inelegant way of describing the young driver’s messy collision with a half-built bridge abutment on the way into the canal. If it had been Ryder’s side of the car instead... She shook her head. “You were lucky,” she said. She wished she could control her own reactions, but she couldn’t. She kept trying to stay objective, trying to remind herself that Ryder might very well turn out to be the bad guy in all this. But her own responses betrayed her every time she turned around. What she’d felt when Chris Jimenez had told her about the FBI agent’s death was sheer relief—relief that it hadn’t been Ryder’s body that had been smashed to pieces when that car had gone over the bridge. “Why was I being driven back to Miami by an FBI agent?” he asked. She made her answer brisk, to counter her sympathy at the sight of Ryder’s drawn face and too-careful breathing. “Nobody knows the answer to that except the FBI,” she said. “And they’re not talking. They are, however, very interested in talking to you.” She related what she’d learned from Chris Jimenez, who’d dug up the information quickly and willingly once he’d grasped why she wanted it. Chris was erratic, and tended to see the whole world through the screen of his computer. But he was bright. And nobody, he’d assured her, had seemed to wonder why he was asking questions about Ryder’s disappearance and Jayne’s possible involvement in it. “There was a reporter at the scene of the accident right after it happened,” she said. “Apparently, he overheard a witness saying she’d seen you and the driver struggling just before the car went over the railing. The witness didn’t stick around. But it looks like the FBI is taking the rumor seriously. Chris talked to the guy at the Bulletin’s crime desk. He said the scuttlebutt is why the FBI wants you brought in, and soon.” For a long moment Ryder was silent. His dark blond head was glinting gold on top in the sun, and she felt an unexpected urge to reach her hand and run it over the smooth, corn-silk hair slicked back so tightly against his scalp. When he finally spoke, though, it was obvious his own thoughts had nothing to do with the temptations that kept catching at Jayne. His deep blue eyes were anguished as he looked up at her. “What if I did?” he asked. “What if we were tussling in the front seat of the car? What if I was responsible for that kid’s death?” He was searching her face with an openness she hadn’t seen in him in a very long time. How long had it been, she wondered, since Nick Ryder had allowed himself to admit to her that he might be wrong, that he might be vulnerable? How long since he’d really shared his fears with her, the way he was doing right now? “You know me,” he was saying. His voice was rough, as though his need to know, his need to reach her, was pushing past all the defenses he’d built up so painstakingly. “At the moment, you know me better than I know myself. Am I capable of doing—what they said I did? Not just the accident, but—all of it. Stealing that money. Everything.” Everything included so much more than he knew—so much more than Jayne wanted to tell him. It included everything that had slowly soured between them, until they’d finally recognized there was no point in staying together any longer. For far too long, she’d hoped for a happier ending. She could feel a ridiculous echo of that naive hope now, tugging at her, murmuring, Maybe things will work out, after all. But right on its heels was the bleak certainty she’d finally come to terms with. It’s over, her common sense told her. It’s finished. She’d be a fool to let herself listen to that hopeful little voice again. Ryder hadn’t changed—he’d just lost his memory, that was all. The chances were very good that it would come back—the nurse at the hospital had said so quite matter-of-factly. And the chances were even better that if Jayne let herself be seduced by the searching heat of Ryder’s eyes and the rough temptation of his voice, she would only end up with her heart broken all over again. Standing a little straighter, she met his hungry gaze and said bluntly, “I don’t know you, Ryder. Not anymore. It’s been a long time since I could predict what you might or might not be capable of.” It was hard to watch that open expression vanish from his eyes, hard to see the watchful mask settle back over his aquiline features, shuttering his blue gaze. Jayne swallowed past the sudden regret in her throat, and tried to steel herself against the desolate note in his voice as he said slowly, “Maybe I should turn myself in. Maybe I’m on the wrong side in this. Maybe—” It was obviously hard for him to say it. Jayne’s fingers had closed into her palms at her sides as she watched Ryder grappling with all the ugly possibilities in his mind. “Maybe I’m part of something crooked in the Miami police department,” he said finally, harshly. “And the reason they want me out of the way is so I won’t tell anyone about it.” The same idea had occurred to Jayne. It would certainly explain why the FBI had been interested enough in Ryder to pick him up at the prison. If there was funny business within the Miami police, the federal authorities could easily be investigating it. But... “We know something’s crooked in the police department,” she said. “Somebody ordered that tap on Madeleine’s phone, and alerted the guy with the gun about where we were. But we don’t know for sure where you fit in all this. I’d like to have a better idea of which side you’re on before I see you walk back into custody.” In an instant that wary mask was gone. She felt him searching her face again, felt the little quiver of connection down low in her belly as he reached for her wrist and closed his long, strong fingers around it. He didn’t need her physical support now—he’d shifted his body so he was leaning against the tile-covered retaining wall bordering the convenience store. It was something else he was looking for—something that made her breathing quicken as she felt the sensation of his skin against hers. “I haven’t said thank-you—for helping me.” His eyes were steady and direct. She could feel the renegade appeal of them, just as she’d felt it all those years ago. And she knew she needed to fight against it this time. “There’s no need for thanks,” she said. “It just seems—like the right thing to do.” She could tell by the way he was holding himself that his ribs still hurt. But his dark blue gaze never wavered. “Just like it seemed like the right thing to do not to finalize the divorce while I was in prison, right?” he said. Now, how had he figured that out? He was right—she’d delayed the official divorce because pushing the legal work through while Ryder was in jail had felt too much like kicking a man who was already down. But she was surprised that he seemed to understand it now. The old Ryder—the man who’d walked away from her without a word just over a year ago—hadn’t cared about any of this. It was all the same to him, his lawyer had informed her, whether she divorced him then or later. That was the real Ryder, she reminded herself. It was this Ryder—this hunted, battered man with eyes like a distant storm at sea—who wasn’t real. When his memory came back, this moment of closeness, of empathy, would be forgotten. She was sure of it. His next words didn’t make it any easier to keep her distance. “You’re a good person, Jayne Robards,” he said. Something deep inside her started to warm and blossom at the slow sincerity in his voice. And another part of her wanted to turn and walk away before she got tugged any more deeply into this dangerous swirl of memory and desire. The silence between them lengthened as Jayne tried to come to terms with her own contradictory impulses. She could feel Ryder waiting, trying to gauge her response. When the silence had stretched almost to breaking point, she saw his face close down slightly, as though he’d taken a chance and lost. He let go of her wrist and sat back slightly, squinting into the sun as he looked up at her. “Well, hey,” he said with a lightness that didn’t fool her. “No need to fall all over yourself telling me I’m a pretty wonderful guy myself. I’ll just sit here wheezing quietly until you get around to it.” The thought of his bruised ribs was a welcome distraction. “You are wheezing,” she said. “I think we should—” That open, seeking look had all but disappeared from his eyes. Jayne struggled against regret as she saw it go. “We should go back to the motel,” he finished for her. “I know. But first—what was it you said about some guy you know in the city attorney’s office?” “Greg Iverson.” “Good friend?” “Yes.” “Do I know him?” She almost laughed. “He introduced us,” she said. “Back in college.” She watched him grab hold of this new bit of information, storing it away as he’d done with everything she’d told him. “You trust him?” he asked bluntly. “Yes. Absolutely.” She already knew what he was going to say next. “Do I trust him?” “I don’t know if you really trust anybody.” Her words didn’t seem to surprise him. After all, she’d told him more or less the same thing the day before. He was looking away from her again, toward the busy street and the crowded beach beyond it. She could see that hooded, hawklike gaze settling back into place, the sharp-eyed, implacable look he’d cultivated and perfected in the job he’d come to love more than he’d loved her. Then, without warning, he did meet her eyes. “I trust you,” he said. How could she believe him, when his face was still masked by that cautious, wary expression? “No, you don’t,” she said. “Not enough, anyway.” She didn’t want to go into detail, to explain about all the times they’d tried to restore the fragmented pieces of the trust that had once been so true, so complete. They’d been through this a thousand times. And this noisy beachside street, with an already-suspicious cop around somewhere and a killer on their trail, was hardly the place to start digging into all those old heartaches. “Look,” she said quickly, before he could answer. “There’s a phone in this convenience store. I can call Greg right now, before we do anything else. Will you be all right if—” His eyes were shuttered, as if he suspected how much of the truth she was leaving out. But he didn’t argue, just shifted his big upper body and looked out at the steady parade of cars and people passing by. “I’ll be fine,” he said. “Do what you have to do, and then let’s get back to that motel. I hate to admit it, but I think this body of mine could use some rest.” Chapter 6 He was running. It was dark. All around him he could hear dogs barking. He felt hunted. He knew he had to get away, but he didn’t know how. Or where. Or why. There were branches hanging down in front of his face. He kept pushing them away, but there were always more, tangling his vision the same way the underbrush kept snagging his feet as he tried to run. Somewhere behind him he could hear shouting. It made him want to put his hands over his ears, made his heart sick for reasons he couldn’t begin to understand. You never loved me. You don’t know how to love anyone. And somewhere, out of the darkness, the word Brady. Was it a name? His name? Was someone calling to him, or was it his own voice he was hearing? He couldn’t tell. But he tried to hang on to the word, certain it meant something. Maybe it was the clue that would save him. Maybe it could lead him out of this dark, tree-choked maze, out into the light again. He knew there was safety ahead of him. He could picture it: a cabin, nearly overgrown with the underbrush that sprouted so fast in this tropical climate. There would be a light in the window, a haven from whatever was chasing him. The barking dogs were farther away now. But he could still hear the voice calling to him. Brady... He muttered the name under his breath, trying to print it on his memory. There was some kind of light up ahead. He reached up to push a leafy branch out of his face, straining to see past it. If he was coming to something, he wanted to know what it was. Was it the cabin he’d been imagining, the haven he somehow knew was out there? But the damn branch clung to his hand, refusing to be pushed aside. He swatted it, trying to shake it loose. It wouldn’t go. He could feel its feathery fronds brushing against his cheekbone, as if a sudden breeze had stirred it. “Ryder.” The same soft breeze seemed to be wafting his own name to him. He raised his arm again, still gripped by the certainty that he had to keep moving or he would be overrun by some unnamed, unimaginable danger. But that soft sound tugged at him as insistently as the vines he’d been trying to clear out of his path. When he lashed out against it a second time, it seemed to wrap itself around him. “Damn it—” “Ryder, wake up. It’s all right. You’re just dreaming.” At first he refused to listen. Everything had been like a dream since he’d wakened in that hospital. Nothing had seemed quite real. Why should this be any different? But the soft voice at his ear was getting louder now. The tangled vines seemed to be thinning. And all of a sudden he realized the obstructing leaves clinging to him were actually Jayne’s fingers holding his arm, trying to still his flailing in the motel-room bed. “Ryder, it’s okay. You’re awake now.” For an instant—one shining, tantalizing instant—he thought it really was all going to be all right, just as Jayne’s sultry voice was promising. He was going to open his eyes—he was opening them, to see the red glow of the bedside lamp—and his memory was going to be back. The blank spaces that had taunted and maddened would be filled by all the names and facts he needed to keep Jaynie safe—to keep himself safe—to chase this nightmare away and let him start to put his life back together. He hauled in a deep breath and waited. But the memories didn’t come. He could feel the slow panic building in his gut again. He tried to sit up, pushing against Jayne’s arm where it still held his own. But the dull pain in his ribs stopped him before he’d levered himself more than a few inches off the mattress. “Ryder, if you don’t take it easy—” “I was taking it easy.” That much was coming back to him. He remembered crashing on the motel bed—how long ago? A few hours, he thought. It had still been daylight then. Now there was no light coming from behind the red-and-white curtains on the windows. The whole place had the hushed feeling of the hours just before dawn. “I was dreaming—” Hell, what had he been dreaming? There’d been something—a word—a name— He fought against the shadows in his head, getting one elbow under him as he closed his eyes tight, trying to delve back into the dream Jayne’s soft voice had pulled him from. A name—what were the words he’d heard echoing somewhere in that dark, overgrown landscape? Brady. He grabbed hold of it. “Brady,” he said out loud, barely realizing he’d linked his fingers around Jayne’s in his excitement. “I was dreaming about somebody named Brady. Who is that? Is it a name you know?” For the first few seconds of her silence, Ryder was convinced she didn’t know the name, that it was some new clue that would lead them out of the mess they were in, if they could just figure out how to follow it. But then he realized she was only trying to let him down gently. “Brady was the name of the judge who sentenced you,” she said. “John Brady.” Ryder eased himself onto the pillow. The adrenaline that had been coursing through him was starting to ebb now, leaving him drained and weary. “It’s not a big surprise that you would dream about him,” Jayne added. “He called you every name in the book when he sentenced you. In fact, I was a little surprised when I found out you were up for parole so soon.” Ryder closed his eyes tight again. Why couldn’t he remember any of this? How was it possible to have lived for thirty-six years, to have gone through a career-ending scandal, a year’s worth of prison and a near-fatal accident, and not to remember one single thing about it? “So, it’s just another dead end.” He heard the bitterness in his own voice. “Damn it—” He raised his now-free hand, but before he could bang it onto the mattress, he found his arm caught a second time by Jayne’s gentle grip. “I always hated it when you did that,” she said. “Did what?” “Slammed things around. It never helps anything.” He looked up at her. He had to move his head on the pillow to do it, and his shift in position angled their bodies closer together, his splayed out across the worn red bedspread, hers curled next to him, half seated, half reclining, as though she’d joined him in a hurry when he’d started thrashing in his sleep. For the first time, he realized she must have been across the room in the single armchair. One of the spare pillows was leaning against the back of it, and the bedspread was rumpled near the foot of the bed, as though she’d been resting her bare feet there. He had a dim recollection of arriving here sometime during the afternoon. His ribs had been on fire, his head pounding like an angry surf. He’d all but collapsed on the bed, fully clothed and nearly exhausted. He didn’t know how long he’d slept. But it seemed to have done his body some good. He was able to move now without as much pain. And the sight of Jayne’s face, when he tilted to look up at her, made him feel even better. Her hair was disheveled, her eyes wide and dark. A slight blush darkened her cheeks, and the pulse at the base of her neck was quick, as though her heart had been racing to match his when she’d eased him out of that dark, clinging dream. She released his upraised hand and moved slightly away from him. He watched that pink flush deepen, and wondered whether she’d felt, as he had, the heat of the brief physical connection between them. “Maybe slamming things around helps me blow off steam.” He spoke slowly, watching the play of light and shadow on her smooth skin. “I never saw any signs of it.” Ryder thought about how he’d pounded the wall in his hospital room yesterday morning when his sense of helplessness and frustration had gotten the better of him. She was right: it hadn’t really helped anything. “Maybe I do it when I can’t think of what else to do,” he said. Her faint smile creased her cheek in a way that was almost—but not quite—a dimple. Ryder found himself fascinated by it. If he raised a hand, he could trace that nearly invisible indent, that tiny silken hollow. “That’s closer to the mark.” Her amusement colored her voice. “The thing is, there’s almost always something else you can do. We’re not out of leads on this yet, Nick.” It was the first time she’d called him by his first name. And the richness of her voice was full of the same sympathetic exasperation that had kept him going through his pain this afternoon. There was something companionable about it, something that made them seem more like what they were supposed to be—a husband and wife. Of course, he reminded himself, they were married only in legal terms at this point. All at once he hated the thought of it, hated the realization that despite the connection that surged between them whenever they were close to each other, the hope and intelligence he could see in Jayne’s violet eyes somehow hadn’t been enough to hold their marriage together. Part of him wanted to ask her what had happened. But he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the answer. It suddenly seemed too hard to end this one brief moment of empathy, of comfort. So he held the question back, and let himself savor the way Jayne’s clear gaze had turned luminous in the dim light of the lamp. When she spoke again, the quiet strength of her voice seemed to find its way into every corner of his bruised and exhausted body. “Greg Iverson’s cleaning lady said he’d be back from Tallahassee late last night.” She spoke as if reminding him of it. And, in fact, he had only the haziest of recollections about her earlier phone call. While she’d been making it, he’d been nearly doubled up outside the convenience store, trying to keep air moving in and out of his lungs. “We can call again—” She glanced at her wristwatch. “Not quite yet. But in a couple of hours. And then—” The scent of her skin was spinning itself around him like silk. Ryder tried to keep his mind on her words, on the all-important question of what they were going to do next. But there were too many potent distractions. The night air wafting in through the cabin window felt as warm and sultry as Jayne’s voice. The soft light on her skin was making his palms ache with the need to touch her again. And the thought that in just a couple of hours it would all come crashing down on them... That this moment of sensual peace was going to vanish into the kind of fear and tension he’d spent all of yesterday battling.... It made his gut clench in protest. “Let’s deal with that when we get to it, okay?” he said. His words seemed to surprise her. Or maybe it was the tone of his voice. “Is this really Nick ‘Business First’ Ryder talking?” she said musingly. “The man who would rather lose a night’s sleep than risk missing a break in a case?” Ryder raised a hand and stroked the backs of his fingers along the satiny skin from her elbow to her wrist. He couldn’t help it—the smoothness of it in the dim light was driving him crazy. “Is that what I’m like?” he said. “All-business?” “Yes. You are.” He thought she was trying to sound businesslike herself. But the slight catch in her voice betrayed her. She was feeling that vivid connection between them as strongly as he was—he was certain of it. “You weren‘t—always that way.” She was looking down at his hand where it was stroking her skin. Those incredible dark lashes fringed her eyes so Ryder couldn’t see the expression in them, but the pink suffusing her cheeks was deepening as he watched her. “When we were first married—” She ended the phrase abruptly, as if she’d realized she was headed in a direction she didn’t want to take. “Don’t stop.” He looked up into her face, but she wouldn’t meet his eyes. “When we were first married—” She shook her head, refusing his prompting. “It doesn’t matter anymore,” she said. “It was a long time ago.” Suddenly it did matter—it mattered almost more than anything else. Ryder sat up, clasping her shoulder with one hand. Her eyes widened at his sudden move. He could feel himself being drawn into those deep purple depths, drowning in the jeweled magic of her gaze. “It matters to me,” he said. “I haven’t heard a single thing about myself yet that I liked. I’m a lousy husband—I’m a lousy cop—hell, I may have caused the accident that killed that kid from the FBI. I nearly got you shot twice yesterday. If there are some happier memories you don’t mind tossing my way—” He stopped. He hated feeling as if he was begging, hated having to admit to Jayne just how sick at heart he felt when he thought about the few facts he knew of his own life. The thing was, the simple warmth of her skin under his palm seemed to have the power to ease some of that heartsickness. And that made it impossible to back down from what he was asking. Clearing his throat on a bearlike growl, he said, “We were happy at first, weren’t we?” It took her a long time to answer. When she finally did, he heard regret and desire, memory and anticipation, all rolled together in her voice. “Happy isn’t a strong enough word for what we were,” she said huskily. He was reaching toward her almost before she finished. He gave in to the temptation to slide his hand over her shoulder to the elegant line of her neck. With his fingers lost in her short, dark hair and her eyes locked on his in that bottomless stare, he felt as though he were almost a part of her, drawn into a world that seemed tantalizingly familiar and yet exotically new. He felt her shiver as he caressed her, a long, slow tremolo that ran all the way up the length of her spine. Her response acted on him like a shot of straight whiskey. He gathered her against him, surrendering to the longing that seemed to rise like a flood tide every time he touched her, every time he was near her. “I want to make you happy again.” He rasped the words against the velvet of her ear as he eased her down in his arms on the mattress. “You’re so beautiful, Jaynie—no one could dream anything half as beautiful as you.” And nothing could have felt more perfect than the way her body merged with his, arms and legs entwined. Ryder could feel her heart beating fast against his own chest as they settled into the hollow in the middle of the overused motel mattress. There was no mistaking the desire that her quickened breath betrayed. But her eyes were still troubled. “It’s not that simple, Ryder.” He could see her struggling against her own longings, trying hard to resist the erotic current humming between them. “What we had is over.” “Is it?” He knew his voice was rough, uncompromising. But he couldn’t soften it. Part of him was angry—angry that she was trying to deny the only thing in the world he was absolutely certain of right now. He and Jayne Robards fit together so perfectly, and her shining eyes and enticingly parted lips only proved it. “Can you honestly tell me you don’t want—this?” The word ended as he captured her lips with his, letting himself fall headlong into the sweetness of her kiss, the welcoming recesses of her soft mouth. He felt her lifting her hands to his face, his hair, almost as though she was trying to persuade herself to push him away from her. But the gesture turned into a caress. The smooth sensation of her palms against his skin seemed to release something inside him, easing the anguish that had been eating at him all day. “Or this...” He was still intent on overcoming her protests, on igniting the hunger he knew she shared with him. He lowered his head and kissed the long, delicate curve of her neck. His lips found the ridge of her collarbone, and hesitated for a moment over the slim gold chain she still wore. Then he discovered the roundness of her breast, and opened his mouth against it, absorbing the softness of her even through the layer of lavender cotton that stood between them. His searching mouth found the hardened center of her breast. He heard her breath go in sharply. The quick, eager sound shot straight through him and settled low in his loins. He slid one arm under the small of her back, pressing them even closer together. The sagging mattress springs creaked beneath them as he moved. Jayne’s breathy, startled laugh reverberated under Ryder’s cheekbone. “This is crazy,” she said. “Thirteen years of marriage, and here we are hiding out in a third-rate motel like a couple of guilty teenagers.” Ryder had just had the same thought himself. “Hell, who’s feeling guilty?” he muttered as he raised himself to look at her again. Immediately he wished he hadn’t spoken. The light in her face dimmed slightly, and he could see doubt edging back in. Was he guilty? Had he committed crimes, betrayed his colleagues, endangered Jayne herself for all the wrong reasons? Neither of them knew. And the thought of it—the weight of all those unanswered questions—threatened to come between them, to end this sensuous moment of magic and possibility. He couldn’t let that happen. If he could prove to Jayne how powerful the bond still was between them, he might be able to salvage the vision of warmth and peace he’d just seen in her eyes. They were already half-submerged in a tempting, seductive sea. If he could pull them all the way in—if he could chase away the lingering suspicion in Jayne’s liquid gaze— He could think of only one sure way to do that. With every word he spoke, he ran the risk of stumbling over some dark corner of a past he couldn’t recall. So he abandoned speech and relied instead on his body’s instinctive, wordless response to this woman who seemed to belong to him in a way that went far beyond marriage, far beyond memory. He claimed her mouth again with a fierceness he couldn’t hold back. He heard her moan under his lips, and recognized urgency in the sound. Her hands slid under the waistband of his shirt, skimming past the elastic bandages around his ribs and up to his shoulders. The butterfly-light sensation of it made Ryder’s head spin. Images assailed him from out of nowhere, gentle curves of nearly white skin, a pearly glimmer that dazzled his mind’s eye and tightened the erotic throbbing in his loins. He shed his shirt with as much grace as he could muster around the constraining bandages. He watched her lips part again as she looked at him, and saw her eyes darken to velvety-black when he angled one long leg suggestively between hers. “If you try to tell me this all belongs in the past,” he muttered, “I won’t believe you.” She didn’t answer, except to arch her spine, bringing them even closer together. Her belly met the aching hardness of his arousal and they both gasped again, each new discovery—or was it a rediscovery?—more astonishing than the last. She bent one leg and slanted it against his hip. He felt cradled by her, surrounded by her heat, by her enticing, feminine scent. He reached one hand back and clasped her ankle, then slid his fingers higher, past her knee, under the hem of her flowered skirt. He didn’t realize he’d closed his eyes until his mind was already reeling with fantasies of Jayne naked in his arms, of the perfection of her breasts and the slender curve of her waist. His fingers had reached the impossibly smooth skin of her thigh. He lingered there, quivering from someplace deep within that was telling him exactly how it would feel to bury himself inside her, to feel her surrounding him, body and soul. The secret center of her beckoned like some half-remembered dream. He knew she was as aroused as he was—that she would welcome his touch and open to him eagerly. He thought about filling her, sharing all of himself with her, fulfilling the silent promise he’d seen in her eyes— And suddenly something said Stop. The response was so strong, so unexpected, that at first he thought it had been an actual physical jolt, an electrical shock, maybe, or a lurch from the old bed underneath them. It took him a moment to realize it had come from inside himself. He felt the admonition shudder through his frame and settle at the base of his spine, rough and insistent, battling with the desire that was still coursing through him. Stop now. Before you can’t stop. He forced his eyes open and saw Jayne’s face radiant with arousal and anticipation. Her eyes were closed, her long lashes brushing pink-hued cheeks, her petal-soft lips tantalizingly parted. It would be so easy to lower his head again, to claim those lips in another long kiss, to pursue this almost painfully sweet pleasure to its natural end. But what if Jayne got pregnant? That was the realization that had stopped him. Grappling with his own reactions—why was he feeling fear, for heaven’s sake? Why was his gut clenching like this?—he shifted his weight and moved slightly away from her. Her eyes flew open as he did it. The dismay flooding her delicate features was hard to watch. When he thought that just a moment ago... The mere thought of it—of how close they’d come to plunging into making love—brought back another instinctive wave of protest from somewhere in his belly. “We can‘t—do this.” His voice almost didn’t work at first. “Not without—precautions.” It was hard to speak. And suddenly he was having a hard time breathing. His chest felt constricted by the bandages around it and the renewed pain stabbing at him from inside. While he’d been holding Jayne in his arms, all his bruises and aches had receded, soothed by the balm of her nearness, her touch. Now, though, they were back. And Ryder clung to them this time. This was reality, he told himself. What he’d just been feeling—everything that had rolled through him at the sensation of Jayne’s hands, her lips, her skin—had been a dream he’d had no right to reach for. He’d let it momentarily blot out his common sense. But that moment was over. Or it would be once he got his rebellious body and crazily pounding heart under control. A few minutes ago he’d told Jayne he was feeling anything but guilty. He almost laughed at the idea now. Guilt was exactly what had just slammed into him. And it made his voice rough-edged as he said, “This is all wrong. We’re taking too damn many chances. What if somebody’s tracking us right now? We should be trying to figure out what the hell’s going on, not—” He ran out of words all of a sudden. The silent struggle going on in Jayne’s eyes didn’t help any. Neither did the quiet hurt in her voice. “Not making love,” she said simply, bluntly. “That’s right.” He tried for bluntness, too, but the words ended up sounding ragged. How could he have let himself even contemplate it? He was a man on the very edge of survival, with a past he couldn’t remember and a future he wouldn’t have bet two wooden nickels on at the moment. He had no right to be asking for intimacy, no right to be chasing after dreams. Especially not with a woman who’d already decided she didn’t want to be his wife. If they’d made love— If he’d fathered a child— His frame shuddered again at the thought of it. He had nothing of real value to offer to a woman. Not now. Perhaps not ever. And he certainly had nothing to offer to a child. He willed himself to move, though his legs were far from steady. He reached for the shirt he’d dropped over the edge of the bed and pulled it over his head, wincing as he raised his arms. The pain was almost welcome this time. It was a signal, a reminder of everything he needed to be free of before he could possibly pursue the passionate visions that had crowded into his heart while he’d been holding Jayne close to him. Jayne wasn’t looking at him. She hadn’t moved, except to raise one hand. She was staring at nothing, her fingers pressed against her mouth as though she was holding back words she didn’t want to speak. “Jayne, listen to me.” He had to explain himself, had to make her understand the fears that had gripped him so unexpectedly. “I don’t know what the hell is ahead of me. Maybe, once this is all sorted out—” “Stop.” She fanned her fingers out toward him, making her hand into a barrier between them. “I’ve heard all this before, Ryder. You don’t need to say it again. In fact—” He waited, taken aback by the idea that he’d unwittingly stumbled into a pattern he couldn’t even remember. Jayne’s suddenly pale face—and the fact that she was refusing to meet his eyes—told him that whatever was happening right now, it was at the heart of everything that had gone wrong between them. But Jayne was cutting off her own words, as though she’d said more than she really wanted to. “Never mind,” she said. Her voice shook as she swung her bare feet over the other side of the bed. “You’re right. We should be concentrating on finding out who’s chasing you, not letting ourselves get sidetracked. It’s still early, but by the time we get to a phone we can probably call Greg. The sooner we get this sorted out, the happier I’ll be.” She didn’t sound happy at the moment. She sounded resigned, and almost as bleak as the gray predawn light coming in around the edges of the threadbare curtains. Her somber tone was heartbreakingly different from the throaty gasp his caresses had called up a little while ago. Ryder could still feel the buzz of desire in every corner of his body, struggling with the bone-deep fear that wouldn’t go away. What if something went wrong? What if Jayne got pregnant? What if someone was on their trail right now? What if he ruined everything? It was all too chancy, too dangerous. Ryder pulled the car keys out of the pocket of his jeans, trying to ignore the fact that several crucial parts of him were still potently, powerfully aroused. “All right, let’s go then.” His voice was a low growl in the early-morning stillness. “I’ll be waiting in the car whenever you’re ready.” Chapter 7 Greg Iverson slid into the seat across from Jayne. “So where’s our poster boy?” he asked. “Are they looking for him that thoroughly?” “You bet they are. All-points bulletins to local police stations across the entire region, checkpoints on major highways, faxed descriptions to gas stations and motels—” Iverson spread his well-manicured hands over the linoleum-topped table between them. “They’re serious about this, Jayne. And you didn’t answer my question.” The waitress brought two mugs of coffee. Jayne waited until the woman was gone again before she spoke. “He’s around,” she said. “He wanted to make sure nobody followed you.” Iverson frowned as he poured cream into his coffee. “I checked my mirrors the whole way here,” he said. “I believe you. But whoever’s after us is slick, Greg. Ryder’s taking no chances.” In fact, Ryder was in the diner’s kitchen, having bribed the cook to let him keep an eye on things from there. The cook’s manner had been matter-of-fact as he’d folded the twenty-dollar bill into his pocket. Obviously, Ryder had muttered to Jayne, they weren’t the first ones who’d found this little beachside diner a convenient meeting place. “No shooting,” the cook had said, and Ryder had lifted his hands to shoulder height. “No gun,” he’d replied. Jayne was careful not to let her glance stray toward the swinging door into the kitchen as she spoke now. But Greg was frowning, anyway, as though he sensed her deception. “They’re after him, Jayne, not you,” he amended. “There’s no earthly reason you should be caught in the middle of this mess.” Ryder had said essentially the same thing. “In case there’s anybody following Iverson, I don’t want them getting a look at me,” he’d told her when they’d parked the car in the back corner of the diner’s lot. “The only reason you nearly got shot yesterday is that you were too close to me. And I plan to make damn sure that doesn’t happen again.” It hadn’t been his only safeguard. Jayne had kept her phone call to Iverson deliberately short. She’d given him a bare outline of the previous day’s adventures, mentioning only that it was clear someone in the Miami police department must have leaked information about Ryder’s location to whoever the shooter had been. She hadn’t suggested a meeting place on the phone, either. Giving Iverson enough time to get on the road, she’d faxed directions to his car fax machine from a drugstore near the Olde Maritimer. “And to think I was ribbing him about all his yuppie toys the last time we had lunch together,” Jayne had said. “Maybe a car fax isn’t such a frill, after all.” “You two have lunch together often?” Ryder had asked. “Fairly often. He’s been a good friend this past year.” Ryder had frowned at her answer. Jayne had no idea why. And no intention of asking him. She’d been doing her best to keep her distance since this morning’s explosive moment of tenderness and passion—and its troubling aftermath. How had she let that happen? How had she lost herself so far in Ryder’s kisses, in the hungry blue fire she’d seen in his eyes? She’d been trembling on the verge of something she’d sworn was over, ready to let herself slide back into a haze of longing she should have recognized as an illusion, a shimmering, deceptive mist in front of her eyes. Well, her eyes were open now. And she could see one thing very clearly. There might be flashes of the old, tender Nick Ryder in this lost and beleaguered stranger who’d stumbled into her life once more. But just below the surface were all the problems they’d never been able to find answers for. Ryder still had to be the one in charge, deciding what he would and wouldn’t share, unable or unwilling to let their love truly blossom. He might not remember anything about their marriage or its slow disintegration, but the stubborn solitude she’d never been able to get past—the sudden silence that had ended that hazy moment of passion this morning—was still obviously very much a part of him, memory or no memory. “Jayne? Are you listening to me?” With an effort, she focused her attention back on Greg Iverson. He was leaning over the table toward her, touching her wrists gently with his fingertips. She couldn’t let her thoughts wander like this, she told herself firmly. Too much was riding on this meeting, and on enlisting their friend’s help. Just because her body was half-beguiled by the feeling of Ryder’s arms around her—just because her own anger was having a tough time making headway against all the other emotions and desires he’d ignited inside her— “I’m listening,” she said firmly. “You’re telling me this is Ryder’s problem, not mine.” Iverson nodded his close-cropped, jet-black head. “Considering how he treated you—” “I know.” She didn’t want to start reliving all that now. “And you’re right. But that doesn’t mean I want to stand by and watch somebody kill him. If you’d seen the look on that gunman’s face in the hospital hallway—” She shivered, despite the hot coffee and the promise of warmth in the November morning. She hadn’t told Greg all the details of their brush with death in the hospital, and she didn’t want to tell him now. Just thinking about it was enough to raise goose bumps on her bare forearms. The problem was that she was being tugged in too many directions at once. Her good sense told her Greg Iverson was probably right—this wasn’t her fight, it was Ryder’s. If she was smart, she would step aside and let him fight it alone. But her photojournalist’s instincts were telling her there was a lot more going on here than had come to the surface yet. And her heart was saying, If Ryder dies, a part of me will die, too. Iverson’s liquid brown eyes were troubled as he met her gaze. “Don’t get me wrong,” he said. “I’m still Ryder’s friend, and I’ll do what I can for him.” “But—” She could hear the reservations in his voice. He withdrew his hand from hers and took a sip of his coffee. “But he’s in a hell of a hole on this one,” he said. “And he’s not nearly out of the last hole he dug himself into, either. I want to see him safe as much as anyone, but I hate the thought of putting you in danger, too.” “Don’t worry. Getting out of danger is my very first priority.” She gave him a quick smile and hoped it wasn’t as shaky as it felt. “Greg, listen. What Ryder really needs right now is information. If you could talk to the FBI—” He was already shaking his head. “You’ve got to be kidding,” he said. “I’ve never been more serious. If Ryder only knew why the FBI picked him up at the prison in the first place—if he had some sense of where he stands—” “Where I stand, in case you’d forgotten, is right in the middle of the city attorney’s office,” Iverson cut in. “By rights, I should have informed the cops or the FBI the minute you called me this morning.” “Someone in the police department is on the wrong side in this. They have to be. I told you—” “I know. And I believe you. That’s why I’m here.” He reached for her hand again, closing his fingers around hers. “But it’s one thing to meet with you on my own. It’s something very different for me to go digging into FBI files while withholding information about a fugitive they’re looking for as hard as they can.” The word fugitive had a grim sound to it. But that’s exactly what Ryder was, Jayne realized. Iverson was underscoring the fact. “He’s in violation of his parole, if nothing else,” he told her. “He’s stolen a car. He’s wanted for questioning by the FBI in connection with the death of a federal agent. This is all serious stuff. And much as I want to see him safe, I can’t step outside the law. Ryder may have done that, but—” “All right.” She’d known there was a possibility he would react this way. And a part of her knew he had a point. What chance did Ryder have if he insisted on standing against the whole world? How could she—or Greg, or anyone—help him if he refused to bend even a little? Iverson seemed to be reading her thoughts. “As long as the two of you stay out there, you’re both fair game,” he said. “Nobody can help you if you’re in hiding.” She thought fast. She and Ryder had agreed on a plan of action earlier this morning, but things weren’t working out as they’d hoped. A part of her said, You need to regroup and think this through again. But another part—the part that was still reeling with hurt from the way Ryder had cut himself off from her this morning—had different ideas. If Ryder could make unilateral decisions, she thought, then so could she. He wouldn’t like it, but she didn’t want to waste the single opportunity they might have to enlist some official support. “What can you do for us, then?” she asked Greg bluntly. “If Ryder comes in, what can you do to guarantee his safety?” “I thought you said he wasn’t coming in.” It was an effort not to turn her eyes toward the kitchen door. If she glanced that way, would she see Ryder’s wary blue gaze raking the room? She could almost feel him watching her, could almost hear his deep voice telling her she was making a mistake. She straightened her shoulders and kept her eyes on Greg Iverson’s tanned, handsome face. “What he says and what I say may not be the same thing,” she said. “Come on, Greg. I’m trying to find some middle ground here. If Ryder comes in, what can you do for him?” She could see him turning over the possibilities in his mind. Iverson had always been a quick thinker, a born politician, Jayne had often mused. Next to him, Ryder seemed half-tamed, rough and blunt and plainspoken. And so stubborn that even the people who loved him most had a hard time getting too close. She had no idea what had made him that way, or why he’d retreated farther and farther into that solitary shell the longer they’d been married. But she didn’t want to watch that obstinate isolation of his land him in trouble so deadly he might not survive—not if there was something she could do to prevent it. “I can make sure he gets a top-flight lawyer, for one thing,” Greg was saying. Jayne nodded. “That’s a start,” she said. “That guy the police department hired to defend him was worse than useless.” “I know. I assume you’d want some kind of safe house to be part of the deal—” She nodded again. “Arranged through the FBI, not the Miami police,” she said. “In fact, if you can guarantee the police wouldn’t have anything to do with it—” Iverson looked doubtful. “Tricky,” he said. “That would be tricky.” “No trickier than explaining the situation to me if Ryder happens to get shot while he’s supposedly safely in custody.” She’d spoken more heatedly than she’d intended. She saw Greg Iverson’s eyes narrow at her tone. “Anyone would think you were still in love with him, Jayne.” He didn’t sound particularly pleased by the idea. “I thought you said you were over him.” “I was. I mean, I am. I definitely am.” She waved her own words away. These were dangerous currents, and she didn’t want to let herself get pulled into them. “All I want is to wrap this up, with Ryder in one piece and whatever is happening in the police department exposed,” she said. “And if Ryder’s a part of it?” Her heart gave a little lurch she couldn’t control. She felt as though she’d lived a year in the last twenty-four hours. And yet she was no closer to knowing whether Ryder was innocent or guilty. It was as though everything that happened opened more unresolved questions, more old wounds. Frustration sharpened her voice as she said, “I don’t care if he’s a part of it. I just want to know what’s happening.” Her answer seemed to satisfy Iverson. “Fair enough,” he said. “All right, let me make some calls and see what I can do in the way of rustling up a decent criminal lawyer. It’s still early to be waking people on a Sunday, but—” He was halfway to his feet, already sliding out of the booth, when the swinging door from the kitchen banged open and Ryder slammed through it. At first, Jayne was too startled to register anything but the focused intensity of his gaze. Had he overheard their conversation somehow? Was he reacting to her suggestion that he might cut some kind of a deal? She didn’t have a chance to find out. He crossed the little diner in a few long strides and took hold of her hand, pulling her toward him. “Come on,” he said tightly. “We’re getting out of here.” “Ryder—” He shook his head. She could feel the tension in his grip. “There’s no time to talk,” he said. “Somebody’s onto us.” “That’s impossible.” Under his tan, Greg Iverson’s face was suddenly pale. “I swear, nobody followed me.” “Nothing’s impossible.” Ryder was moving toward the rear exit, propelling Jayne with him. Iverson was following, but reluctantly, glancing through the front windows as though he couldn’t believe what Ryder had said. Jayne believed it. After their two hair-raisingly close encounters with death yesterday, she wasn’t about to second-guess Ryder’s instincts. If he’d noticed something... She stayed close to him as they hurried through the busy kitchen. She saw the cook glaring at them as he poured batter onto the griddle in front of him. “I said no shooting,” he warned them. Ryder shook his dark blond head. “Buddy, nobody wants shooting less than I do,” he replied. Jayne kept her voice low. “What did you see?” she asked. “The same car cruising by four times in ten minutes.” Iverson was right on their heels. “That doesn’t necessarily mean—” Ryder stopped short at the back door of the diner, glaring at the man who’d been his friend. “If I’d been thinking that way yesterday, I’d be dead by now,” he said. “And probably Jayne would be, too.” It was enough to silence Iverson’s protests. He came to a halt next to them, looking serious and determined. “You’re right,” he said. “Whatever happens, we’ve got to keep Jayne safe.” For an instant, Jayne paused and looked at the two of them, wondering what had made two such different men friends for all these years. Everything about Greg—his jet-black hair, his straight-from-the-racket-club physique—was sleek, controlled, polished. His jeans were freshly creased, his yellow polo shirt tucked into his waistband and held there by an expensive-looking black and silver belt. He was a civilized man, she thought. A successful man, who’d learned to make the system work for him. An insider. By contrast, Ryder had always been a loner, even as he’d worked his way through the ranks of the police department. And he looked the part as he strode toward the back door of the little beachside diner. His clothes were rumpled, as Jayne’s were, from having been slept in. He’d refastened the elastic that pulled his hair back from his face, and it made his high cheekbones look even more prominent, his eyes even warier. There were storm clouds in those dark blue depths, and a kind of buried turmoil Jayne had never seen in Greg Iverson’s brown stare. They were like day and night, she thought. The one thing they had in common—had always had in common—was Jayne. And their shared concern for her now was making them move with a unified urgency. Ryder pushed open the screen door at the back of the kitchen. “It’s a maroon coupe with two men in it,” he said. “If it’s making the same circuit—and after four trips, I’m pretty sure it will be—it’ll be back in a couple of minutes.” He had to raise his voice to be heard over the beeping of a dump truck backing into the parking lot. Iverson was nodding as they all moved onto the diner’s small back porch. “And when they don’t see Jayne and me in the window—” “They’ll come looking. Think you can divert them?” “I’ll do my best.” Iverson was reaching for his keys. “If somebody tailed me up here, they presumably know my car. If I can get them to follow me a few blocks—” “That should do it.” Iverson was already jogging toward the front of the diner, where he’d left his shiny blue BMW. Ryder was digging his own keys out of the pocket of his jeans. Only Jayne was looking toward the car Ryder had stolen. “There’s just one problem,” she said. The beeping dump truck they’d heard had backed all the way into the lot now. And its driver was getting out to hook it up to the diner’s Dumpster—which just happened to be right next to Jayne and Ryder’s car. The blue sedan was completely boxed in. And judging by the slow pace of the truck driver’s motions, there was going to be no good way to hurry the process up. “Oh, hell.” Ryder took hold of Jayne’s elbow and started after Greg Iverson. “Looks like we go with plan B.” “Do we have a plan B?” “I’m working on it.” It ended up being less of a plan than a last-minute scramble. As they rounded the comer onto the street that ran perpendicular to the beach, Jayne heard Ryder call, “That’s them, sitting at the traffic light.” Iverson’s car was parked at the curb. He aimed his remote control at it and Jayne heard the door locks snap open. “You were right,” Ryder said at her ear as they ran the last few steps to the car. “Those yuppie toys are the way to go.” The three of them slid into the BMW just as the light changed and the maroon car started gliding toward them. “Step on it,” Ryder said, and Iverson obliged. Maybe, if they hurried, they could get out of sight before the two men in the maroon car noticed that Jayne and Iverson were no longer in the diner. If they were lucky— They weren’t quite lucky enough. Jayne heard Iverson curse as tires squealed behind them. Her heart seemed to slam into her throat as she realized the danger they’d managed to elude last night was suddenly snapping at their heels again. She wasn’t sure whether she’d grabbed Ryder’s hand or he’d grabbed hers. Their fingers locked together as the car swayed around a corner and onto the busy beachside street. She could see Ryder fighting his own impatience. He was gripping the headrest, obviously wishing fiercely that he was the one in the driver’s seat. “If you cut in ahead of that van—” “There’s not time.” Iverson’s knuckles were white as he clasped the steering wheel. “Then make time, damn it.” Ryder’s words barely got out through his clenched teeth. Jayne wasn’t sure Iverson even heard them. He kept glancing in his rearview mirror, nervously moving his right hand from wheel to gearshift and back again. She remembered the hell-bent-for-leather way Ryder had managed to outdistance the white pickup truck yesterday at the mall. His right foot was tapping on the light blue carpet in the back seat, as though he was trying to speed things up to a pace that suited him. “I think they missed us.” Iverson’s eyes flicked to the rearview again. “I don’t think they caught us at the turn.” “Then they’ll probably catch us at the next one.” Ryder’s face was pale now, too. Jayne wondered how his ribs had fared in that headlong dive into the back seat of the BMW. “Look, if you don’t want to drive this thing, how about letting someone etse—” “Cool your jets, all right, Ryder?” Iverson sounded angry. “You’re not the one in charge here, so just—” “The hell I’m not.” Iverson had slowed the car as they approached a yellow light. Without letting go of Jayne’s hand, Ryder leaned over and opened the door beside her. She could feel the strength of his body leaning into her, and the force of his impatience as he kicked the door wide. “Hey!” Iverson had noticed what was happening. “You can‘t—” “Watch me.” It was like being picked up by a hurricane and carried out to sea. Ryder swept one long arm around Jayne’s shoulders as he pushed his way out of the car. Before she could argue, he was propelling her toward the beach, stumbling a little over the sand-covered boardwalk, carrying her with him away from their best hope of safety. “Ryder, this is crazy.” She struggled against the weight of his arm, but he had a firm hold on her shoulder and he was moving fast, sidestepping sunbathers and playing children. “Let me go—you’re out of your mind.” “Iverson’s out of his mind, if he thinks those guys are about to give up so easily.” There was a stiff breeze off the ocean. His words whipped by her almost before she’d heard them. “Sticking with him is the best way to get ourselves killed.” “Sticking with him is—ow!” She tripped and nearly lost her balance as the toe of her pump caught on a piece of wood half-buried in the sand. Only Ryder’s strong grip kept her upright. Behind her she could hear Greg Iverson calling her name. He must be out of the car and following them, she thought. Maybe if she dragged her heels—if she could just get Ryder to listen to sense for once— It all happened so quickly that she barely had time to register it. One moment she was looking over her shoulder to Greg’s blue BMW parked at the curb. The next instant it had turned into a fireball that mushroomed out with a force that nearly knocked her to her knees again. She saw Greg pitch forward, and heard people screaming. Tires howled along the length of the street, and suddenly the whole beach was in chaos. Her first impulse was to turn back, to see whether Greg was all right. But Ryder’s pace never flagged. He was heading for the boat pier, refusing to let Jayne’s hesitation slow him down. “Ryder, wait—” He shook his head. “That was probably a bullet in the gas tank,” he said, his voice grim. “The second one’ll be for us, if we don’t get the hell out of here.” It took her a moment to realize what he intended to do. The pier was lined with motorboats, but all the owners were staring at the explosion, at the billowing cloud of smoke and twisted bits of metal that had been Greg Iverson’s shiny car only a few seconds ago. She saw people running toward the boardwalk, shouting to each other, waving their arms. She and Ryder were probably the only two people on the beach not looking toward the flaming car, she thought. Or were the two men from the maroon car standing back there somewhere, guns at the ready, searching for Jayne and Ryder among the panicked crowds of weekend beachgoers? Suddenly, getting the hell out of there seemed like a very good idea. Ducking low as Ryder was doing, as though bullets were already whizzing over their heads, she followed him onto the pier and down the ladder leading to the first motorboat that had keys in the ignition. She was already casting off the ropes as Ryder gunned the engine. There was a horrible familiarity about the scene, except no one was yelling at them to stop this time. In fact, no one seemed to notice them at all as they spun away from the pier and out toward the open sea. Chapter 8 The sun had climbed high above the ocean. Ryder shielded his eyes from the glare on the water and called to Jayne, “How much farther to that inlet?” She was sitting in the bow of the boat, studying the map they’d found stashed in the small storage hatch. “Three or four miles,” she said. “Good.” “What did you say?” Between the noise of the engine and the wind whistling off the Atlantic, talking was nearly impossible. Ryder shook his head. “Never mind,” he shouted. “Just keep watching the shore.” He’d steered well away from the beach at first, concerned only with getting them out of the range of gunfire. He had no idea whether their escape had gone unnoticed. And he’d managed to choose a boat with an ailing motor—the thing had taken to coughing intermittently, making him wonder whether it was going to strand them out here. After almost an hour, though, the motor was still running. And Ryder was certain by now that no one was on their tail. Gradually, cautiously, he’d been piloting the boat back toward shore, blending in with the other pleasure craft dotting the seacoast on this sunny Sunday morning. There’d been no chance to talk, not yet. And Jayne seemed to be keeping her distance, anyway. She’d busied herself looking in the storage bins, finding towels, life preservers, insect repellent and the map that gave Ryder some idea where the hell they were on the coastline. He wasn’t fooled by Jayne’s apparently businesslike air as she’d seated herself in the bow, well away from where he was standing at the steering wheel. She looked wary, guarded, as though the danger that was stalking Ryder might somehow be clinging to him even a mile out to sea. Or maybe it was another kind of danger she was worried about. When he thought about how their encounter in the motel cabin had ended this morning—when he remembered the soft hurt in her face and the way she’d pressed her palm to her mouth... Well, he couldn’t blame her for being distant now. But her remoteness still stung more sharply than he liked to admit. He’d already decided to head for the Intracoastal Waterway. The narrow navigable strip of water lay just inland, sheltered from the roughness of the ocean. Aside from the sputtering motor, their boat was too small to venture much farther into open water, and now that they’d shaken off their pursuers, Ryder knew they would be wise to head for calmer waters. And after that... A big racing sailboat slanted past them, sails humming taut in the high wind. Passengers lined its deck, waving as they crossed Jayne and Ryder’s wake. He could see their tanned, smiling faces, and somehow the scene reawakened the anxiety that had been gnawing at him since he’d first realized how much danger he was in. If the sailboat could get this close, so could anyone else. Ryder was certain they weren’t being followed at the moment, but that didn’t mean he could let down his guard. Squinting into the glare of the sun, he opened the throttle, coaxing a little more speed out of the reluctant motor as he angled the boat across the breakers rolling in from the sea. It was obvious that Jayne’s thoughts weren’t completely easy, either. Once they’d spotted the entrance to the Intracoastal Waterway—a break in the beach, surrounded by low-rise buildings—and navigated their way off the rolling ocean, her first words were, “What are the chances of the waterway being watched?” “It’s not impossible.” He slowed the boat down and felt it settle lower in the water as they rounded the turn. “That’s what you told Greg when he insisted nobody had followed him.” Jayne’s face was serious, her hair tangled by the breeze. “You said nothing was impossible.” Ryder didn’t answer. He needed to keep his mind on what they were going to do next, rather than reminding himself how much information and firepower anyone crooked inside a law enforcement agency had access to. He didn’t know who was after him, but it was very clear that whoever it was had very useful connections. “But Greg is smart,” Jayne said, moving closer, sliding along the seat so that only the low windshield was between them. “I believed him when he said he’d been careful to check he wasn’t being tailed.” “There are other ways of tailing somebody.” Like bugs, Ryder thought. And radio signals. Anyone who could tap a cop’s phone would know how to install an electronic monitoring device on the undercarriage of a car. “And if he’s so smart,” he added, “how come he was dragging his heels when that maroon car was after us?” “Not everybody’s as reckless as you are, Ryder. And Greg has reason to drag his heels where you’re concerned. You—hurt a lot of people when you refused to talk about why you were going to jail.” “Including you.” His own words surprised him. He was doing his best to stay sharp and focused on the problem of their immediate safety. But something kept pushing at him, something that wouldn’t let him forget how Jayne’s wide eyes had looked when he’d drawn back from her this morning. He couldn’t escape the realization that he’d hurt her badly, not only in the past but again a few hours ago. Despite everything that was going on around them, he couldn’t help feeling that he wanted to make amends, or at least to understand what had happened—what was still happening. Jayne’s quick shake of the head told him she wasn’t interested. “Including Greg,” she said firmly. “He thought your arrest was a real slap in the face to everyone you’d worked with.” Ryder snorted. “Are you sure he wasn’t just worried that being friends with a convicted felon might damage his political career?” Her eyes sparkled with sudden fire. “You don’t have a lot of friends at the moment, Ryder,” she said. “Maybe you shouldn’t knock the few you have left.” “I’m just being cautious. Iverson looks like a pretty slick operator to me.” She looked impatient, frustrated. “Of course he’s slick,” she said. “Slick enough to be able to line up a top-flight lawyer to set up a deal for you, which is what he’d been about to do when we had to leave that diner.” “Wait a minute.” Ryder frowned at her over the windshield. “I didn’t say anything about wanting a lawyer.” “No. I did.” Something shivered through Ryder that he didn’t quite understand. He’d felt the same sensation when he’d been staring through the narrow window in the diner’s kitchen door. There’d been something about the sight of Greg Iverson taking Jayne’s hands in his own—something trusting and natural about their two heads leaning toward each other over the table... He shook his head. What he was feeling didn’t make any sense. But it wouldn’t go away. It wasn’t just jealousy, though he’d felt the unmistakable stab of that, as well. It was a feeling of being on the outside. Of being alone. He hadn’t stopped to think it through at the diner. He’d been busy trying to keep an eye on the maroon car circling the block, and trying to figure out what the hell to do if it turned out to be a threat. But now, cruising along in calmer waters, he had to face the fact that what he’d felt then—what he was feeling now—was loneliness, pure and simple. You don’t know how to love. I can’t reach you. He didn’t know where the words were coming from. They echoed in his head the way that damn dream had early this morning, almost familiar, but not quite enough to grab hold of. He didn’t know if the words represented memories or fears, if they were directed at himself or someone else. But they resonated through his body, leaving him unexpectedly shaken. “We agreed we would ask Greg to help,” Jayne was saying with that same pragmatic air. “He wasn’t willing to dig around behind the FBI’s back, but he did offer to make some kind of a deal—” “I don’t want deals,” he said, cutting her off. “I want information.” “You’re asking for too much, Ryder.” She sounded impatient. Ryder frowned as he turned the wheel slightly to angle into the wake of a passing cruiser. You’re asking for more than you can possibly have. Was it Jayne’s voice he was hearing in his head, or his own? He couldn’t tell. But the desolate feeling that went with the words was all too clear. He looked at Jayne’s determined, heart-shaped face, at her intelligent violet eyes and the body that had made him want to shout with pure joy when he’d held her close this morning. He was asking for too much, he thought. The dream of possessing Jayne Robards was beckoning to him and warning him away at the same time, glorious but unreachable. You’re on the outside. Where you’ve always been. It was as though his memory was coming back the wrong way around, offering him only feelings, not facts. He had no concrete memories to back this up, no specific recollections. He only knew he’d felt this way before. He was longing for this beautiful woman who turned his blood into fire, who seemed to bring a promise of a kind of passion and comfort that made his head spin. And at the same time he knew it could never last. He was asking for too much. Again. The thought of it made his voice rough. “Maybe it’s a good thing we had to hit the high seas,” he said. “Another couple of minutes and I might have found myself walking back into custody.” “At least it was a plan.” The breeze was whipping her short dark hair around her face. It made her look suddenly young, and adorably disheveled. “Do you have something to replace it with?” “Not yet.” “Where exactly are we headed, then?” “West.” He’d had a good look at the map when Jayne had first found it. It seemed that a boat could navigate straight across Florida using the canal that ran into Lake Okeechobee, and then into a river that went all the way to the west coast of the state. “Sticking around here is too dangerous,” he said. “We’ve had too many close calls already.” “I agree. But just heading west doesn’t seem like much of a plan to me.” “Hey, it’s a work in progress. A boat is a lot harder to trace than a car. I figure we’ve got some time. We just need to find a place to hole up for a while.” She seemed determined to play devil’s advocate. How could he find any woman so maddeningly seductive when she was arguing with him? Ryder wondered. “Greg said the FBI has faxed your description to gas stations and motels right across the region,” she was, saying. He’d been afraid of that. He started to bang his open palm against the steering wheel, and then caught Jayne’s eye. Slamming things around never helped anything. She’d said it just this morning, when his frustration had boiled over on him. It was close to the same point now, but he managed to rein himself in, staying focused instead on coming up with some kind of usable plan. “So we’ll figure out something else,” he said. “If nothing else comes along, we can sleep in the boat.” She looked less than enthusiastic, and Ryder didn’t really blame her. “Look,” he said, “I know you were only coming to visit me in the hospital, not signing on for a damn roller-coaster ride.” That faint suggestion of a smile creased her face again. “More like a shooting gallery,” she said. Had they ever laughed together, lighthearted, carefree? They must have, Ryder thought. He could feel the tug of what was almost a memory whenever he glimpsed that fleeting half smile in Jayne’s gaze. But it was gone almost as soon as it appeared. And her voice was very serious as she added, “You’re right—I wasn’t exactly planning to hit the road with bullets flying over my head. And it’s starting to lose its charm, Ryder. I really think the best thing to do is to take Greg up on his offer—assuming he’s still in one piece.” There was genuine worry in her face now. Ryder felt that little clutch of jealousy again, that sense of being pushed to the outside. “He’s in love with you, isn’t he?” He made the words deliberately blunt. “Greg?” The way she pursed her lower lip was damn near irresistible. He could almost taste her full mouth under his own, welcoming, exhilarating. “I thought he was at one time,” she said. “What happened?” She looked straight at him, then away again. “I married you instead,” she said. And soon she would be unmarried again. Ryder’s hands tightened around the wheel at the thought of it. He had a pretty good idea that her old friend, the Deputy City Attorney was eagerly awaiting that day—assuming, as Jayne had said, that Iverson was still in one piece. “He was far enough from the car when it blew that he should be okay,” he said. Personally, he hadn’t liked one single thing about Greg Iverson, but he hated to see that anxious frown settling itself on Jayne’s features again. “We, on the other hand, are still in deep trouble,” he added. There was a marina up ahead. Ryder knew they should fill the gas tank before long, and he wanted to check the motor, see if he could get it working more smoothly. He steered toward the marina, trying to put thoughts of Greg Iverson’s smooth manner and glossy good looks out of his head. “We need to find someplace to lay low. And we need to find out whatever we can about Judge John Brady,” he said. Jayne was frowning in earnest now. “Brady?” she echoed. “Why?” He wished he had a better answer for her. “Because I’m hoping—assuming—there was a reason I was dreaming about him,” he said. “Since we have absolutely nothing else to go on at the moment, I’m going to follow my hunch and assume his name wouldn’t have shown up in my subconscious unless there was a reason.” “Ryder, dreams aren’t logical. You might just as easily have been dreaming about Walt Disney, or the mayor of Miami, or—” “But I wasn’t.” Cutting the engine, he steered the boat into the slip next to the fuel pumps at the marina. “And I wasn’t even dreaming about him, exactly. It’s more like his voice was echoing in my head. Like it was some kind of message.” He waved his hand, as though he could deflect all the perfectly reasonable objections she might throw at him. He hated being in the dark, hated having so little to go on. But he clung stubbornly to his instincts because he had nothing else he could cling to at the moment. “What do you want to find out about Brady?” she asked. “Anything. Everything. I won’t know until I find it.” “And where precisely are you planning to look?” Ryder handed the red metal gas tank up to the teenage attendant and waited until the kid had stepped out of hearing range. “I was hoping you might help with that,” he said. “If we can get to someplace that has a fax machine—if you know anybody who might be willing to send us information about Brady’s career—anybody the cops aren’t likely to be watching, that is—” He broke off. He hated asking for help like this, hated having to admit to his own helplessness. But in most of the ways that counted, he was helpless. And in spite of the way it made his heart sink, in spite of his fear that Jayne might turn him down, leaving him more alone than ever, he had to push the point, had to know what she would say. “I just can’t think of another way to do this,” he said when she didn’t immediately answer. “I need your help, Jayne.” It took her a long time to reply. Ryder listened to the rhythmic chugging of the gas pump, careful to keep his face turned to the waterway behind them, in case his features—and his bandaged forehead—happened to stick in the memory of any observant passersby. “I was doing my best to help you when I was talking with Greg Iverson,” she said at last. By cutting Ryder out of the loop. He could still feel the knot of solitary hurt in his gut when he remembered it. “I know,” he said shortly. “But it didn’t work.” This time her silence lasted even longer, until the gas attendant had lowered the tank back into the boat and taken the money Jayne handed up to him. The noises around them—other boat engines, the gentle slap of waves against the shore, the traffic from the road next to the waterway—seemed to recede into the distance as Ryder waited to hear what Jayne would say. Half of him already knew. Half of him had been waiting for her to say these words for what felt like forever. She spoke reluctantly, as though the whole subject was one she’d been trying to avoid. “I still don’t know whether you’re guilty or innocent,” she said slowly. “Me, too.” It was an effort to keep his own voice calm. “I know even less about this than you do.” Her eyes turned wary, and Ryder felt that same clench of loss and hurt down low in his belly. You’re on the outside, something inside him was saying again. And you always will be. Even with Jayne. He pushed away the nagging voice and crossed his arms over his chest. He knew he should be tilting the motor up, checking it over, getting back on their way, not sitting here where they might be spotted or remembered. But somehow, it was more important to face all the things he and Jayne didn’t know about each other. “Even if you are innocent—” She didn’t seem to like where the statement was headed, and shook her tousled head to cut it off. “It doesn’t change anything about us,” she said instead. “About our marriage, I mean. That’s already over—it was over even before you were arrested.” “You’ve said that already.” Then why did it hurt so much to hear her say it again? Ryder pulled his crossed arms more tightly against his chest, as though he could build a wall that would deflect everything that was coming at him. The problem was that most of it was coming from inside. And it wasn’t only his bruised ribs that ached—it was all of him. It was places he couldn’t even put a name to, and feelings that kept ambushing him despite his best efforts to avoid them. When he thought about everything that had torn through him when he’d taken Jayne in his arms this morning—when he remembered the hungry noises she’d made when he’d touched her, those little moans that told him she’d been as eager for their loving as he was— Get to work on the damn motor, his common sense was telling him. Don’t waste time on this. But he didn’t move—couldn’t move. Something in Jayne’s troubled gaze held him, something that seemed to touch the deep well of uncertainty and longing buried somewhere within him. “If I help you, it’s only because I want to see this over with once and for all,” she said. “I want to know what happened, so I can put it behind me.” Well, that was blunt enough. Ryder steeled himself against it, against the knowledge that no matter how this adventure ended, Jayne Robards would never be his. The promise of passion he’d heard in her sultry voice was simply never going to be fulfilled. Jaynie... “Fair enough.” Could she hear the effort grating in his voice? He couldn’t tell. “Both of us want to know the truth, then.” “Right.” The obvious next move was to discuss how they were going to do that. And to get to work on the motor while they talked. But Ryder still didn’t turn from her. And he couldn’t bring himself to steer the conversation into those safe and obvious channels, either. The gentle motion of the waves under them was almost hypnotic. And Jayne’s eyes on his were somehow soothing and disturbing at the same time. He felt as though he could look into those brilliant purple depths forever. And at the same time... The emotions that had been pushing at him all day were even closer to the surface now. Part of him wanted to let this silent moment of connection stretch on, calming him in the midst of the turmoil all around him. But another part wanted to push past it—wanted desperately to know where all these tangled feelings of loss and desire were coming from. He cleared his throat and moved away from the steering wheel toward Jayne’s seat in the bow. He hadn’t intended to touch her. But it just felt so natural to reach out a hand and cup the back of her neck, stroking her warm skin with his thumb. She leaned her head back slightly, as though she was caught between running from her own responses and giving in to them. The connection between them sizzled into vibrant life again, adding new urgency to the question Ryder finally had to ask her. “Why—did we split up in the first place?” He knew his voice wasn’t much more than a growl, but there was nothing he could do about it. For a moment he thought she was going to pull back from him, to demand that they keep their attention focused on the matter at hand and leave their own history in the past, where it belonged. He could almost see the phrases forming themselves behind her dazzling eyes, making her gaze more brilliant, more jewel-like than ever. But then something softened in her face. It was all Ryder could do to hold himself still. He wanted to raise his other hand, to pull her close against him, to cover her soft mouth with his own, as though the sheer potency of their contact might ease whatever she was about to tell him. But he made himself stand still, trembling slightly with the effort it took. “I wanted children,” she said finally. “You didn’t.” At first it seemed ridiculous. Surely no man in his right mind would have let a woman like Jayne slip through his grasp over something as simple as that! And then her words started to sink in. He remembered his own bolt of blind panic when they’d been on the point of making love this morning. If something happened— If Jayne got pregnant— If he fathered a child— The sense of his own inadequacy, his own limitations, hit him like a cold wave. Love never lasts. It was that nagging voice again, pushing at him from inside. What happened with you and Jayne only proves it. You’re asking for too much. Jayne had said it herself. He wanted more than he could reasonably have. And he didn’t trust himself to know how to hang on to it if he got it. He tried to imagine holding a child of his in his arms. The sweetness of it caught at his throat. He thought about looking at a small face with Jayne’s violet eyes, or her wide, inviting smile. A child with the high Ryder cheekbones, maybe, or his own long, rangy build. And right behind the sweetness, bulldozing it out of the way, was a stab of fear, of imagined loss. It wouldn’t last. It couldn’t. Something would happen to change it, to take it away. He didn’t know how he was so sure of it. But he’d never been more certain of anything in his life. “Ryder—” Jayne was half twisting in his grasp, and he realized he’d tightened his fingers on the back of her neck without noticing. But that wasn’t what she was protesting about. She was looking toward the main marina building, frowning again. “That security guard keeps looking over at us. If we don’t move pretty soon, he’s going to start wondering what we’re up to.” There was anxiety in her throaty voice. But there was also relief. She wasn’t entirely sorry the security guard was providing an excuse to move away, Ryder thought. He knew she was right. But he could feel reluctance in every bone and sinew of his body as he let her go. Why did it seem as though she was offering him heartbreak and salvation at the same time? How was it possible to feel drawn so powerfully toward her even while he knew this couldn’t possibly lead anywhere? And why, despite the danger dogging them at every step, despite all the unanswered questions about the mystery surrounding them, did it suddenly feel as though keeping them both alive might turn out to be the easy part? Chapter 9 The world seemed endlessly green and still as it stretched around them. Jayne leaned back in her seat and squinted into the late-afternoon light. They’d been on the water for hours. The sun had long since passed overhead and was starting to lower toward the horizon they were heading for. Without the suntan lotion she’d found in one of the storage bins, she knew, she and Ryder would both have been toasted crisp by now. As it was, she could see his dark blond hair starting to glint gold on the top of his head as it had done when he was younger. In those distant days, she recalled, he’d spent some of his waking hours enjoying the world around him, instead of focusing all his energy on his job. He was focusing just as intently now on piloting the boat, and on trying to figure out how wide a margin of safety they’d managed to put between them and danger this time. “I wonder if anybody on the beach saw us getting into this thing,” he’d said as he steered out of the lock that connected immense Lake Okeechobee with the river flowing west toward the coast. He hadn’t spoken the whole time they’d been crossing the lake itself, either because the motor was too loud or because he’d been lost in his own thoughts. The sound of his voice had come as a surprise to Jayne, although his question hadn’t. She’d been wondering the same thing herself. “I think everybody was looking the other way,” she said. “Except Greg, of course. He saw us running toward the pier.” “Then assuming he’s okay, he’ll probably tell the FBI how we got away. He’ll probably tell the Miami cops, too.” Jayne shook her head. “He knows there’s something funny going on with the police,” she said. “I told him about Madeleine’s calls being intercepted when I was trying to get information from her. I don’t think he’ll let the police in on what’s happening.” “He may not have a choice.” Ryder’s voice was grim. “Guys in the city attorney’s office are supposed to uphold the law, not obstruct it. If they question him, I don’t see how he can stall them beyond a certain point.” It seemed likely, then, that the FBI and the Miami police—and undoubtedly whoever had been shooting at them for the past two days, as well—would be on the lookout for the boat Ryder and Jayne had stolen. No one had looked twice at them while they’d been in the lock leaving Lake Okeechobee. But the longer they were on the water, the more nervous Jayne was starting to feel about the possibility of someone coming in search of them. And despite Ryder’s ministrations, the boat’s motor still had occasional coughing fits, when it sounded as though it was about to give up and quit altogether. It wasn’t a reassuring sound. It didn’t help that Ryder was starting to seem more and more restless the farther they went. It was nearly an hour since they’d left the lake. The river was taking them through territory that was largely uninhabited, full of swampy woods that had obviously never been drained the way much of the land nearer to the Atlantic coast had been. And the landscape seemed to be having an odd effect on Ryder. He kept frowning, glaring at the heavily treed shoreline as though he suspected they might be under surveillance from behind the branches and vines that hung out over the water. Or maybe it was something else that was on his mind—Jayne couldn’t tell. She only knew that after their brief exchange at the lock, he’d fallen silent again, as though nothing existed except the hunt they were in the middle of. The really strange thing was that he was starting to look more like the hunter than the quarry. If she were to photograph him right now, she thought—if her cameras, the tools of ther trade, weren’t a hundred miles away with her everyday existence—he would come out looking like a prowling lion, surveying his grassy kingdom for signs of prey. It wasn’t just the golden glint of his hair, although that did change his tightly slicked-back ponytail into something almost like a lion’s mane. It was something in his stance, and in his eyes. His whole bearing was altering as they motored steadily downstream toward the coast. His broad shoulders weren’t set in that tight, wary slope anymore. His long legs were no longer braced as though he was expecting an attack. Now, despite the way his gaze kept flickering from one side of the shore to the other, he stood more easily, one hip cocked, looking more like a warrior about to stride out to do battle than a hunted man on the run from the law. The blue jeans she’d bought were a shade too loose for him. And he hadn’t bothered with the belt. With his legs canted at that sexily careless angle, the stonewashed denim rode suggestively low over his hips. It was making Jayne’s breath quicken just to watch him. And his eyes— His eyes looked the way she remembered them from years and years ago. There was a light in their blue depths that she hadn’t seen in a very long time. He’d become so suspicious about the world, so convinced that the grim slice of life he saw every day as a police detective was the only world there was. Now, though, his eyes were lit by something of the old fire she’d once loved to see. He looked intent, challenged, ready to meet what was around him instead of permanently on his guard against it. She couldn’t imagine what was behind the sudden change. Once, he even cut the engine without warning, whipping his gaze around to a little stream that meandered its way into the river. When he did it a second time, Jayne finally spoke. “What’s the matter, Ryder?” she said. “What’s out there?” He shook his head. “Nothing. I just thought—” He gazed into the darkness among the tree trunks, then waved one hand, dismissing his own words. Jayne wasn’t about to let the subject drop. “Thought what?” she prompted. He’d opened the throttle again, though not to its former speed. But his reply was low enough that Jayne could barely catch it over the noise of the engine. “I thought I recognized this place.” “I wouldn’t be surprised,” she said. “You grew up somewhere around here.” That was enough to do it. Abruptly, he cut the engine again, and the boat sank lower in the water so suddenly that Jayne had to shift on the seat to keep her balance. “I did?” The light in his eyes was stronger now. “Where, exactly?” “I don’t know where exactly. You never said.” He snorted, and glanced around them again. They’d passed a couple of little towns and some vacation homes a few miles back, but the stretch of water where they were now was bordered by overhanging trees, dark green and lush. To Jayne, it all looked the same. Was it possible to tell one little swampy corner from the next? “Was I always such a secretive type?” His question surprised her. And so did the openness in his face as he asked it. She wasn’t sure she wanted to be quite that open—not after this morning’s jolt of passion and disappointment. Ever since, she’d had the sense of teetering on the edge of a chasm she’d just climbed her way out of. “About—some things,” she replied. “You could be very stubborn when it came to talking about yourself.” Or rather, not talking about himself. He’d held back the news about not wanting a family until they’d already been married for years. When they’d been newlyweds, he’d seemed to share her dreams about extending their love to their own children, creating a family stronger and more loving than the ones they’d grown up in. But something had happened to change his early agreement into a stone wall, as blank and unresponsive as his face had been when he’d pulled back from her this morning. When I’ve wrapped up what I’m in the middle of now, we can talk about it, he’d .said a dozen times. And then a hundred. She’d finally realized he was never going to talk about it. Having a family was something Nick Ryder just didn’t want to do. It was strange now to be trying to recall what little he’d told her about his own family over the years. “You must have seen something around here that reminded you of home,” she said. “You always told me you grew up with your grandfather in a big—” “In a big house with no other houses around it for miles.” He finished her phrase triumphantly, his eyes flashing as he said the words. Despite her own caution, Jayne couldn’t help feeling some of his excitement. If his memory was starting to come back—if they might be starting to find their way out of the dark shadows that still surrounded them— She made herself take a slow breath. The return of Ryder’s memory only solved some of their problems, she reminded herself. This glimpse of the old Ryder, like the heartbreaking tenderness he’d shown her once or twice since she’d found him in the hospital, was only temporary. When his memory came back, a lot of unhappiness could very well come with it. She was as sure of that as if she’d seen it in a crystal ball. And besides, there was no guarantee that the family property Ryder was picturing was anywhere near the landscape they were meandering through. “It could just be that this spot reminds you strongly of where you grew up,” she told him. “It doesn’t necessarily mean—” “I know.” He opened the throttle a little more, waiting for the motor to go through one of its chugging fits before heading downstream again. “I’ve still got a bump on my head the size of a golf ball. I could be mixed up about all of this.” But she could tell he didn’t believe it. He was still watching the shoreline like a hawk, glancing from right to left with a sharp-eyed scrutiny that transformed his whole face. He was the hunter now. And he obviously felt he was hunting on some very familiar terrain. “Who owns my family’s property now?” he asked after a few miles. “You do.” Their divorce lawyers had requested a list of assets, and Ryder’s family property had been on it. She remembered seeing it and thinking, not for the first time, that Ryder’s silence on the subject of his family had put just one more layer of reserve between them. She watched his long, strong fingers spin the steering wheel, easing the boat around a half-submerged log jutting into the river. She wasn’t crazy about the swampiness of the place—she’d always preferred dry land to water, if she had a choice. But Ryder seemed to feel right at home. She could see it in his eyes, and in the way his expression was becoming more and more intent. When the river took a sudden turn ahead of them, veering to the right, he actually laughed out loud. “I knew it,” he said. “I do know this place.” “Ryder—” He didn’t let her voice her doubts this time. “There’s a little creek that comes in from the right, just after we hit this turn,” he said. “It looks like nothing more than a trickle—at least, it used to—but if you push up it a little way, it widens out again.” “You’re not seriously suggesting that we—” “And if you keep on it for a mile or so, it meets up with a path. Or what used to be a path.” “You keep saying ‘it used to be.’ You left home when you were sixteen, Ryder. That’s twenty years ago. It’ll all be overgrown, even if—” He wasn’t listening. He steered the boat around the curve and raised one arm in triumph when the little creek appeared exactly where he’d said it would be. It wasn’t overgrown—at least, not completely. But it did look narrow and weedy and far too wild for Jayne’s taste. “Let’s just stick with the river, okay?” she said. “At least we know where it goes.” “I know where this goes, too.” He was already turning the wheel, heading for the mouth of the stream. “I know exactly where it goes.” “To your family property, right?” He nodded. Under the shade of the trees along the bank, the gold highlights had disappeared from his hair. But she could still see the same light in his eyes. His whole face was alive with it, with the possibility of some adventure Jayne wasn’t sure she wanted to be in the middle of. “Ryder, this is nuts. It’s the first place they’ll look.” “They won’t check the part I’m heading for.” He was actually doing it. As he’d said, the stream seemed impossibly narrow where it met the river. Jayne had to push overhanging branches out of her face as he nosed the boat forward. She saw him put an arm out and shove against the trunk of a big tree to get them past an especially shallow part. Quickly, before the propeller could snarl, Ryder reached back and tilted the motor partway out of the water. She heard the engine whine and sputter as he did it, as though it shared Jayne’s misgivings about heading into this shadowy little bayou. But almost immediately, the water got deeper again. No one seeing the stream from the river would ever suspect it was navigable, but just as Ryder had predicted, they were actually making headway along it. He’d lowered the motor again and clamped it at an angle. He seemed to know exactly how much clearance he had. And now his face was alight with something very close to pleasure. As though he was elated about being here. As though he really was coming home. As far as Jayne could see, all they were coming to was more swamp and trees. And she was still far from pleased about any of it. Especially after she saw the alligator. At first she thought it was just another fallen log along the side of the stream. It was hard to focus on things because of the way the late-afternoon light was filtering through the trees. The pattern on this particular log was nothing more than a trick of the light, she told herself as they approached it. But then it moved. “Ryder—” Jayne half stood in the bow of the boat Instinct was telling her to run like hell. But there was nowhere to go. And her sudden movement made the boat rock under her feet, unsettling her even more. “Sit down. You’ll spook him.” Ryder’s voice was easy and authoritative. He’d already seen the big reptile, Jayne realized. And he didn’t sound even a little worried about it. “I’ll spook him?” Her voice shook over the words. “Ryder, it’s an alligator. Shouldn’t we—” “The stream’s too narrow for the boat and a gator at the same time. If we scare him into the water, he’ll be in danger from the propeller.” He’d closed the throttle to almost nothing. They were nearly silent as they glided by the alligator. Jayne could see its eyes peering out of the muck at the edge of the water. “Well, why don’t we turn around and—” “Turn around how?” He had a point. But he didn’t seem to be serious as he made it. He had no intention of going back, she realized. He wasn’t scared of the damn alligator. Was he going crazy, or was she? “It’s watching us.” She felt a shudder run up her spine as the boat slid past the huge creature. “Probably trying to figure out if we’d go best with red or white wine.” Ryder actually chuckled. Softly. Out of concern for the alligator. “Last time I saw one of those on this creek, I was about ten years old,” he said. “It’s a wonder you lived to be eleven years old, if you were into playing with alligators.” She still couldn’t quite keep her voice steady. “It’s a good sign, Jaynie. Means nobody’s been up this way for a while.” “Nobody who lived to tell about it, anyway.” They were safely past the reptile now, but Jayne’s uneasiness was still escalating. The thought of that armor-plated carnivore blocking their only escape route was not a comforting one. “And I thought you left home because you hated it here,” she said, not sure she wanted to look ahead of her to whatever new dangers might be lurking in the mud. “I never knew you were such a country boy, Ryder.” He chuckled again. The sound seemed to come more easily to him this time. It occurred to Jayne that she hadn’t heard him chuckle like that in a very long time. “I left home because of the people, not the wildlife,” he said. “I used to love it here, except when I had to deal with human beings. I used to know every piece of this property like I knew my own face.” “And you—remember it now.” She made it halfway between a statement and a question. Ryder didn’t miss her emphasis. “I remember some of it.” That was what was behind the light in his eyes, she thought. After floundering in a void with no memory at all, recognizing a familiar landscape must be a huge relief. “More to the point, I remember that there’s a cabin in the woods a couple of miles behind my grandfather’s house.” The stream seemed to be getting narrower again, but Ryder didn’t slow his pace. “This is the back way in. It’s exactly what we’re after, Jaynie—a place where nobody can find us.” “What if they come to the house?” “They’ll find it empty, exactly the way it’s been since my grandfather died.” His grandfather had died just before Jayne had met him, she recalled. He’d been completely alone in the world, as she had been. It had been one of the strongest bonds between them, in the beginning, until the solitude inside of Ryder had seemed to overwhelm him. “Won’t they check the cabin?” “I don’t think another soul on earth knows it’s there, except for me. My grandfather said it used to be slave quarters, but it had pretty much fallen down by the time he inherited the place. He helped me fix it up when I was a kid. It was always—my hiding place.” His face dimmed for the first time since they’d rounded the comer back on the river. Jayne wanted to ask what he’d been hiding from, but there were more immediate questions crowding at her. For instance, how was he planning to get the boat past the boggy spot she could see ahead of them? He adjusted the height of the motor and kept them moving forward, speaking as he negotiated the increasingly shallow stream. “Since we got in by water, there’s no way to track us,” he said. “And we can get out by water whenever we need to. There’s a little town downriver called Narvaez. It used to be big enough that it had a few stores. Somebody there may have a fax service. We can work from there, and stay hidden while we do it.” She had to admit the plan all hung together. Except— “I don’t see any cabin,” she said, peering into the mottled wooded landscape. “Where is it?” “Just a couple of miles through the bush.” “A couple of—Ryder, you are crazy! I mean, I like Mother Nature as well as anyone, but—” “Do you?” He turned off the engine. His words hung in the sudden silence. It wasn’t only the challenge in them that startled her. It was the humor. She’d almost forgotten Ryder could be this way—strong, sure of himself, poking gentle fun at her with that devastatingly sexy light in his blue eyes. She swallowed hard, and said, “Well, no, not really. I’m your basic city kid. I guess I always have been.” He was edging the boat into the mouth of a tiny stream that ran in to meet the one they were on. She could tell he was trying to get the craft as far out of sight as he could, and even though the overhanging trees made her feel she was in one of those leafy nightmares she’d always hated, she moved to help him as he shrouded the boat in branches, blocking it from view. “Well, city kid,” he said when they were finished, “this’ll be a treat for you. And I don’t want to sound too suggestive, but it might be a good idea if you stick close to me, all right?” She had no intention of wandering off, but she didn’t get a chance to tell him so. Stepping out of the boat onto the muddy shore, Ryder reached for her hand and pulled her after him. And he kept a firm hold, his fingers surrounding hers with a warmth that was reassuring and disquieting all at the same time, as he led the way along the shore and into what seemed to Jayne to be an uncharted wilderness, pure and simple. They walked for what felt like a very long time. “I thought you said two miles,” Jayne muttered as she tried to keep her impractical leather pumps from being sucked off in yet another low spot. “Miles are longer in the bush.” “They do that to keep out the tourists, right?” “Nah. That’s what the gators are for. And the snakes.” Jayne shivered. “Your memory is coming back. You know I always hated snakes.” “Actually, I didn’t remember it. I just saw one slide across the path, is what made me think of it.” The shudder seemed to run all the way up from the backs of her heels this time. She clenched her toes to keep her shoes on and took a couple of quick steps to keep up to Ryder’s longer strides. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about this path.” With an effort, she kept her voice from shaking as much as it wanted to. “See, where I come from, the term ‘path’ means that somebody has actually been there before. And sometimes there’s even a place to put your feet, and some other little amenities like that. Whereas this path of yours—” He ducked his head under a low branch, and Jayne did the same. “Hey, it’s been twenty years. You said so yourself.” “Then how do you know we’re going the right way?” The thought of getting lost in the wilds of central Florida, wandering around until some passing alligator took pity on them and decided to end their misery, was even less appealing than the knowledge that there were snakes underfoot. “I just know.” He sounded as calm as she’d ever heard him. It was ironic, Jayne thought. Ryder’s old self-confidence seemed to be coming back now that they were as far as it was possible to get from any kind of real help. “The big trees are all the same,” he was saying. “And the streambeds haven’t changed much, either. This country stays pretty constant, year to year. In fact, we should be coming to one more little low spot, and then we’re there.” Then we’re there was the sweetest thing she’d heard all day. The “one more little low spot,” however, proved to be a problem. For one thing, it was more of a small pond than a low spot. For another, it stretched across the “path” into the woods on both sides. She couldn’t see a good way around it. And Ryder seemed to be on the point of striding straight through. Tugging on his hand, Jayne held back. “Has it got snakes in it?” she demanded. “Probably not.” Probably not wasn’t as reassuring as she would have liked. She kept a firm grip on Ryder’s hand and held her ground. They’d brought the insect repellent with them from the boat, and it had kept most of the flying insects at bay, although there was still a cloud of mosquitoes buzzing around their heads. Jayne’s heels were blistered from trekking across soggy, uneven ground in shoes that were designed for walking across a city street. Her skirt had caught repeatedly on the bushes that surrounded them, and the fullness of it made walking even more difficult. She was tired, disheveled and not at all certain about heading into the wilderness with a hunted man who—only a couple of days ago—she’d told herself she never wanted to see again. But she could handle all of that. What was keeping her rooted to the spot was the thought of stepping into that muddy brown water and feeling something slithering up her ankle. She was close to her limit, she realized—or maybe she’d just reached it. “Ryder.” She could feel impatience in his grip, but she resisted it. “This is—are you sure we’re almost there?” What she wanted to say was, This is crazy—we have to go back. Her doubts were clear in the sound of her voice, judging by Ryder’s expression when he turned to look at her. And then his own face changed. He frowned and looked down at her feet, which were half-submerged in the squishy turf they’d paused on. Ryder’s sneakers were mud-soaked, too. But at least they’d been designed for hiking. He waved his free hand at the cloud of bugs around his head, and said, “You should have said something.” “Oh, I did.” She pulled her right foot free of the ooze, and felt the left one sinking deeper into it. “I’ve been saying lots of things. I’ve just been keeping them to myself.” The gleam in his eyes intensified without warning. She couldn’t tell if it was surprise she was seeing, or admiration, or something else. She only knew her pulse started to pick up speed at the sight of it. It had been so long since Ryder had looked at her that way—since she’d seen that flash of spirit in his eyes and felt it speaking directly to her own heart. She caught her breath as he released her hand and stepped closer to her. Before she’d realized what he was up to, he leaned over and slid one long arm behind her thighs. With the other one, he circled her waist, lifting her out of the bog and against his broad chest. “Ryder—your ribs—” She could feel the edge of the elastic bandage where it cut into his torso. Instinctively, she tried to shift away from it, lightening her weight against his rib cage. But she could feel the strength in him, too. It was as though being back where he belonged had rejuvenated him in some mysterious way. And her attempt to move away only ended up settling her more closely against him. Her arms went naturally around his neck. She could smell his skin, a subtle, musky smell that suddenly seemed like the scent of sunshine, if such a thing was possible. She knew it wasn’t. It was all preposterous—the trek through the jungle, the way her heart was suddenly pounding at her collarbone, all of it. But as she looked into Ryder’s blue eyes from such close range, all she could think of was that lion-gold mane of his, and the way he seemed to have soaked in all the heat and strength of the country they’d been traveling through. “Believe me, sweetheart, I wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t been absolutely certain the cabin is only a few more steps.” That renegade gleam of humor glinted in his eyes again. Jayne caught her breath as he started to walk, splashing through the calf-high puddle as though it wasn’t there. She tried to think of a snappy remark about scaring off the snakes. But nothing came to mind. Nothing, that is, except the thought, I’ve missed you, Nick. It was getting more and more difficult to tell herself this wasn’t the real Nick Ryder. That old, heart-stopping eagerness in Ryder’s face was cutting through all her doubts, through all the hurts of the past few years. The man who was carrying her through the trees with such care and strength was so much like the golden-haired loner she’d fallen in love with, so much like the Nick Ryder who’d once told her they’d been made to love each other and no one else. Each step he took jostled her a little closer to him. By the time they reached an opening in the trees, Jayne was breathing hard, as though she was the one doing the heavy lifting. And Ryder’s chest was rising and falling faster, too. She hoped it was only the effort of carrying her that was doing it. If they found themselves drifting into the same dangerous passion that had gotten them into such trouble this morning— “There.” The rough, hungry edge to Ryder’s voice was distracting enough that it took Jayne a few seconds to realize what he was nodding at. “Home sweet home.” She turned her head and felt a host of conflicting feelings rising like a wave inside her. Just as he’d promised, there was a small cabin in the clearing ahead of them. The clearing itself was half-overgrown. But enough light came in from above that she could clearly see the wooden structure, its door and windows boarded over, its roof obviously intact. Relief was the first thing she felt. They weren’t lost, after all. And Ryder’s memory hadn’t been playing him false. It was like a small, desperately needed beam of light in the midst of what had been nothing but darkness. But on the heels of her relief came a much more troubling sense that she was coming home, too, not just Ryder. There was something almost familiar about this, something that felt as though they’d been here before. Realizing what it was didn’t do anything to calm her rapidly beating heart. It was their honeymoon she was thinking of, and Ryder’s romantic, chivalrous gesture of sweeping her off her feet as they approached the doorway of the apartment they’d shared when they were first married. The feeling of his arms surrounding her now, and the haven of the cabin beckoning them from across the clearing, conjured up all kinds of memories for her. And for Ryder, too, judging by the look in his eyes. But he seemed challenged by it, not disconcerted, as Jayne was. She could feel herself drawn into the dizzying hunger of his gaze, into that open, searching expression she hadn’t seen for such a long time. “Welcome home, Jaynie.” His words were low and rough. She hadn’t figured out how to answer them when he lowered his head and kissed her. The heat of it went straight to her belly and settled there. His mouth parted to meet hers, swirling her instantly into a world of tenderness and passion, of laughter and longing. His lips were familiar and demanding, the scent of his skin an erotic haze that wrapped itself around and around her before she could even think about escaping it. It was a kiss full of promise, she thought dizzily. As though this was the beginning of something new and wonderful. She knew it wasn’t. It was the beginning of the end, that was all. Once they found out who was trying so hard to kill Ryder, this would all be over. And she would go back to the real world, where ghosts from their shared past wouldn’t keep appearing out of nowhere to tempt and arouse her. Ryder was no ghost, that was for certain. His kiss stirred her from head to toe, leaving her shaken and hungry for more. She knew that more was a bad idea. But it was hard to remember that, especially when Ryder lifted his lips from hers and she felt a little stab of loss deep inside. Her voice almost didn’t work when she tried it. “This—isn’t real, Ryder,” she said. “The little honeymoon cottage—the hideaway for two—it isn’t what you’re thinking.” He didn’t bother to deny that he’d seen it exactly in those terms. She’d known that—known precisely what was going through his head when they’d stepped into the clearing. “Isn’t it?” His answer wasn’t much more than a growl. And it wasn’t an answer, anyway. It was just one more unwelcome question, Jayne thought as he lowered her to the ground and stepped away from her side. She’d been right—his breathing was as deep and unsteady as her own. And his eyes weren’t laughing any longer. They were full of turbulent clouds again. He held her gaze for one long, unsettling moment. And then he strode off between the trees toward the cabin that had once been his shelter from the storm. Chapter 10 “And I realize we’ve missed most of the migrating birds, but this was the only time I could get a whole week off. I work in sales, and the schedules are so unpredictable.” Jayne dropped a couple of pairs of cheap sunglasses into her shopping cart. They wouldn’t provide much in the way of disguise, but along with the two baseball caps she’d already picked up, they might help to make the two strangers in Narvaez a little less recognizable. “As it is, I’ve still got to be in touch with the office every day about a deal we were right in the middle of when I left,” she added. “You don’t know how glad I am that you have a fax machine and that you’re so close to the river.” “You’re boating, you said?” The proprietor of Narvaez’s sole grocery store was leaning over a carton of cereal, supposedly putting the boxes onto the shelf ahead of him. It was clear, though, that chatting with Jayne was of far greater interest at the moment. She and Ryder had anticipated that. New faces in a tiny town like this were bound to attract attention. They’d been careful to construct a cover story before boating into Narvaez on Monday morning. “You always told me the best liars were the ones who gave enough detail to be plausible, but not so much that they got trapped in their own inventions,” Jayne had told him. “You said most of the criminals you caught were the ones who contradicted their own stories at some point.” “Guess I couldn’t have been all bad as a cop.” He’d said the words gruffly, but Jayne had caught an echo of discontent in them. Deep down he seemed to be desperate to know he wasn’t on the wrong side in all of this. “Yes, we’re boating,” she said to the curious store owner now. “We’ve got a houseboat anchored a few miles out” She was careful not to say in which direction. “And we’re just touring around in the motorboat.” She lifted a couple of gallon jugs of water into the cart. The little cabin, which had seemed like such a haven when they’d finally reached it, had started to feel impossibly primitive by the time they’d wakened this morning. It was sturdy enough, built so well that even after twenty years of disuse it was in remarkably good shape. Ripping the board down from the door had been a struggle, using up what little energy Jayne and Ryder had had left. They’d decided to leave most of the windows boarded up, “just in case,” Ryder had said. They’d uncovered one, using a crowbar in the toolbox inside the building. By the fading evening light, Jayne had looked around at the plain but well-provisioned single room, thinking that when Ryder had wanted to escape, he’d certainly been thorough about it. There were even a couple of candles and some matches in a waterproof container in the cupboard. They hadn’t needed the light for long—both of them had been close to exhausted. Despite the hooting and cawing of various birds and beasts out in the forest, Jayne had fallen asleep almost immediately on the rope bed in the corner. Ryder’s deepening breathing from across the room—he’d insisted on sleeping on the floor, with a blanket under him—had been a familiar lullaby for the few minutes it had taken her to slide into sleep. The problem was, the cabin’s provisions didn’t include food or water. They’d both wakened ravenous and thirsty, and eager to head for the little town Ryder said was just downriver. The hike back through the woods wasn’t Jayne’s image of a prebreakfast stroll. But it was made easier by the fact that Ryder brought a machete with him from the cabin, and hacked out something closer to her idea of a path. The thought of food at the other end of the trip was enough to keep her going despite her water-soaked pumps and impractical flowery skirt. Once they’d reached Narvaez, they’d agreed that Ryder should keep a low profile. He stayed with the boat, leaving Jayne to make her phone call and buy some supplies. Her first stop had been a used-clothing shop across from the grocery store, which provided a pair of sneakers in her size, and some jeans that were only a little too tight. A couple of days of living on crackers and cereal ought to take care of that, she thought as she crossed the street to the grocery. She and Ryder had decided that lighting a fire would be too risky, in case anyone was watching the property. So their shopping list had consisted of food that didn’t need to be cooked. If the owner of the store thought there was anything odd about her choices, he didn’t say so. He hadn’t looked askance at her explanation about having left unfinished business behind her at work, either. “There might be several faxes a day,” she told him as she paid for the groceries. “I’ll come back for the first ones later this afternoon. And then I’ll try to stop by in the mornings until this mess at work is cleared up. With luck it won’t take long.” And with luck, she added silently, the acquaintance she’d called—a law student in Saint Petersburg who’d helped in the past with legal research for stories that accompanied Jayne’s photo spreads—wouldn’t have time to wonder about her request for all available information about Judge John Brady. “I’m so buried in work right now I can’t describe it,” her friend had said. “But I’m also broke, as usual. So if you want to pay me to dig something up for you, I’ll put your request right on the top of the list. Start looking for those faxes sometime later today.” “If there’s a pattern in any of this, I can’t see it.” Ryder tossed the shiny fax pages aside and leaned back in his wooden chair. “I know.” From her cross-legged seat on the bed, Jayne looked across the room at him. “There are a couple of cases here where it seems to me that Brady went very easy on the defendant. But there are other ones where he acted like he was auditioning to play Judge Dread.” “Like mine.” “Right.” The records of Ryder’s own trial were among the documents they’d picked up at the store in Narvaez that afternoon. Ryder had read the account with grim fascination before handing the pages over to Jayne. A quick glance had been enough to bring it all back. She’d sat through every day of Ryder’s trial a year ago. And she’d replayed it a hundred times in her mind since the moment when the jury had announced a guilty verdict. She didn’t really want to relive the whole experience now. But Ryder was making it hard to ignore. “Were you there?” he asked. “At my trial, I mean?” “Yes.” “So you’ve seen this Brady guy in action.” Jayne nodded. “What’s he like? I mean, is he bordering on senility or something? That might explain the inconsistencies in his decisions.” “He’s far from senile. And he seemed very sharp at your trial.” Ryder snorted. “Too damn sharp, I’d say,” he muttered. She knew what he meant. Judge Brady had been scathing in pointing out during the trial how Ryder had betrayed his profession and his own integrity. Brady’s final instructions to the jury had been so loaded that it would have been a miracle if they’d found Ryder anything but guilty. “I wasn’t the only one he threw the book at,” he commented now. “No. I noticed that, too.” “Maybe if we can find some common thread among the cases he seemed to come down hardest on...” Jayne’s friend had been efficient in gathering the records on Brady’s cases. Jayne scanned them again, looking for similarities. “There’s this guy named Henderson,” she said. “Brady really clobbered him on a racketeering charge.” “I noticed him earlier. The thing is, the very next month there’s another racketeering case—some guy called Jimmy Trujillo—and Brady let him off easy because the evidence wasn’t up to par.” “That’s standard practice, Nick. The judge has no control over how the police collect evidence. You had a case thrown out yourself because there was something wrong with the evidence procedure.” She remembered that case all too well, too. It had seemed to spark a new level of preoccupation in Ryder with his career, a new obsession with his work that had done their already-faltering relationship no good. When this case is over— Once this one is wrapped up— She shook her head, trying to chase away the unwanted memories. “Greg Iverson was the prosecuting attorney on that Henderson case,” she said. “I wonder—if we’re very careful about how we contact him—” Ryder shook his head. “Too risky,” he said. “After yesterday’s little adventure, whoever’s after us is going to be keeping an eye on Iverson, big-time. We’re on our own with this, Jayne.” He looked at the sheaf of faxes again. “Brady presided over the trials of a couple of other police officers besides me,” he said. “Once again, there’s no pattern. He was lenient with one, hard-line with the other.” “I know. I covered both of those trials for the Bulletin.” He gave her a sharp look. “Was that your choice?” he asked. She shook her head. “I don’t usually get the courthouse assignments—my beat runs more to human interest stories and social events, but my editor loves corruption-in-high-places stories. He’s been on a kind of one-man crusade to clean up the Miami police department for years now.” “He getting anywhere with it?” “Well, he’s got a lot of people mad at him, if you call that progress.” She could see Ryder thinking hard. At first she thought he was trying to figure out what her angle was in this, and whether she might share her editor’s antipolice sentiments. She didn’t, of course. But Ryder had sometimes quizzed her about it while they’d been married. He’d been defensive whenever she’d tried to talk about how his preoccupation with his job was affecting their marriage. But there was none of that old defiance in his blue eyes now. And his next question wasn’t the one she’d expected. “I thought you said we’d already agreed to split up before I was arrested,” he said. “We had. About ten minutes before you were arrested, to be exact.” She knew she would never forget the misery of that night She and Ryder had just ended one of their hopeless arguments with the realization that there was nowhere for them to go from here. She could still hear the empty sound of his voice as he’d said, If that’s how you feel, maybe we should call it quits. There’d been no time to digest the stark conclusion that their marriage was really ending. The knock on the door had been followed by harsh voices—questions—demands—the flashing of lights from the cruisers parked in their driveway—the barking of the neighbors’ dogs as people came out on their porches to see what was happening on the usually quiet suburban street. “So we were splitting up, but you still came to the trial.” Ryder’s gravelly voice recalled her to the present. “Yes.” These were questions she really didn’t want to be answering. “It seemed like—the right thing to do.” “Just like helping me now seems like the right thing to do?” He tapped one thumb against the fax pages on the little table in front of him. “Are you always this loyal, Jayne? Even to people who’ve hurt you?” This is going nowhere, she told herself. It was like trying to figure out why she kept straying onto Ryder’s side of the bed while she slept, even though her conscious mind knew he was no longer there. Everything to do with their marriage belonged in the past. And she had to find a way to get it to stay there, once and for all. “It’s not loyalty,” she said. “I told you—I just need to see this finished. These are loose ends, Ryder. I want them tied up so I can get on with my life. Is there anything more we can get from this stuff,” she added, changing the subject, “or do we need to wait for those clippings tomorrow?” She’d asked her law-student friend to dig up whatever newspaper stories were available about the cases Judge Brady had presided over. By themselves, the legal records didn’t give the whole story. But more background might show a pattern Jayne and Ryder hadn’t been able to see yet. Ryder’s expression told her he wasn’t fooled by her attempt to deflect his questions. He didn’t pursue the topic, though, just said, “It wouldn’t hurt to see if we can pinpoint when Brady started turning in these erratic verdicts. He seems to have been fairly consistent in his early cases. If there’s a break in the pattern—if we can get your friend to zero in on his life at around the time when things changed—” He shrugged and tapped the shiny pages on the table. “I want to read these over again,” he said, “but I need some more light to do it with.” He got up from the chair and moved toward the little cupboard in the corner where Jayne had stored their supplies, including new candles and matches. He was moving more easily now, she’d noticed. He no longer held himself as though his whole body ached. And when the bandage on his forehead had come loose again this afternoon, they’d decided the lump underneath it was healing well enough that it didn’t need to be covered. He looked so much more the way he had when she’d first met him, from the sexy angle of his hips, to the suggestive gleam deep in his eyes. Of course, the haircut helped, too. They’d been halfway home this afternoon when Ryder had suddenly killed the motor and let the boat drift out of the slow-moving current. He’d nodded toward the new first-aid kit Jayne had bought to replace the one they’d had to leave in the car. “That thing got a half-decent pair of scissors in it?” he’d demanded. “Yes. Why?” He’d pulled the elastic from his ponytail with one quick motion. Jayne felt an all-too-familiar quiver at the sight of that thick, corn-silk mane flying free as he shook his head, loosening his hair. But he seemed to be thinking along strictly practical lines. “If there are descriptions of me circulating out there, they’ll probably include the ponytail,” he said. “No sense hanging on to a recognizable feature when I can easily get rid of it.” Getting rid of it sounded so easy and impersonal. Actually doing it had been something else altogether. Seating herself on the gunwale behind the captain’s chair, Jayne had done her best to lop off the ponytail and shape his dark blond mane into something resembling a hairstyle. But her hands, usually so agile and efficient with a camera, had trembled the whole time with the scissors. She’d always loved the way Ryder’s hair felt. And it had been impossible not to remember the way her caresses could make him close his eyes and purr like a big satisfied jungle cat. Trembling fingers had been only part of the problem. The haircut she’d come up with—still long on the top, but shorter at the back, layered as expertly as she’d been able to manage—made Ryder look more than ever like the man she’d first fallen in love with. With the shorter style, the hard, masculine angles of his jaw and cheekbone stood out strikingly. It eased the tense lines that had seemed so noticeable with his hair tightly pulled back. Jayne found her breath quickening all over again as she watched him standing next to the open cupboard. Those high, part-Indian cheekbones were stark and sexy against the dark wood of the cabin’s interior. “Son of a gun.” The amazement in his voice recalled her to the present. “What is it?” she asked. “I thought I’d lost this a long time ago.” He was holding a leather case in his hand. Jayne had noticed it when she was putting away the supplies, but she hadn’t stopped to see what it was. Now she realized it was a sheath for a knife. As she watched, Ryder drew out the knife itself. He tilted it back and forth, testing its weight in his palm. The flame of the candle he’d lit caught the edge of the blade, making a sudden gleam in the dim cabin. “I made this handle,” he said, still sounding surprised and pleased. “When I was about twelve years old.” He strode toward her across the bare wooden floor, as though he was suddenly impatient to share his handiwork with her. Setting the candleholder on the floor next to the bed, he seated himself close to Jayne on the rope mattress. It creaked a little under his weight, but he didn’t look worried. He and his grandfather had built virtually everything in this place, he’d told her, not to mention restored the building itself. He seemed to know exactly how much weight the bed would hold. “Look,” he said, offering the knife to her, handle first. “I did all that inlay myself. My grandfather was a cabinetmaker early in his life, and he showed me how to do it. I got the shells off the beach in Fort Myers when he took me there on a business trip once. He didn’t leave home often, but when he did I usually got to go with him.” The inlaid handle was beautiful, with pure white shells and abalone set in a filigree pattern that must have taken endless hours to do. But it was Ryder’s face, rather than the knife, that captured Jayne’s attention. “Do you realize you just told me more about your grandfather in one breath than in all the time I’ve known you?” she said. Once again she was expecting him to turn defensive, to tell her—as he’d told her so many times before—that none of this mattered. Once again he startled her. The open expression never left his face as he turned to look at her. “I wasn’t very happy here,” he said. “I’m not surprised I didn’t want to talk about it.” What did surprise him was how easy it felt to talk about it now. Ever since that moment on the river yesterday, when he’d felt all those memories and images flooding back into his mind, he’d found himself in a bittersweet mood that he still wasn’t sure how to handle. On the one hand, all the uncertainty and isolation of his early life had come back to him with its sting intact. But Jayne’s presence seemed to be softening that somehow. This is what I wanted when I lived here, he kept catching himself thinking. Someone who understood Someone who was concerned about what the hell was happening to me. She was only concerned about it on a very short-term basis. She’d made that perfectly clear more than once. But Ryder couldn’t keep himself from believing there was a part of Jayne that still cared about him, perhaps as fiercely as he was coming to realize he cared about her. She’d stuck with him, hadn’t she? She’d had plenty of chances to leave him behind these past few days, and she hadn’t. And then there was the way her mouth had felt flowering into passion under his own. And the way her body had melted against him— He didn’t want to let himself think about that, not when he was sitting so close to her. He forced his thoughts back to the knife she held, and to his own sudden desire to tell her things he’d apparently kept a tight lid on during their marriage. “My grandfather wasn’t an easy man to live with,” he said. “He had some—old-fashioned ideas.” “Such as?” He didn’t miss the sparkle of interest in her wide purple eyes. She did care, he thought exultantly. “He had a very stern sense of duty,” he said. “He didn’t believe in turning back, no matter how unpleasant things got.” Her eyes narrowed slightly. “I’d say he taught you more than just how to build things, then,” she said. “That might be a description of yourself, when you were still with the police department.” It was a disconcerting thought. And he could feel some of his earlier frustration seeping back in when he tried to reach for the memories she was talking about, and realized they still weren’t there. “I always swore I wasn’t going to be anything like my grandfather,” he said slowly. “Or like my parents, either.” Jayne was watching him intently, as though she wanted to see what was going on in his thoughts. “That didn’t leave you a lot of early role models you could be like, did it?” she said. “Oh, there was always the Caped Crusader.” He could tell his attempt at a lighter tone wasn’t fooling her. “And Neil Armstrong. After all, NASA was practically up the road.” “But you were stuck here. With your grandfather and his sense of duty.” She paused, then added, “Did he think you were a duty, too, Nick?” “I was the biggest one of all.” “And he took you in when your parents died?” “Is that what I told you?” She gave him a sharp look. It was obvious she’d always wondered about this. Or perhaps something in his account hadn’t jibed in that quick mind of hers. “You told me your grandfather adopted you when you were seven,” she said. “And that your parents were both dead. I guess I assumed—” It made sense to Ryder. “I probably wanted you to assume that,” he said. “The reality wasn’t very appealing.” Even with Jayne’s sympathetic, heart-shaped face so close to his, these things weren’t easy to think about, much less to say. He paused, those old feelings threatening to rise and swamp him again. “Ryder.” How could a woman’s voice be firm and sultry at the same time? He looked up and saw her frowning at him. “If you clam up on me now, I swear I’ll be very tempted to use this knife on you.” He looked down at the knife she still held. Some of his memories, at least, were crystal clear—like the solitary hours he’d spent working on that inlaid handle, hiding out in this cabin, trying to find someplace he could call his own between his parents’ on-again, off-again love and his grandfather’s stern sense of right and wrong. “Why did your grandfather adopt you?” She wasn’t going to let him out of it, he realized. He might as well just get this over with. “I think I was pretty much a mistake in my parents’ lives,” he replied. “Sometimes they enjoyed having me around, but mostly I was only in the way. They had a tendency to leave me with friends and just forget to come collect me again.” Like checked luggage, he’d often thought as a child. He’d long since learned to clamp down on the hurt of those old rejections. But Jayne’s eyes darkened with indignation as she listened to him. “How long did they leave you for?” she wanted to know. “Weeks. Sometimes months.” “Nick—” He shook his head at her instinctive protest. “They were the original party kids,” he said. “They lived to have a good time. I just didn’t fit into that lifestyle.” “So your grandfather adopted you to give you some kind of real home.” “He bought me from them.” This time he couldn’t keep his voice casual. “At least, that was how I thought of it when I was a kid. He tried not to let me know about it, but I found out he’d paid my parents off—settled a big chunk of his money on them in exchange for a promise that they would disappear from my life.” Jayne’s face was appalled. “And they did?” she said. “They had—expensive habits. Anything you could drink or snort or bet money on was like a magnet to those two.” He tried to keep his old anger out of his words, but his efforts didn’t quite work. There was so much tied up with these memories. There was his own misplaced but fierce love for those flamboyant, feckless people, his parents. And his childhood certainty that if he hadn’t been such a nuisance, they would never have left him behind. And his slow realization that if you wanted to be loved in this world, you had to earn the privilege. It wasn’t something that came naturally. It wasn’t a gift. It was a reward, something you got once you’d proved you deserved it. All those recollected tensions were gnawing at him now, making his gut ache again. He hauled in a slow breath and realized Jayne was reaching out a hand to cover his. He wanted to draw back—damn it, this was difficult enough without his feelings for Jaynie confusing things even more. But before he could move, her slender fingers were entwined with his. “What did your parents die of?” she asked softly. “My mother died of an overworked liver. And my father...” He paused, thinking of that charming, good-looking rogue who’d been so slick on the outside, but so weak when it counted. “I think my father died of lack of my mother,” he said. “They weren’t very good at behaving like adults, but they really did love each other.” And they hadn’t loved their son, despite their occasional giddy outbursts of affection. His grandfather’s love had been uncertain in another way. It had always been tied to how well Ryder could live up to his grandfather’s exactingly high standards. Love, he’d discovered early in his life, could be as sharp and dangerous as the knife Jayne was sliding back into its scabbard. She’d let go of his hand to do it. He could feel the loss of contact like a sudden cold draft on the mild evening air. He looked up into her face, half hoping to see that sympathetic light in her eyes again. To his surprise, she was looking almost pleased. “That explains it,” she said. “Explains what?” She snapped the sheath closed and set the knife on the bed between them. Even in the faint candlelight, the abalone inlay of the handle shone against the old red blanket he’d dug out of the closet. “It explains why we were so drawn together when we first met,” she said. “How did we meet, anyway?” “Greg Iverson introduced us. He was editor of the college newspaper, and I was a staff photographer. The two of you played on the baseball team together.” Ryder didn’t like the little twinge of jealousy that grabbed him at the mention of Greg Iverson’s name, not to mention this thumbnail sketch of Iverson’s all-round college career. Athlete, editor, law student, future governor of the state, no doubt—not to mention a suitor for the hand of the woman who was still Ryder’s wife. “I had done a photo layout, accompanied by an article I’d written about my mother’s death,” Jayne continued. “She drank herself to death over a period of about fifteen years, after my father was killed in Vietnam. Greg let me do a very personal piece about it for the paper. When you read it, you bugged him and bugged him until he finally introduced us.” Ryder could imagine Iverson resisting the idea. What man wouldn’t want to have a woman like Jayne all to himself? “We just—seemed to know each other somehow,” she said. “You always dodged my questions about your own family, but—I knew there must have been something that had taught you how it felt not to be able to count on anyone but yourself.” There were too many emotions shoving at Ryder now. He was thinking of that moment when he’d first seen her in his hospital room. He’d had exactly that feeling—that they knew each other, that somehow, without even hearing her name, he’d recognized her as a central part of his life. A temporary part, his mind told him. And Greg Iverson was standing in the wings, just waiting for Ryder’s exit. The strength of the possessiveness that suddenly swept through him took him by surprise. Maybe their marriage was over. Maybe it would all happen exactly the same way if he and Jayne were to do it over again. Maybe the uncertainty about love that had been ingrained in Ryder so early on just didn’t fit with what Jayne wanted from life. But right here— Right now— He needed to know that what he and Jayne shared—what they’d instinctively recognized in each other—was real. Even if it was almost over. The light from the clearing outside was faint and fading fast. From the floor at his feet, the single candle made a soft pool of golden light that seemed to join the two of them together in the midst of the shadows around them. Ryder couldn’t think of a single thing to say that wouldn’t lead them into subjects he didn’t want to talk about. And he could see Jayne thinking hard, opening her mouth to speak. She was going to pursue this thread to its very end, he thought. She was so single-minded, so quietly persistent. He could almost hear her next question. He didn’t want to answer it. So he leaned forward and kissed her, instead Chapter 11 He’d intended to stop with a kiss. After all, he’d managed to restrain himself yesterday, carrying her toward the cabin. And only this morning, even with the soft touch of her hands against his hair, he’d managed to sit through the haircut she’d given him without once betraying how his body was reacting to her nearness, the scent of her skin, her gentle fingers. Of course, yesterday he’d been nearly exhausted. And this morning they’d been out on the water, secluded for the moment but still visible to anyone on the river. Neither of those things applied now. Now it was just the two of them in this nearly silent, nearly dark cabin. And with the first touch of Jayne’s lips, Ryder could feel himself losing all control. He’d been certain her attention had been fixed on the questions she’d been asking him, and on the story that had emerged about his past, his family. But as his mouth met hers, he heard—or maybe felt—a throaty sigh that made him realize he hadn’t been the only one aware of how close they were sitting on the old rope bed. He threaded his hands into her hair and felt those short, soft strands falling over his palms. She was so delicate—when he ran his hands along it, her neck felt as slender, as elegant as a crane’s. But there was a strength in her that was impossible to miss. Ryder could feel it as he lowered his grip and clasped her closer to him. And he could feel it, too, in the way her tongue arced against his, enticing him, answering him. He had no conscious memory of what making love with Jayne Robards had been like. But his body was telling him very clearly that it was the kind of experience a man might happily die for. This is just a kiss, he told himself. He couldn’t stand to end it, though—not yet, not when the perfume of Jayne’s skin was surrounding him like an exotic genie let loose from a magic lamp. She was still wearing the lavender sweater she’d had on when he’d first caught sight of her in the doorway of his hospital room. Even with his eyes closed, Ryder could see the color of it. It was a pale copy of the deep violet of her eyes. And it was loose around the waistband of those tight, sexy jeans she’d bought for herself in Narvaez. He couldn’t resist the urge to slide his hands up inside the sweater. Her waist was so small he thought he could probably encircle it completely with his hands. He didn’t stop to find out. The feeling of her skin against his palms was driving him crazy. He glided higher, feeling the long curve of her rib cage, then the soft weight of her breasts. He rubbed one thumb over the tight nipple he could feel through her lacy bra, and heard that throaty moan again, quivering deep inside her. Every cell in his body was begging him to wrap both arms around her and carry her down with him onto the bed. But it’s just a kiss. Nothing more. Anything more spells trouble. He tried to hang on to the words, even as the sensation of her breasts growing taut under his hands had him feelings half-wild. “Jaynie—” There was a pleading note in his voice that startled him. He never pleaded, never wasted time wishing for dreams that were out of his reach. He’d learned that lesson a long time ago. The problem was, time wasn’t behaving itself these days. His recent past—everything that included his marriage to Jayne, his career, his arrest, his jail sentence—had vanished into the air. And the more distant past—the cabin, the forest, the lonely kid he’d been—all seemed very immediate. He was that lonely adolescent again, hungry for love and afraid to reach for it, aching for the heat and comfort of a woman’s touch. And not just any woman. It was this woman he wanted—urgently, desperately. And he’d already had her—and lost her. The thought of it was enough to push most of the remaining caution right out of his thoughts. How could Jayne imagine turning her back on anything as scintillating as the way their mouths knew how to tease and tantalize each other? Knowing how perfectly their two bodies fit together, how could she stand the thought of being apart? He was pleading with her to give this relationship a second chance, he realized. Or maybe it was himself he was pleading with. He didn’t know. He only knew that the longer he went on kissing her, the harder it was to think of turning back. The satiny warmth of her mouth was turning his insides to liquid fire. He was intensely aroused, yet each new swirl of Jayne’s tongue against his seemed to make the blaze burn a little higher. He wanted to take her right now, hard and rough against the pine boards of the cabin floor. He wanted to spend all night just savoring her sweetness, coaxing an endless waterfall of those sexy little sounds out of the back of her throat. He tried to say, We should stop ‘right now, and found he couldn’t make a sound. Jayne had reached up her hands and pushed them past the open collar of his polo shirt. The feeling of her gentle, knowing fingers against his collarbone was like throwing fuel on an already blazing bonfire. He couldn’t stand it any longer. Releasing her for a moment, he pulled the navy blue shirt over his head and tossed it onto the floor. What was left of his conscious mind reminded him that the single candle was still burning down there. Scooping it up with his left hand, he reached behind him and set it out of the way at the foot of the bed where he wouldn’t kick it over. Jayne’s rapid breathing betrayed her own arousal more clearly than words. Her hands, once he’d freed her, had gone automatically to the row of little buttons at the front of her sweater. She’d undone the top few. But now, as Ryder turned to her, she paused. Her eyes were nearly black, her lips parted and rosy pink. Her words, though, held an undercurrent of doubt. “This isn‘t—going to turn out to be another dead end, is it, Nick?” He knew she was thinking of the morning in the Olde Maritimer, when he’d pulled back from her at the last moment. “I don’t think I could stand—” He took both her hands in his and kissed first one, then the other. Such small hands, he thought, and yet so sure and strong—like Jaynie herself. Then he let them go and took over where she’d left off with the buttons of her sweater, pushing them open to reveal the silken purity of her skin. “It’s not a dead end.” He didn’t tell her about the condoms he’d bought in the little beer and bait shop at the dock in Narvaez. With his face half-hidden by the sunglasses and baseball cap, it had seemed safe enough to show himself. He hadn’t exactly planned on this happening again, but only an idiot would have pretended it wasn’t possible. He was glad now he’d bought the protection. Like Jayne, he didn’t want a replay of the way his fears had come between them a couple of days ago. “I don’t know where this is leading,” he said. His voice sounded like a bear’s growl, he thought. And that was what he felt like—a wild animal, responding to wholly primitive urges that he couldn’t have denied if he’d wanted to. “But I do know one thing,” he added. He got the last button of her sweater undone and gazed in awe at the milky perfection of her skin in the soft candlelight. He ran a hand over her belly, her breasts, and felt her quiver as she leaned her head back and closed her eyes. “I don’t think I could stop this if someone was holding a gun to my head,” he finished, and leaned forward to kiss the base of her long, exquisite neck before pulling her arms free and tossing the sweater onto the mattress behind her. His choice of words wasn’t the best, he realized. He moved slightly away from her again and saw her eyes open, as though the dangers of the past few days suddenly threatened to crowd in on them again. But there was no danger around them now. There was only the velvet warmth of the deepening Florida night, and the sounds of the evening birds, and the quiet murmur of the breeze in the tops of the trees. This was a sanctuary, just for the moment. Jayne’s eyelids half closed again as she eased back into pleasure, silently telling him she felt the same way. They were safe. They were hidden. In each other’s arms, they were home. “Nick...” He loved the way she breathed his name. And the feeling of her fingers running through his hair. He loved everything about her, he realized suddenly, even the tiny, stubborn frown that hadn’t quite left her forehead as she spoke. “Why—why couldn’t you have been this honest with me—when we were still married?” she asked huskily. He didn’t have a good answer. Except the obvious one. “We are still married.” He could feel that spurt of possessive desire again, urging him to claim her as his own, to imprint her body with his loving so she could never truly belong to another man. He reached one hand behind her back and flicked open the clasp of her bra. His fingers seemed to know exactly how to do it, just as he knew exactly how she would respond when he lowered his head and kissed the hollow between her breasts as he tossed the scrap of lace onto the floor next to his shirt. Still, she seemed to be trying to cling to the common sense Ryder had long since abandoned. “I’ve spent such a long time—trying to convince myself that it’s really over between us,” she said. The little gasp in the middle of her sentence was prompted by Ryder’s tongue curling around the center of her breast. She was leaning back in his grasp, gripping his shoulders hard with her hands, fighting, he thought, for self-control, And losing. “Are you trying to convince yourself of that right now?” He spoke against the satin-smooth curve next to his cheek. He could feel her heartbeat pounding right through her body. It was like a muffled drumbeat urging both of them to go on, and on, and on. “No. Right now, I‘m—oh, Nick, that feels so good.” That was the way he’d gently captured her nipple between his teeth. He wanted to devour her, he thought, to absorb all her sweetness and strength and beauty into his own weary, battered body. As he turned his face against that seductive spot between her breasts again, she let go of his shoulders and leaned back on her wrists, opening herself wide to his caresses. Ryder eased himself toward her, and heard the old rope mattress give an ominous creak. Her gasp this time had laughter mixed into it. “I wondered if that was going to happen,” she said breathlessly. Ryder had been wondering the same thing. He’d spent enough of his boyhood hours here, fantasizing about doing exactly this. But he’d been far too shy—and too isolated—to go beyond dreaming. The mattress hadn’t been built for two. And it had certainly never been used that way. Without letting Jayne go, he shifted to one side and lowered himself onto his knees on the floor next to the bed. The move left his head almost level with hers. He succumbed without a struggle to the urge to capture her mouth again in a deep, hungry kiss. The jeans she’d bought in Narvaez fit her like a second skin. Ryder’s mouth had gone dry every time he’d let his gaze follow her as she’d moved around the cabin this afternoon. The urge to peel the faded denim off her had been nearly overwhelming. And now he let it overwhelm him. Unsnapping the top button without even looking, he eased the zipper downward. His mind was reeling with images of the warm center of her body opening to him the way her mouth was opening under his. As though she’d been waiting for the gesture, Jayne lifted herself slightly off the mattress. Between the two of them, they slid her out of her jeans and panties. Ryder heard her sneakers clunk against the floor behind him and felt the whole world tilt at the realization that she was naked in his arms and responding to him with a passion that went far beyond anything he knew he deserved. For a moment that little voice in the back of his mind muttered at him again. He could almost hear the well-worn phrases, intruding on the pleasure that was racking him from head to toe. This won’t last. You don’t know how to love. You haven’t earned the right to this much pleasure. He felt his belly quiver with the very beginnings of doubt, and opened his eyes as he lifted his lips from Jayne’s. She looked so unimaginably beautiful, with her short dark hair tousled from his touch and her cheeks tinted rose pink with the flush of desire. How could he possibly claim this woman as his own? How could he offer her anything, when he wasn’t even certain he could keep either of them alive beyond the next few days? She opened her eyes, too. And she seemed to recognize the dawning doubts that Ryder was doing his best to hide. At first he thought he’d done it again—killed their pleasure dead before it had had a chance to take hold. He could already feel the guilt of it nudging at him. But then Jayne shifted her weight again. And the unabashed sensuality of her next move chased away every doubt his mind could throw at him. With a slow, sexy smile, she lifted both bare legs and wrapped them around Ryder’s torso. He’d taken off his elastic bandage earlier in the day, and although his ribs were still tender, Jayne’s leggy embrace was so gentle that he felt no pain, only an astonished arousal when he realized what her provocative caress meant. She didn’t speak. It was as though she shared his realization that words were too dangerous for the two of them, too loaded with all the difficulties of the past. But their bodies seemed to know a way around all that. As Jayne pulled them closer together, clasping him to the moist, eager center of her, Ryder gave up thinking and let himself sink into the overpowering seduction of the moment. He thought he was probably going to pop a rivet in his own jeans if he didn’t get out of them soon. Getting free of them without disentangling himself from Jayne’s body was a challenge, but he managed it. And then pure passion took over, and there was nothing Ryder could do but just ride the wave until it finally crested, taking him with it. She swung one leg around the hardness of his arousal, capturing him in the juncture of her thighs. Ryder groaned and leaned into her, sliding one hand under her bottom, lifting her slightly, delving into the sweet, wet core of her. Her cry of delight was music to his soul. He reached deeper and deeper into her, lost in the softness of her skin and the generous eroticism of the way she was responding to his touch. The silky expanse of her inner thigh was rubbing against him in a way that was close to maddening. He felt as though he was being absorbed into the night itself, into the hidden recesses of Jayne’s body and the realm of dreams he’d never dared to let himself reach for. “Jaynie—please—” He didn’t know what he was pleading for this time. He heard her cry out again as he reached some secret spot deep inside her. She was as sultry and mysterious as the tropical landscape around them. And he thought the scent and heat of her body might be what would finally drive him right out of his mind. The feeling of her fingers stroking him was too much to stand. Reaching briefly behind. him, he pulled one of the condoms out of the back pocket of his jeans, where he’d stashed them. He saw Jayne’s eyes widen at the sudden crackle of plastic as he opened the package. Don’t say anything, he begged her silently. Don’t let this moment disappear on us again. He had the thing on before she’d had a chance to say whatever was on her mind. And the questions that had troubled her gaze for those few seconds disappeared again when Ryder ran both palms up over the length of her body and then down along the gentle curve of her spine. Lifting her again, he settled her against him and felt her welcoming him inside her, pulling him toward her with intertwined legs, banishing the last of the wariness that lingered in his thoughts. There was nothing but the animal satisfaction of joining with her now, nothing but the delight of a discovery that seemed new and familiar at the same time. Her astonished, wordless cry told him she felt exactly the same way. Had it always been this way? he wondered. He was almost certain it had. How could anyone ever get used to something this all-encompassing, to a sensation that wrapped body and heart and soul into one excruciatingly compelling rhythm? He followed that rhythm blindly, moving farther into Jayne as though she was the source of everything he had ever longed for. His hands splayed against her back—her fingers dug deeply into his shoulders—they gasped in unison whenever the balance of their bodies shifted and they discovered another angle of pleasure, another level of longing. That longing had consumed the entire world now. There was nothing anywhere outside this room, outside the small, candlelit circle where they rocked together in each other’s arms, driven faster and faster toward the fulfillment Ryder had seen beckoning to him in Jayne’s eyes since he’d first turned and looked at her. The rope bed creaked, but he paid no attention this time. Jayne’s inarticulate cries were spiraling up farther and farther. They seemed to connect to something directly at the base of his spine. He felt as though he was burning up like the candle beside them, as though the heat he and Jayne were generating was a flame he would gladly let himself be consumed by. And then, suddenly, it exploded into one glorious blaze. He heard Jayne’s voice peak on a high, quivering note of amazement and awe. And then, as she shivered into reaction around him, his body answered her with a spasm so powerful he felt he might fly into a million pieces in the dark night around them if he let her go. It took a long time for things to stop smoldering. Ryder couldn’t open his eyes, couldn’t do anything but hang on and wait while his heart rate finally caught up to the rest of him. He swirled one thumb over the smooth expanse of Jayne’s back, pausing to caress the little valley alongside her spine. Her breathing was as erratic as his. And she seemed to be just as lost in the moment, just as incapable of finding words for what they had shared. After a while, he moved far enough away to reach for the blanket he’d used as a mattress last night. With the red blanket from the rope bed on top of both of them, it made a rough enough place to sleep. But just as neither of them seemed capable of speech, neither of them wanted to let the other go. Ryder drew Jayne’s still-warm body close against him and settled his head next to hers on the single pillow she’d pulled down from the bed. The hard pine boards under them didn’t matter. This was heaven, or as close to it as a man could probably get. With that thought in his mind, and with Jayne’s soft hair ruffling against the skin of his cheek, Ryder drifted into the most restful sleep he’d had in a very long time. Ryder had left the beginning and the end of the trail as overgrown as they’d found it, to keep any prying eyes from noticing the way he’d been clearing the underbrush every time they’d trekked to the motorboat and back. He’d dragged a tree trunk across the boggy spot just before the clearing, though, dropping it so that it looked as though it had fallen there naturally. As Jayne crossed the log now, arms outstretched to keep her footing on its smooth, curved surface, she felt as though this balancing act mirrored the one she’d been doing all day. Ryder had already been up when she’d wakened. She’d heard him splashing in the rain barrel outside the cabin, and realized he was probably washing his hair, as he’d done yesterday morning. Had he awakened with the kind of lascivious thoughts that were quivering through her own body? And if he had, was he using the cold rainwater to dampen them down? When he came back into the cabin, however, she hadn’t seen the distant, cautious expression she’d feared. He’d looked mildly disappointed to find her already dressed, but he’d given her a quick grin and a casual kiss before setting out the cereal box for breakfast. While they ate, their conversation was confined to the safe, neutral subject of the faxes they were expecting that morning and the lack of milk and coffee to round out the breakfast menu. The rest of the morning had been the same. Ryder had shown no signs of the passion that had overwhelmed both of them last night. But he hadn’t retreated all the way back into himself, either. She didn’t know what he was thinking, or feeling. But she found herself acting in much the same way, half-cautious, half-intimate. It was as though they were both unwilling to plunge ahead into something that still felt shaky and uncertain, but aware that with last night’s lovemaking they had crossed the line into something new and undefined. The problem was, she couldn’t figure out whether they’d been heading forward or backward when they’d crossed that line. And the strangeness of it—the sense that the territory they’d entered was both familiar and unexplored—had kept her on edge all day, feeling as though she was balancing precariously between an unresolved past and a future that was still hazy and unchartered. “Hang on to those faxes.” Ryder’s voice was deep and gravelly behind her as she stepped from the log onto dry land. “I have a feeling we’re going to find what we’re looking for somewhere in there.” Jayne already had the same feeling. While Ryder had piloted the boat back from Narvaez, she’d been scanning the information her friend had dug up. Even at a casual glance, she’d noticed some things that shed new light on the court records they’d been looking at yesterday. Once they were back inside the cabin, they divided up the shiny pages. “We’re looking for any unusual background information about the defendants in Judge Brady’s cases,” Ryder said, uncapping the highlighter Jayne had bought. “Particularly the ones we thought he’d been especially tough or especially lenient with.” Those policeman’s instincts of his still worked so well, Jayne thought. Ryder had loved being a detective. She’d always wondered whether it was a way for him to take a stand against the chaos of the world around him. Unfortunately, the chaos inside him had been harder to control. Had it finally prompted him to betray his colleagues and his own early idealism? She found it harder and harder to believe, especially when she saw him digging into the information in front of him now, searching eagerly for the truth. But this isn’t the same Nick Ryder you said goodbye to a year ago, she cautioned herself when she felt the little tug of desire as he ran his big, agile hands through his newly cropped dark golden hair. If and when his memory came back, that other Ryder—that stony-faced, uncommunicative loner—could reappear. Their new, tentative camaraderie kept lifting her heart without warning. But she had to keep reminding herself that nothing had changed permanently. They were still on the run. They still didn’t know what Ryder had done, or what he had gotten in the way of someone else’s doing. They were still getting divorced. Nothing had happened to alter any of that. Stifling a sigh, Jayne turned to her own pile of faxes and started to read. Chapter 12 She found something almost immediately. “Listen to this,” she said. “It’s a social column about some fund-raising dinner John Brady was at three years ago.” She read him the brief paragraph, and noticed his face change when she came to the list of attendees. “Jimmy Trujillo?” he echoed. “We came across that name yesterday.” He reached for the previous day’s faxes. “He was a defendant in one of Brady’s cases.” Jayne had already made the connection. “Racketeering, I think.” “Right.” Ryder had found the record he was searching for. “He was one of the people Brady went easy on.” He took the page Jayne was handing over to him. “Strange that they would know each other socially,” he commented. “Not that strange. I’ve photographed a lot of high-society dinners and fundraisers since I’ve been with the Bulletin, and you’d be surprised who gets onto some of those guest lists. Not everybody in those tailored tux jackets gets their money from family trust funds, if you know what I mean.” “I know exactly what you mean.” Ryder scanned the clipping, highlighted a line or two, then set it aside. “I think it’s worth remembering.” Jayne agreed. “My friend may turn up something else about Trujillo in tomorrow’s batch,” she said. It wasn’t the only lead they found. Jayne’s memory started to click as they read through the dozens of newspaper articles her friend had sent. Before long it began to look to her as though the criminals Judge Brady seemed to favor might be associated with the same Miami crime syndicate. “Organized crime isn’t my beat,” Jayne said. “My editor’s like your grandfather—a little old-fashioned in his ideas. He thinks women shouldn’t be covering violent crime, so mostly I don’t get to photograph and write about those cases until they’re already in court. But I could swear that most of these names are boys from the same mob.” “So if this mob had bought Brady somehow—” Jayne knew it wasn’t unheard of. “And if you had somehow stumbled onto the fact during one of your own investigations—” “It could be that I was framed—and given a stiff sentence—to get me out of the way,” Ryder finished, running his hands through his hair once more, making it look more than ever like a lion’s mane. “It doesn’t explain how you got out on parole so early.” “I know. It would explain why the FBI was picking me up, though, wouldn’t it?” He raised his eyes to hers, and she could see him fighting his own frustration again. It was obvious his memory was creeping back, bit by bit. But it hadn’t completely returned yet. He was asking for Jayne’s confirmation, and annoyed that he still had to. His whole manner could change when he starts to remember what really happened. She swallowed and wished she could decide whether that moment was one she was eagerly awaiting or living in dread of. “The FBI does have jurisdiction over cases of corruption in law enforcement agencies,” she said. “But this still doesn’t tell us whether they were interested in you as an informant or a perpetrator.” He scowled at her. “Everything about this case cuts two ways,” he said. “Every piece of information we have could mean at least two different things. Damn it—” He raised a hand as though he was about to slap the tabletop, then caught Jayne’s eye and stopped. “I know,” he said ruefully. “It doesn’t help. I just can’t figure out what else to do.” He ran his hands through his hair again and looked at the pile of pages on the table in front of him. “We know there’s somebody in the Miami police department who’s in league with whoever tried to kill you.” Jayne went back to basics, partly to sort out her own tangled thoughts, partly to block out her reaction to the way Ryder’s strong forearms rippled as he dug his fingers into his dark blond hair. “Right.” He frowned, but let her continue. “And if our guesses are right, the mob may be mixed up in this somewhere, too.” “Makes sense. Those three attempts to kill me had a professional look to them.” “I agree. And cops may be good with guns, but they’re not trained to be professional killers, the way mob hit men are. So we’re looking at two components already, the mob and some corrupt element in the Miami police.” “Plus the legal end.” “I was getting to that. Let’s assume the mob has bought people in the police department, and that it also owns John Brady. So when its people get arrested—” “The cops can try to fudge the evidence, which will make it harder to get convictions.” He was already a step ahead of her. “Or if it does get as far as a trial—” “They’ve got a friend in the legal system—Justice John Brady—to tilt things in the defendant’s direction.” Jayne was so intrigued by the picture that was starting to emerge that she barely noticed how they’d slipped into their old pattern of finishing each other’s sentences. “And Ryder—here’s another thing. You had a case—I can’t remember what it was—where something went wrong with the evidence. You were furious about it—you said you knew you’d followed procedure. You couldn’t understand where things had fouled up. But if there was someone in the evidence room doctoring things—” “The evidence room.” His eyes changed suddenly. He looked the way he had on the river when he’d started to recognize the landscape as his home, Jayne thought. Was he on the verge of another breakthrough into the memories that had been locked away from him? She could see him struggling for a recollection. But after a moment, the gleam in his eyes faded, and he shook his head. “I thought I had something,” he said. “But it’s gone. The evidence room rings another belt, though. That’s where you said I supposedly stole the money from, right?” “Right.” Jayne had been thinking along the same lines. “If somebody was actively altering evidence, it wouldn’t have been hard to frame you that way.” She could feel her heart lifting at the thought that one part of this mystery might be close to a solution. It wouldn’t fix everything. But at least it might lay to rest the doubts about Ryder’s integrity that had plagued her during his year in prison. At the very edges of that fledgling feeling of hope was the thought—faint but impossible to ignore—that if they could lighten some of the clouds over their relationship, they might be able to lighten the others, as well. Maybe, if they unraveled this thread of the mystery, they might find their way back to each other. She tried to squelch the idea. It was absurd, far-fetched. And if she allowed herself to hope for it and then it came to nothing, it could be heartbreaking. But it wouldn’t go away. It lingered in the still afternoon air of the cabin as she and Ryder shuffled the day’s faxes into order. “So what do we do next?” he asked. She knew he was talking about the mystery. But it took an effort to tear her own thoughts away from the tantalizing glimpse of the future that kept nudging at her. “Well, we can’t go to the police.” “Obviously.” “We don’t know whether the FBI is on our side or not. And we do know Greg Iverson is being watched, in case he contacts us.” He nodded. “Doesn’t leave much in the way of official help,” he said. “There’s one avenue we haven’t explored yet. The Bulletin .” “Your paper?” “I told you, my editor loves corruption scandals. If we can feed him the evidence we’ve got, my guess is he’ll set the wheels in motion to break this thing open.” Ryder looked doubtful. “Can he do it? Without getting himself killed, I mean?” “He’s gone after public officials—and mob bosses—before now and walked away in one piece. My one concern is that we haven’t definitely tied Brady to the mob yet. It’s just speculation. If we had something that linked them conclusively—” “There may be something in tomorrow’s faxes. We asked your friend to dig up what she could about the period of Brady’s life when his verdicts seemed to start getting screwy, after all. If there’s anything really damning, that’s where it’ll likely be.” “I agree. Which leaves us nothing to do but wait until tomorrow.” It sounded simple—just wait. But the cabin seemed to get very crowded when the two of them were moving around at loose ends. They kept finding themselves close together without meaning to be. Jayne considered taking a nap. But the idea of lying down on the bed with Ryder so close to her seemed unbearably suggestive. She wasn’t sure she wanted to let herself be pulled back into the kind of firestorm she’d been swept into last night. Her body was still thrilling with the memory of their lovemaking, and the unthinkable possibilities it had unleashed. She was starting to let herself entertain impossible thoughts about Ryder finding his way back into her life, she realized. She was thinking and doing things that only a week ago she would have declared to be absolutely out of the question. It was time to put the brakes on, if she could. But it was more easily said than done. Ryder’s own restless wanderings around the cabin kept catching her eye. She was drawn to the long slope of his back, the sexy tilt of his hips, the superheated depths of his blue gaze. “Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked midway through the afternoon, when she caught him staring at her from across the cabin yet again. “No reason.” She thought he was trying to look neutral, disinterested. But a quick grin got past him, slanting his mouth into a devilishly sensuous curve. “This just happens to be exactly the fantasy I entertained for most of my adolescent years,” he added. “Being cooped up here with a beautiful woman—” He shook his head, and his grin widened. “Only difference is, in the fantasy I wasn’t trying quite so hard to be a gentleman.” If that’s what he was doing, it wasn’t working. Desire rose like a spring flood in Jayne’s body every time their eyes met. And the thought of the night to come was in both their minds, she was certain. They’d folded the pair of blankets and put them on the foot of the single bed, but she caught Ryder’s glance straying that way more than once, as though he was wondering whether nightfall would find them in each other’s arms again. They shared a meal of corn chips and salsa from a jar. Ryder looked into the empty jar when they were finished and said, “I think my cholesterol level is slipping dangerously low. I’d give my right arm for a nice juicy steak.” “Don’t start trading your body parts yet. You may need them.” Jayne crumpled up the empty chip bag. “But I know what you mean. I’ve been craving grilled shrimp all day. I miss cooked food.” “And beer. I miss beer.” She shook her head at him as she got up from the table. “I can’t imagine anything that would knock the memory of beer out of your head,” she told him. The thought seemed to please him. “When this is all over, I’m going to take you someplace where we can order steak and grilled shrimp and a whole row of beers,” he said. Something flared inside her at his words, something that was part hope and part alarm. It was the first time he’d said anything about the future. And he’d spoken the words so casually, so easily. Did that mean he’d been coming to think—as Jayne had—that they might be finding their way back to the closeness they’d once shared? Or had he just tossed away the comment without thinking? She couldn’t be sure. And she didn’t feel ready to ask him about it. She’d tried too many times to take a hopeful view of their future, only to watch him retreat into the demands of his job or the silence he’d used to deflect her questions. The truce between them was still fragile enough that she didn’t want to threaten it by plunging back into their old arguments. So she just shook her head again and said, “It’s a bit soon to be making dates, Nick. This is a long way from over yet.” She stepped behind him into the little area that served as a kitchen. They’d been putting their trash into one of the paper bags from the grocery store in Narvaez, but it was full now. Jayne reached for the folded-up bag she’d wedged into a space between the cupboard and the wall. Her fingers encountered more than the paper bag and the rough wood of the cupboard, though. There was something smooth in the same narrow space, something she could barely reach when she went after it with one forefinger. It was a black-and-white photograph, unframed, and badly tattered around the edges. It showed a man and a woman on a sandy beach, with a little boy between them who appeared to be about three years old. Jayne recognized him instantly. The woman was blond and vivacious-looking, with her head thrown back and a wide smile on her face. The man was smiling, too, but sheepishly, as though taking the photograph hadn’t been his idea. He had his hands on the child’s shoulders. The gesture looked awkward, and the little boy seemed to know it. Even in that child’s face, the high cheekbones were unmistakable. And so was the wariness in his eyes. “Ryder, look.” She half turned and realized he was already on his feet, looking at the photograph over her shoulder. He took it from her, staring down at it with. an expression she couldn’t decipher. “Did you remember that was here?” she asked him. He shook his head. “I must have hidden it a long time back,” he said. “I had no idea—” She looked back down at the photograph. No child should have that too-knowing, guarded look in his eyes, she thought. A child had the right to grow up knowing he was loved, feeling he was secure. That was what Jayne had hoped to offer their own children—a home where they would be cherished, a mother and a father whose love would stay with them while they grew and found their place in the world. She’d once hoped—so fervently it made her ache to think about it—to see a little blond boy playing in her own backyard, with exactly those high cheekbones. She’d always wanted children, as far back as she could remember. And not just any children—Ryder’s children, blond babies who would have a chance to grow and thrive without the battles she was realizing Ryder himself had had to fight. No wonder he’d chosen a profession where he could be the one to solve mysteries, to make order out of chaos. And no wonder he’d been so hesitant about the idea of having children of his own. And yet— “They don’t look like the monsters I was picturing,” she said slowly, examining Ryder’s father’s face without finding any of the selfishness she’d been expecting. He just looked weak and unsure of himself. Ryder’s words confirmed her thoughts. “They weren’t monsters,” he said. “They were just unhappy people trying to act happy. I think they must have fed each other’s worst tendencies, and that didn’t help anything.” “Did we—do the same thing, do you think?” She couldn’t help asking the question. And she was so absorbed in waiting for his answer that she barely noticed him sliding one long arm around her shoulders, pulling them closer together. He seemed to be offering support and looking for it at the same time, she thought. The gesture had been completely natural, as though the closeness they’d been sidestepping all day had simply overtaken them with no fanfare. “I don’t know,” he said. His deep voice resonated against her shoulder as he spoke. “I still can’t remember anything about our lives together.” She’d been expecting to hear that bitter, frustrated sound in his voice. But for the moment it seemed to have disappeared. His words were serious, but more open than she’d heard him sound yet. She could feel the flutter of hope in her chest again. If she and Ryder could just hold on to this moment of trust and candor—if they’d somehow found an unexpected way around all the obstacles that had plagued their marriage— “I do know one thing, though.” He set the photograph down on the table and turned so he was facing Jayne with both forearms resting on her shoulders. She felt her whole body start to pulse as her hips nestled into the angle of his long legs. “Even without the rest of my memory, I’m prepared to swear that what happened last night was better than anything I ever even thought about.” He lowered his arms, circling her waist and pulling her closer. “It was—the way it used to be.” Her voice had gotten husky without her realizing it. “Was it?” She caught the suggestive gleam in his eyes, and wished she could capture the quick slanting grin that so completely transformed his face. She’d always loved Ryder’s grin—the maverick charm of it, the way she’d sometimes caught a glimpse, under that sexy tilt of his lips, of something half-hidden, something lonely but aching for love, something that had always spoken directly to her soul. She was seeing it now, buried deep in his dark blue eyes. And it was making it very difficult to breathe all of a sudden. There were so many things she wanted to ask him. Had these stolen few days in his boyhood home laid any of his old demons to rest? Did he recognize how much he’d changed, even since she’d found him at the hospital in Miami? Was it possible he shared her dawning sense that this might be a new beginning for the two of them? She didn’t get a chance to put any of her questions into words. He was shifting his body against her, reaching behind him for something. It took her a moment to realize it was his old knife he was after. He unsnapped the scabbard from its place on his belt and handed it to Jayne. His fingers closed around hers as he put it into her palm. The worn leather was warm against her skin from its contact with Ryder’s hip. She ran her thumb over the intricate inlaid pattern on the handle, feeling a sudden strong connection with the lonely boy who’d made it. “I want you to have this.” His voice roughened over the words like a grader on a gravel country road. “I-well, I owe you.” She looked into his eyes, and felt herself caught all over again between longing and doubt. “You don’t owe me anything, Ryder,” she said. “If you’re thinking—” His fingers tightened around hers where they held the knife. “I owe you for that diamond ring you pawned, if nothing else,” he said. “This is—well, it’s not worth much to anyone except me. But it‘s—” She waited while he searched for the right words. “I just want you to have it,” he said finally, sounding frustrated with his own attempts to say what he was feeling. “It’s not a promise, not exactly. Hell, I’ve got no right to promise you anything right now. I just—it’s all I’ve got to offer you.” Jayne couldn’t help thinking of the bleak moment when she’d handed her wedding ring to the clerk in that dingy pawnshop in Fort Lauderdale. Such a contrast to the shining promise of the day Ryder had first slipped the ring onto her finger. She didn’t know where this moment fit between those two extremes of hope and hopelessness. He was giving her the only token he possessed at the moment. But he seemed to be doing it as a way to settle old scores, to repay a debt he seemed to feel he owed her. On the other hand, it was impossible to miss the rough honesty in his face and words. He wasn’t making empty promises, as he’d done so many times before. He wasn’t avoiding her, running away into the dark mysteries of his job or anywhere else. He was here with her, giving her as much as he could give right now. And standing close to him like this, looking up into the deep sea-blue of his eyes, was making it difficult to think beyond what this moment might offer in return. The scent of his skin—musky, elemental—was close to intoxicating. The obvious stirring of desire at the juncture of his thighs acted like an accelerant to the arousal that had been simmering inside her all day. Suddenly impatient with words and questions and promises, Jayne lifted her arms to circle his neck. “You gave me something last night,” she murmured. That devil-may-care grin flashed across his face again. “I was thinking of suggesting a rerun,” he said. “Just in case we missed anything the first time.” The first time... That was exactly what it had been like. It had been like going back in time, recapturing their lost love, with all the more recent shadows cleared away. The temptation to savor that unclouded passion was getting more and more difficult to resist. Jayne nestled her body closer to his, and said, “Nick, just out of curiosity—” “Mmm?” He sounded like a big lazy cat, purring in pleasure as she moved against him. “How many of those condoms did you buy?” His grin widened. “Two,” he said. “One—well, just in case. And the other one—” The grin reached his eyes, becoming purely erotic. “In case the first one didn’t work,” he finished. “So that means there’s one left.” “Uh-huh.” She wasn’t sure when he’d started to move his hips like that, or when she’d begun to sway in response. It was like slow dancing, she thought. She could feel the old seductive rhythm building inside her, urging her toward the completion that only Ryder’s loving had ever been able to bring her. His voice was a low rumble at her cheekbone. “And there’s a good chance we’ll be out of here tomorrow,” he was saying. “If those faxes give us what we need, we’ll be gone. No sense carrying out the supplies we carried in, the way I figure it.” She fought the little quiver of disappointment that went through her at the thought of leaving this quiet haven. Tomorrow would be here soon enough, she told herself. For now, she didn’t want to let thoughts of everything that might still go wrong ruin this moment of unexpected union. “Well,” she murmured, “we’ve already polished off the com chips.” He chuckled against her ear. “Time to move on to dessert, then,” he said. And then both of them gave up on talking, as though they’d recognized again how fragile this shared peace was. A false step—a piece of bad luck—a misplaced word about a forbidden subject—there were a dozen ways they could shatter this momentary tenderness. But for the moment they were together. And for the moment that was all that counted. Their loving this time was achingly slow and tender. For an exquisitely long time they just swayed in each other’s arms, following the silent music that was playing inside both of them. It seemed like forever before Jayne lifted her head from Ryder’s shoulder and looked into his eyes. Still holding his gaze, she slid her hands under his dark blue shirt and pushed it up over his head. The dark gold hairs on his chest, when she ran her palms over them, seemed to ignite tiny electrical charges all through her body. His skin had a salty outdoor tang to it when she lowered her head and caressed the hard planes of his chest with her open mouth. She felt his frame stiffen as she did it. Her own body was already more than ready for him, hungry for his touch, eager for the heat and hardness of him. But they both seemed determined to spin out this erotic prelude to its full length. Although he made quick work of getting out of his jeans, and of helping her out of her own clothes, there was nothing hurried in the way he caressed her. He followed each curve and hollow of her body with hands that were almost worshipful, as though he couldn’t believe she was really here in his arms, as though this was the first time—and maybe the last—they would ever share the almost unbearable delight of inflaming each other like this. When he dropped to his knees on the floor in front of her, Jayne was already close to the melting point. The feeling of his mouth exploring the hidden recesses of her body sent her straight over the edge. Her knees threatened to buckle under her as his tongue worked its slick magic. She felt his strong hands supporting her from behind—or was that a caress, too? It was impossible to tell. She was drifting on a sea of pure sensation, trembling inside and out, longing for fulfillment and yet wanting this pleasure to go on forever. When it did come, it was nothing like the sudden climax of the night before. She felt it building in her like a high tide, a slow swell that had her half laughing with delight even before the first spasms of release caught her. Ryder tightened his grasp as she dissolved into his arms, laughing with her at the uninhibited response he’d conjured up. She felt him turn his face inward first to one thigh, then the other, kissing her slowly. She could feel the adoration in his touch. Surely this was real, she told herself dizzily. It was the other Ryder who’d been a stranger—the man who’d walked away from her, who’d locked her out of his heart, the one who’d told her their love wasn’t destined to flower into the family she wanted so much. This Ryder—this gentle, passionate, vulnerable man—was the man she’d fallen in love with so long ago. And all she could think about was the joy of recapturing that love as their slow exploration of each other’s bodies took them to new and astonishing heights. The afternoon dimmed into evening, but they never noticed. To Jayne it simply felt as though they were going farther and farther inside a hidden world of wonders she thought they’d lost the key to. By the time Ryder finally lifted her against his chest, settling her around him so that they fit like two pieces of a whole, she was already giddy with enjoyment, light-headed with passion. All her muscles quivered as he moved inside her. She saw his eyes close as they rocked together, and watched him go slack-jawed with the astounding rightness of the way they fit together. She felt unimaginably strong and safe clasped in his arms, rooted by his long, strong body. And yet he sounded anything but strong as he matched her slowly building cries of longing. His voice was hoarse, almost broken. And Jayne could hear that desperate, urgent sound in it again, as though he was begging for something. She didn’t know what he was searching for, what part of him was so far from whole that he’d let it come between him and the fiery perfection of the love they’d once shared. She only knew that this—right here, right now—was like starting over. Like grasping at a promise as it glimmered somewhere out in the dusk. As they rode the crest of passion together and tumbled headlong down the other side, Jayne held tight to that vision, to her dawning certainty that she and Ryder had been given an unexpected second chance to salvage what they’d lost. She loved him, she realized suddenly. She’d never stopped loving him. And as they eased into sleep together in each other’s arms, exhausted and sated, she wondered if there was any hope in the world that he might still love her, too. Chapter 13 At first he thought it was another dream. He couldn’t pinpoint the noise. It was like a shutter flapping against the side of the cabin, although Ryder knew there weren’t any shutters out there. He’d heard the wind rising in the night. The branches of the trees had been clacking together in the clearing for hours now. This was a more regular sound, though. It was angry, like gunfire but deeper, booming around him. The noise faded, and Ryder’s waking thoughts faded with it. He turned his face back into the gentle hollow of Jayne’s shoulder and felt sleep claiming him again. But then the dogs started barking. And something stirred down deep in his memory, where there had been nothing but shadows. The sound was still distant, dreamlike. He could hear the dogs yelping and baying, high-pitched, eager. It came and went, as though borne on the wind. Without warning, another sound cut into his thoughts. It was the crackle of a radio, and a tinny voice—a woman’s —speaking through it. Words caught at him now, all mixed in with the distant barking of the dogs. You have the right to remain silent... Please confirm your location... Ryder, what’s happening? Suddenly he knew exactly what was happening, and why. It was no dream. It was real. And deadly serious. And it was almost on his doorstep. “Ryder—” Jayne grabbed for a branch and missed. There hadn’t been time to find her sneakers after Ryder’s shouted “Get dressed!” had jolted her out of a sound sleep. She’d grabbed her leather pumps instead, and they were next to useless on the slippery curve of the log that crossed the swampy hollow at the edge of the clearing. Ryder was right behind her. She felt his arm circling her waist, half lifting her off the log and onto drier ground. “Come on.” He shifted his grip and grabbed her hand. “I don’t understand this.” She barely got the words out as they ran. “What makes you so sure—” They’re tracking us had been his only explanation when he’d tossed her jeans and sweater at her. And he didn’t seem to want to go into any more detail now. “I’m just sure.” She had to admit, it did sound as though the barking dogs were getting closer. Her brain was finally shaking off the last haze of sleep, and she was starting to be able to think of something besides just following blindly in Ryder’s footsteps. “How can anybody track us?” She grabbed another branch as her feet slipped going over a little hummock. She could feel the leather scabbard digging into her where she’d jammed Ryder’s knife into the back pocket of her jeans. “We weren’t anywhere near the main house. There’s no trail.” “They brought a helicopter in. I heard it—that’s what woke me up.” He was pulling her along relentlessly, ignoring the branches that slapped his own face as he moved. “They’ll have spotted the cabin from the air. The dogs are just to sniff us out once they reach the clearing on foot.” Jayne shivered. She knew it wasn’t only the fresh wind that was making her cold. There was something eerie about the baying and yelping sounds wafting toward them on the morning air. Fear and frustration colored her voice as she said, “Darn it, we were so close to figuring this out. If we’d just had one more day before they found us—whoever they are—” “Doesn’t really matter.” His voice was grim. “It’s all connected to the mob one way or another.” They’d been starting to reach that conclusion yesterday as they’d pored over the faxes that had come in. But Ryder sounded absolutely sure now. It was as though something had clicked in his mind overnight. “Could be police, could be FBI,” he was saying as he strode straight through another boggy spot in the trail. “But the mob will get the information sooner or later—probably sooner. We’ve got to get out of the way before that happens.” “Ryder—” She tightened her grasp on his hand, half running to keep up with him. “What makes you so sure about all this?” “The dogs barking.” It made no sense. Maybe this was all a dream, Jayne thought. It had the right feeling to it—the strange, sudden bite of the wind after the mildness of the last few days, the remnants of sleep still clouding her thoughts, the way the soggy ground kept clinging to her shoes as she tried to run. But Ryder’s voice was very definite, not dreamlike at all. And his next words were all too clear. “There were dogs barking in the neighborhood the night they came to arrest me,” he said over his shoulder. “Remember?” “I remember.” She felt a chill settle around her heart as she answered, as though the cool breeze had found its way inside her. “The flashing lights set everybody’s dogs off.” “Well, that was the sound that did it for me.” He still wasn’t looking back at her. She couldn’t see his eyes as he said the words. But his voice sounded more and more hard-edged, less and less like the man she’d been coming to love all over again during the past few days. “I heard the dogs barking, and something clicked,” he was saying. “It all came back to me. I can remember it now, Jayne. I know what’s going on. And it’s not good news.” He was tugging her to the left, off the path he’d cleared. Jayne saw the swampy beginnings of the stream that eventually led to the river, and realized he intended to wade into the muddy, slow-moving trickle. She tugged against his hand, bringing them momentarily to a balt. “Just a minute,” she said. “In the first place, you’re out of your mind if you think I’m getting into that creek with the alligators. And you can’t just tell me you know what’s happening and leave it at that. Damn it, Ryder, what’s going on here? Are you sure your memory is back?” He turned at last. And the rising storm in his blue eyes told her the answer to at least one of her questions. This was the Nick Ryder she remembered, the man who’d shut himself away behind a wall so thick she’d never been able to breach it. She could see him battling whatever fears and doubts—and tenderness—he might be feeling under that armor-plated exterior. This was the man she’d tried for so long to reach, the one who’d finally worn her out with his stubborn refusals to share his heart with her—or with anyone. His memory was back, all right. And so was everything else she’d been foolish enough to think he’d forgotten about for good. “There’s no time for this,” he said. “Then make it fast.” She held her ground against the power of his grip. He frowned, but seemed to realize she meant it. With a tight, angry shake of his head, he finally answered her. “I was working with the FBI on an undercover investigation,” he said. “They were looking into a corruption ring in the Miami police and legal system. That old case of mine you mentioned—the one where the evidence got screwed up—that was what got me started on it. I went to the FBI because I didn’t trust the Internal Affairs people in the police department.” “You never told me any of this.” His eyebrows lowered. “Jayne, you were—are—employed by the biggest cop-hater in the city. It was exactly the kind of story your editor would have put on the front page of the Bulletin, and you know it.” Indignation rose in her like a wave. “I would never have—” His fingers tightened around hers. “I knew you wouldn’t talk,” he said. “But the FBI didn’t. One condition of my joining their investigation was that I not say a word about it to you, or to anyone. Can we get out of here now?” It was two miles from his grandfather’s house to the cabin, Ryder had said. And the woods would make for slow going. Jayne kept hold of his hand, and stayed where she was. Before she took another step, she had to get the facts clear in her mind. “Why were you in jail?” she demanded. “I was framed. The rotten apples in the police department suspected what I was up to, and they rigged it to look as though I’d stolen that money. Once I was arrested, it was easy to manipulate things so I was convicted.” And he’d ended up in front of Justice John Brady, who’d made sure Ryder was sent away. But— “Couldn’t the FBI have blown the whistle at that point?” she asked. “Surely they could have put a case together—” “They—we—didn’t have the name of anyone inside the justice department who was in on the scam.” Despite her reluctance, Ryder was urging her to move, pulling her toward the stream. “I’d already logged enough hours on the investigation that I wanted to be in on the finish.” He’d logged those hours as a way of avoiding everything that was going wrong between him and Jayne, she thought. And the deeper he’d buried himself in his work, the shakier their marriage had become. It had been a vicious circle, spiraling nowhere. And despite everything, she’d let herself be pulled right back into it. She hated the way the ground was sucking at her feet, trying to slow her down. But she hated these unhappy old memories even more. “I agreed to go along with the prison sentence because it seemed like the best way to get into the confidence of some mob members who were already serving time,” Ryder was saying. “We figured I might be able to get into their confidence if they thought I was one of the bad guys. My job was to get close to Jimmy Trujillo, the construction boss who’d just been sentenced. I was supposed to see if I could get him to spill a name.” “And he did.” She tried to stay at the edge of the stream, but Ryder kept tugging her into the center, where her feet were slipping over half-buried obstacles she couldn’t see and didn’t want to think about. “Right. The night before my release, he had a party for some of his buddies, including me. He was still well connected—he could get food, drink, cigars, whatever he wanted. And once he got a few glasses of wine under his belt, he let slip that it was John Brady who was on the mob’s payroll.” He’d waited for a solid year for that information, Jayne thought—a year when she’d been trying unsuccessfully to convince herself that everything was really over between them. While she’d been hugging his pillow in those long, empty nights, Ryder had been playing felon, his mind full of nothing but his job. “I was supposed to be debriefed by the FBI right after I was released,” he said. “I remember being checked out of the prison, but everything after that is still a blank.” “The mob must have realized somehow that Trujillo had talked.” Thinking it through was a way to keep her mind off how the stream was deepening under her feet. “And they sent someone after you.” “And the rest, as they say, is history.” That grim sound was back in his voice again. “And we’re going to be history if we don’t get out of here. Come on, Jaynie, let’s pick up the pace here, all right?” Hearing his old nickname for her in that grating, impersonal tone made Jayne shiver again inside. It had all disappeared, she realized—all the camaraderie and closeness, all the passion they’d shared over the past few days. It had been swallowed up in the cold, emotionless place Ryder used to protect himself from everything he couldn’t bear to feel—all the hopes he couldn’t admit to, the fears he couldn’t quite face. “I am moving,” she said. “But I’d prefer to be doing it on dry land.” He shook his head. “They’ll track us to the start of the stream. But this will make it harder for them to find where we came out again. It’s not much of an edge, but we need what we can get.” She knew he was right. But a part of her hated the thought of leaving this place where they’d been so briefly, so unexpectedly happy together. And besides— “What about the alligators?” she demanded, tugging him to a standstill again. “And the snakes. If we get eaten—” When he turned to look at her this time, there was no trace of the man who’d loved her so tenderly only last night. His blue eyes were blank and hard, his face set in an impenetrable mask she remembered only too well. The old Nick Ryder was back. And Jayne could feel her heart starting to break all over again at the sight of him. “You don’t know the people we’re up against,” he said bluntly. “I do. And frankly, Jayne—” He glanced back at the stream they’d been splashing through, as though he expected to see the baying dogs come nosing through the undergrowth at any second. “Frankly, I’d rather take my chances with the alligators,” he finished. “Come on, we’re wasting time. We can talk about this later.” We can talk about this later. It had been one of Ryder’s all-too-familiar refrains during the last years of their marriage. Jayne curled herself into a tighter ball in the bow seat of the bow and tried to ward off the cold wind and the bleakness of her own thoughts. They’d made it to the boat safely, though they’d both been soaked to the waist and Jayne had been trembling uncontrollably from the thought of everything that was probably swimming and lurking in the muddy water they were wading through. Luckily, the mouth of the stream hadn’t been watched, no doubt because the overhanging branches gave the impression it was nothing more than a backwater. Ryder had let the boat drift silently downstream for a few minutes before starting the engine, which had coughed and sputtered but finally caught hold. Since then he’d been running the thing with the throttle wide open, ignoring its occasional coughing fits. He’d made some minor adjustments when they’d stopped for gas, and had announced that they would head back the way they’d come, through Lake Okeechobee. “It gives us more choice,” he said without looking up from the motor. “We can take any of the canals from there.” And that was the only thing he’d said until they were nearly across the bottom end of the lake itself. Jayne couldn’t tell if he was as chilled as she was. His blank blue eyes gave nothing away. His stance as he stood at the wheel was aggressive and unyielding. He seemed to be expecting an attack at any moment and wasn’t about to let down his guard. When she thought of how they’d swayed in each other’s arms in the twilight only last evening— When she felt the slow pulse of desire starting in her belly even now— She shook her head and wrapped her arms more tightly around her chest. She didn’t know which emotion was uppermost in her mind, worry or anger or hurt at the way Ryder was closing her out of his thoughts again. But anger seemed like the safest feeling to hang on to. At least it was something to counter the icy wind that was knifing into her as they sped across the big lake. When he finally slowed within sight of one of the towns on the southern shore of the lake, she spoke before Ryder had a chance to. “I think we should get in touch with my law student friend and see what she dug up yesterday,” she said. “If we have something that definitely ties John Brady to the mob—” “I agree.” He spun the wheel, turning the boat toward a marina in the near distance. “Now that we know who the good guys are, we can finally get some official help. But it wouldn’t hurt to have a little hard evidence in hand first, since we’re so close to it.” He stayed with the boat while Jayne made a call from a pay phone at the far end of the pier. She could see him leaning over the troublesome motor again as she dialed her friend’s number. “I already faxed it to you last night.” The voice on the other end of the phone was sleepy, and Jayne realized it was still early, at least as far as the rest of the world was concerned. “I know, but I need you to read it to me now.” She didn’t explain, but the sound of her voice seemed to convince her friend that it was urgent. “We’ve got him,” she reported to Ryder when she returned to the boat ten minutes later. “My friend did some looking into Brady’s personal finances at around the period when his decisions started getting erratic. Guess what she found?” He didn’t look up from whatever he was doing to the motor. “I’m not in the mood to guess, Jaynie,” he said. His curt tone stung her. She felt hurt and loss starting to settle in her throat again, making a lump that she had to swallow past. You were going to stay angry, she reminded herself. You’re not going to let him do this to you again, remember? It was hard to remember when she was watching his big, agile hands working among the wires and screws of the motor. But she swallowed past those dangerous, lingering desires, too, and went on, “Brady was a partner in a real estate venture that went belly-up about eleven years ago. My friend had to do some digging—there were a couple of dummy companies that were obviously designed to screen this. But the construction firm that was supposed to do the building on Brady’s land just happened to be partly owned by—” He beat her to it. “Jimmy Trujillo.” “Right. And the funny thing is, although John Brady and his partners lost a bundle on the whole deal, Brady’s personal financial picture stayed very rosy. Now, if you were in a mood to guess—” “I’d guess he lost his shirt, and the mob stepped in and bailed him out. It’s a common way of getting somebody under their control.” “And once he was under their control, he. could influence decisions in favor of their people who’d been arrested. It’s not proof, of course—” “No,” Ryder said, “but it won’t take much delving into his financial records to come up with proof. I say we’ve got enough to go on. It’s time to finish this.” His words cut her unexpectedly. Would this be a finish—not only to the mystery that had been dogging them, but to their relationship, as well? A week ago, she’d been largely reconciled to the idea that Nick Ryder was no longer a part of her life. Now, after living through one heart-stopping danger after another with him, delving into his long-buried secrets, his half-admitted hopes, sharing his bed after a lonely year without him— She tried to push the thoughts away, but they refused to go. Surely, after all this, her heart kept telling her, surely he can’t just turn his back again. Even now, with all the tension between them, their minds worked so naturally together. They’d echoed each other’s thoughts a mere moment ago, each of them anticipating the other’s words with the old certainty she remembered so well. She reached desperately for the determination she’d had only a week ago. Then, she’d been heartsore but ready to move on with her life. Now all she could think about was how it had felt to be cradled in Ryder’s arms, how his loving had touched her very soul. She couldn’t let this go without trying once more to save everything they’d shared. “And then, Nick?” It was hard to get the question out. “What happens then?” He met her eyes, but she could see how reluctant he was to do it. “Let’s do one thing at a time, all right?” he said. She shook her head, feeling the wind tugging at her short hair. “Whenever you said that, we never got to the next thing,” she told him. “Or the next thing turns out to be another case, something else for you to disappear into. If we finish this and then you get caught up with getting your job back and clearing your name and catching some new criminal—” She stopped, hating the thought of it. For the first time, something seemed to be struggling in Ryder’s eyes. She could see the turmoil starting in the back of his blue gaze. And she could see him trying to clamp down on it, as he’d done so many times before. “This is the wrong time,” he said. “You know it is.” She spoke quickly, trying to reach whatever part of him might not already be buried under all those layers of toughness and silence. “It’s always the wrong time,” she said. “I’m not asking you to make plans, Nick—I know as well as you do how important it is to finish this business with the FBI.” “Well, at least we agree on that.” His quick, faint grin was barely an echo of the smile that had transformed his face so completely only last night. But it was a start. It was enough to rekindle the hope that Jayne was having such a hard time hanging on to. “But if that’s all we can agree on—if there’s nothing ahead of us—” It was almost too hard to say the words. Damn it, I love you, Nick. The phrase was hammering at her from inside. But it was too risky, too scary, to say it out loud. How many times could a heart break and still survive? How much could a woman risk over one single man? “Is there anything ahead of us, Nick?” Her voice turned husky over the words, as though all the unspoken love inside her was trying to force its way out. And at first she thought he was responding to it. His eyes widened, and for an instant she could see a flash of longing in those troubled blue depths. “Do you mean—a family? Children?” “You know that’s what I mean.” He hesitated, and the spurt of hope in her chest rose a little higher. “I’m not asking for answers, Nick. Just some sign that we’ve still got something to talk about.” For a long while his eyes stayed locked on hers. She could see him battling his inner demons, grappling with everything that had made him so strong on the outside, so unsure of himself deep down. For a moment she thought the man she loved—the tender, vulnerable man—was winning. And then his face changed. She felt something closing down inside her as she watched his eyes turn hard and unresponsive again. “I’m sorry, Jaynie.” His voice was rough, apologetic. But it wasn’t enough to make up for the blank look in his eyes. “I can’t do this now. There’s too much riding on keeping you safe—on keeping both of us safe.” For what? she almost asked. There was no “us”—not anymore. Even after all they’d been through together, Ryder still refused to let himself imagine a future with her. Well, she’d asked for a sign. And he’d just given her one. Now she had to find a way to carry on from here. It felt like a long time before she trusted herself enough to speak. And when she finally did, her voice wasn’t as brisk as she’d been hoping for. “All right,” she said. “Do you want to call the FBI, or should I?” He looked at the half-dismantled motor, and at the wires he still held in his right hand. “You do it,” he said. “I’ll finish this. You can get the main number for the Miami office from Information. Once you reach them, don’t talk to anybody except Agent Joe Disenza, all right?” She could hear the relief in his voice—relief that they’d gotten back to merely life-threatening questions, sidestepping the really dangerous issue of their feelings for each other. She nodded, clamping down on the ache of loss that went through her as she realized what his tone meant. “There are obviously leaks in the FBI operation—that’s how I was traced when I left the prison.” He was already turning back toward the motor. “Disenza’s the head of the operation I was a part of. I don’t want this getting to anybody but him.” The problem was that Agent Joe Disenza couldn’t be reached—not without Jayne giving a lot more information than she wanted to release to the receptionist. “I know you can reach him if you want to,” she kept insisting. “I need a name before I can do that,” the woman repeated. Jayne could see her point. But she wasn’t about to do anything that would get Ryder’s name back into the official record, not unless it was going through someone who could be trusted, someone with some clout, someone like— Greg Iverson. The thought came to her as she was hanging up the phone in frustration. Greg hadn’t been able to help them before because there’d been no way to be certain which side of law Ryder was really on. But now that Ryder’s memory had come back— She looked out at the pier, where Ryder’s head was bowed over the recalcitrant motor. The wind had tangled his dark gold hair, but the blond streaks that had started to return to it a few days ago were still clear against the deep blue water behind him. Her body quivered as she remembered how it had felt to run her fingers through those thick strands. She thought about the hoarse passion in his voice as he’d called her name last night, and another shiver ran through her. It settled low in her belly, stubborn, erotic, impossible to ignore. The cold wind, the danger on their trail, the indifference in his eyes—none of it had been enough to kill the way she responded to Nick Ryder. Perhaps nothing could kill it. Maybe she would go to her grave loving this man. And he didn’t want her love. He’d been able to cut her out of his mind without a second thought. The change in him had been sudden and unmistakable. The instant his memory had returned, it was as though the past few days had never happened. And that meant the single smartest thing Jayne could do was to bring this whole adventure to an end as soon as possible. Pulling her gaze from Ryder’s sun-bleached hair, she turned back toward the phone and dialed Greg Iverson’s number. Chapter 14 Right from the beginning he didn’t like the setup. For one thing, he’d had no chance to check out the meeting place ahead of time. He’d intended to. It was one of the rules that had kept him alive in a dangerous profession: never walk into a situation where you didn’t know the lay of the land. But the damn motor had been nothing but trouble all the way from the lake. By the time they’d chugged and sputtered their way to the rendezvous spot it was nearly eleven, and Ryder had no chance to do anything more than just glance over the neatly landscaped picnic area next to the canal. He didn’t like the fact that Jayne had called Iverson. He saw the logic in it—as she’d said, “We need someone with some influence. The FBI isn’t going to page this Agent Disenza for me, but they’ll do it for Greg. I’ll call him back in half an hour to find out what he’s set up.” What Iverson had set up was a meeting at eleven o’clock at a place halfway between Miami and Lake Okeechobee. And Ryder had spent the whole trip down there—when he wasn’t cursing the ailing motor—wondering which was bothering him more: that Jayne hadn’t actually spoken to Joe Disenza in person, or that she’d turned so instinctively to Greg Iverson for help. He didn’t like Iverson coming in as Jayne’s white knight. That was supposed to be Ryder’s role, damn it. And he was going to prove it to her, as soon as he got this business with the FBI straightened out. When he thought about the visions that had rippled through him while he’d held her in his arms last night—about the possibilities for the kind of happiness and fulfillment he’d never really let himself consider before— He shook his head, trying to clear those thoughts away. It was mind-numbingly dangerous to let himself think about these things now. He clamped down on it, as he’d been doing all morning. Keeping them both alive was his first priority at the moment. Once this was all over, once they’d had a chance to really talk, surely she would understand that. For now— “I don’t see our boy,” he said as he steered the boat alongside the dock that lined the canal. “He said they’d be at the parking lot.” She was already tying the lines tight, securing the boat to the dock. He didn’t like that, either. The motorboat was hardly the escape vehicle he’d have chosen at this point, but at least it was something. He didn’t like walking away from it as he and Jayne crossed the broad green lawn. Again, he could see the logic in Iverson’s choice. Jayne and Ryder’s boat hadn’t been the only one docked at the picnic area. Despite the chilling wind, there were other travelers using the picnic tables, the rest rooms, the pay phones. The parking area was more secluded, and it was in everyone’s interests to keep this meeting low-key. Unless— He shook his head again. Damn it, he wished he could sort out his own thinking. He couldn’t tell what was professional and what was personal anymore. Was he being instinctively cautious, or just jealous because Jayne had asked Greg Iverson to help them sort things out? He wanted to reach for her hand as they walked, to feel her warmth and strength and to reassure both of them that what they’d shared over the past few days hadn’t simply disappeared. What he’d told her back at the marina was the simple truth. This was the wrong time for them to be talking about the future. But the thought of that future kept shimmering just behind Ryder’s vision, dazzling him, arousing and terrifying him at the same time. He wanted to clasp her hand in his, to hold her close to him, just to know that everything he’d glimpsed last night was still there, still possible. But he didn’t let himself do it. He knew that touching Jayne now could altogether chase away what was left of his common sense. And she wasn’t giving him the chance to reach for her, anyway. She was striding ahead, seeming eager to get this over with. Or perhaps she was just eager to see Greg Iverson again. Scowling, Ryder followed her up the little slope that led to the parking lot. He could see the attorney’s sleek black head emerging from a low-slung red sports car. It hadn’t taken Iverson long to replace the vehicle that had been blown up, he thought. But then, as he remembered now, Iverson had always had a taste for the fast life. Jayne had been the one exception to that. He felt his gut tighten as he watched Iverson step away from the car and open his arms wide, inviting Ryder’s wife into them. And she was going. He heard her low murmur of concern—” You are all right, then”—as she moved toward Iverson. He wanted to call to her, to say, Jaynie, Iverson doesn’t love you the way I do—nobody can love you the way I do. But he knew he still didn’t deserve anything as dazzling as Jayne’s love. He hadn’t kept even the most basic promises he’d made to himself. He hadn’t cleared his name—he hadn’t laid to rest the mystery that had been dogging him for so long—he hadn’t dispelled the danger that still clung to him like the stale prison air he’d breathed during that terrifyingly lonely year without her. He still had nothing to offer her. And until he’d guaranteed the most basic thing of all—her safety—he knew he had no right to mention the word love. He could feel the familiar solitude stabbing at him from inside as he watched Jayne’s tousled dark head leaning toward Greg Iverson’s sleek one. Their voices were low, and he couldn’t hear what they were saying. And suddenly jealousy wasn’t the only thing nudging at him. He’d been so busy watching the scene ahead of him that he hadn’t heard them coming. They’d been hidden by a minivan parked next to where Ryder was standing, and they moved so silently and efficiently that there was one on either side of him before he’d had a chance to turn and get a good look at them. “You’re already dead, Ryder.” He could feel the hard steel at his ribs, pushing at him, underscoring the point. “And if you so much as hint that things aren’t what they seem, she’s dead, too. You got that?” “Where is Joe Disenza, then?” Jayne frowned at her old friend. “I told you, Ryder doesn’t want to talk to—” Greg Iverson shook his jet-black head. “He’s in no position to make demands, Jayne,” he told her. “These guys are on Disenza’s team—I made sure of that. Disenza himself is up in Glades County looking for the two of you. He’s choppering back now. And he wants Ryder brought to Miami, where he’ll be safe.” Jayne turned and looked to where Ryder stood at the edge of the parking lot, deep in conversation with the two business-suited men. The strangers were both tall, nearly as tall as Ryder’s six foot two. She’d seen them flashing their badges shortly after they’d appeared, and now the three men seemed to be conferring. Ryder’s sun-streaked head was leaning toward to the agent closest to him. It was finally ending, she thought. Greg’s words fit with what she already knew. Ryder had heard a helicopter circling his family property early this morning, followed by the baying of the tracking dogs. It was the FBI who’d finally traced them to the cabin, although Jayne and Ryder had had no way of knowing that. But now the hunt was over. Ryder would go back to Miami with the two special agents Greg had contacted. And his newly returned memory—along with the information they’d pieced together about Justice John Brady’s part in the corruption ring—would ensure that Ryder’s name was cleared and his riskiest case closed at last. Then why was she so reluctant to walk away from him? It is over, she told herself firmly. All of it—their marriage, their shared adventure, her impractical dreams of rediscovering what they’d lost. The only things left were the legal details and the runaway passion that still Hared in her whenever she looked at Ryder’s rangy body and disheveled dark blond hair. It had to be over, because she could never go back to a life with a man who shut her out of his heart at exactly the moments when he should have been inviting her in. But somehow... Was it the look in his eyes as he met her gaze across the parking lot that was stopping her where she stood? His face was hungry, searching, nothing at all like the closed-off mask he’d worn ever since he’d wakened her this morning. She could see those old storm clouds in the blue depths of his eyes again. And she could feel herself responding to them, just as she’d responded when he’d reappeared without warning in that hospital room after his accident. No doubt he was finally realizing she’d meant what she’d told him earlier, she thought. It must be sinking in at fast—that things really were over between them, that the future he’d refused to talk about was simply never going to arrive. Go, Jayne, she told herself. Just go. How many more times do you want to live through this? “Come on, Jayne.” Greg Iverson echoed her thoughts as he opened the passenger door of the little red sports car and waited for her to lower herself into the black leather seat. “There’s nothing more you can do here. These guys have got a lot of business to discuss. And you look as though you could use a hot bath and a good meal. I’ll drive you home, and then maybe we can go out and try to forget about all this.” Forget! Jayne almost laughed. Ryder’s knife, in its leather scabbard, dug into her as she settled into the passenger seat, like a physical reminder of all the things she was sure she would never forget. She knew Greg was right. She needed to get back to her own life, the sooner the better. If only Ryder’s eyes didn’t look so haunted, so desperate, as he watched her getting into the car. If only her heart wasn’t thumping so erratically at the idea of leaving him forever. Greg didn’t seem to have noticed her reactions. He was climbing into the driver’s seat, turning the key in the ignition, adjusting the thermostat controls to counter the raw November breeze. “I’ve been having nightmares about people chasing you,” he was saying as he fiddled with the little buttons. “My God, Jayne, when I think about that fake reporter pulling a gun on you back in the hospital—” Jayne went suddenly still. Frowning, she tried to remember how much she’d told Greg about their near escape from the hospital. There hadn’t been time to give him all the details, she recalled. Had she mentioned that the gunman had been posing as a reporter? She was virtually certain she hadn’t. “Reporter?” She made the question sound as innocuous as she could. “Yeah, you know, that Tad McMaster guy, or whatever his name was.” She knew she hadn’t told Greg the man’s name. What was happening here? “And then those characters showing up at the diner—” He shook his head, apparently unaware of her sudden scrutiny. “I just keep seeing that scene over and over in my head. I tell you, it’s been keeping me awake nights.” Three people knew the details of that incident in Ryder’s hospital room: Ryder, and Jayne, and the gunman. And she knew she hadn’t told them to Greg. Then who had? It was a safe bet it wasn’t Ryder. She glanced back to where he stood next to the two tall men, and her frown deepened. What if that turbulent look in his eyes meant more than she’d realized? What if— “Jaynie?” Greg’s smooth voice jolted her back to reality. But it didn’t do anything to calm the fears that were suddenly roiling in her belly. That was Ryder’s name for her. No one else ever used it. And Greg knew that. Why was he using it now? And why had he steered her so protectively toward his car, making certain she didn’t get any closer to the FBI agents he’d contacted? Was it possible— If Greg Iverson was a part of this whole corruption ring, then the danger around them hadn’t gone away at all. It had just become more deadly than ever. The idea seemed ridiculous, unthinkable. But in a horrible way, she knew it made sense. It would explain a lot of things—like the fact that Greg had been the prosecuting attorney on Jimmy Trujillo’s case. What if he and Judge Brady had conspired to let Trujillo off with a light sentence, protecting Brady’s financial involvement with the mobster’s construction firm? It would explain how Greg had been tailed to the diner, despite his protests that no one had been behind him. If Greg, like John Brady, was being manipulated by the mob, no doubt his silent partners would have been keeping a very close eye on his comings and goings after the search for Ryder had begun. It would explain how Greg had known that fake reporter‘s name. He was part of the plot—he had to be. Jayne tried to see a way around it, and couldn’t find one. Ryder had already figured it out, one way or another. That must be what was behind the anguish she’d seen moments ago in his eyes. And he was letting her walk away. To keep her safe. To keep her alive. He was so stubborn, so silent. So strong. And so certain that he had to prove himself, over and over and over again, before he was worthy of anyone’s love. He was doing it now. She could see it in his face, in the rigid way he was holding his jaw and the tortured despair in his dark blue eyes. He would let her go, without a word, because he believed it was the right thing to do. He was holding everything in, as he’d always done, refusing—out of the depths of his own vulnerability, she’d finally come to realize—to fight for the future they’d once hoped to share. Now there would be no future. He was going to die, and he knew it. The two men were only waiting for Jayne to be out of the way, so there would be no witness to the crime. Tears came to her eyes, half-angry, half-panicked. All the love she’d been trying to fight against suddenly filled her like a rising tide. It was nearly impossible to think clearly, when all she wanted to do was run to Ryder’s side, to put her arms around him and never let him go. She shook her head, trying to banish those thoughts. There wasn’t time to dwell on them. And if she didn’t come up with something in a big hurry, there might never be time to tell him how the thought of losing him went through her as cruelly and painfully as a knife. A knife... She shifted her weight on the seat, and reached out her left hand to stop Greg Iverson’s move toward the shift lever. “Can you give me just one more minute, Greg?” Could he hear the way her voice shook? She hoped not. She didn’t want to look too directly at him, in case some of the terror in her belly was finding its way into her eyes, too. “Come on, Jayne—” The impatience in his tone made her even more certain that his prime concern was to get her out of here before those two guys did whatever they were planning to do to Ryder. Surely they wouldn’t kill him right here, she thought. She had horribly visions of reading about another “traffic accident” in tomorrow’s paper. She had no doubt there was a plan already in place, one that would leave Greg Iverson looking like the well-meaning dupe of a couple of charlatans posing as FBI agents. He wouldn’t get away with it—not if Jayne had anything to do with it. But if she going to blow the whistle on the whole scam, she wanted it to be a way of vindicating Ryder, not as revenge for his death. Swallowing hard, she opened the door of the sports car and stepped out onto the pavement. She welcomed the chill of the wind in her face. It seemed to clear her head, making it easier to focus on what she needed to do. “Nick.” She spoke loudly, and saw the three men’s faces snap toward her. “I forgot something.” She slowly pulled the knife out of her pocket as she walked, trying her best to look as though what she’d forgotten was of no real importance. She saw, now that she was looking for it, that one of the “agents” was standing slightly behind Ryder with his right arm bent. She couldn’t see his hand, but she had a sinking feeling that he was probably holding a gun. She wanted to swallow again, but resisted the temptation. She thought about the male beauty of Ryder’s long body, and the way she’d caressed him with her mouth when they’d been making love last night. She’d kissed him—lightly, teasingly—at almost exactly the spot where there was very likely a gun barrel digging into him right now. Undoubtedly, the other man was armed, as well. And she couldn’t be sure how Greg might react. She heard him getting out of the car behind her, calling her name, sounding irritated and more than a little bit nervous. She and Ryder were essentially helpless against two, possibly three, armed men. The only thing they had on their side was surprise—and that was only if she could somehow communicate her thoughts to Ryder without anyone else knowing what she was up to. She’d almost reached them now. Holding the knife in its sheath so that only the ornate inlaid handle was visible, she looked up into Ryder’s eyes and said, “You gave me this a couple of days ago. I just—I’d like you to have it back.” She wasn’t prepared for the desolation that filled his face at her words. “Why?” he asked. His voice was slow and dull with what sounded almost like despair. Then she realized what he was thinking. He figured she was saying goodbye for good—that now, without realizing how much trouble he was in, she was ending things permanently, returning the gift he’d given her, rubbing salt into an already gaping wound. Somehow she had to let him know she did realize what was going on. And she was trying to offer him a gift in return—a slim, outside shot at coming out of this alive. One man alone, with only a knife as a weapon, stood virtually no chance against two gunmen. But with an ally, even an unarmed one, the odds were marginally better. Keeping her eyes steady with his, she tried to push past the heartache in his blue eyes. “I don’t have any real use for it,” she said as casually as she could. “But I thought you might.” One of the two phony agents was starting to look more closely at the object in her hand. She was keeping it half-hidden, but it was only a matter of time before one of the mobsters realized what she was holding. She had to get through to Ryder before that happened. There were so many things she hadn’t said to him over the past few days, she thought desperately. Things like I don’t want to lose you and I’ve never felt this way about anyone else. Things like I love you. Ryder hadn’t been the only one holding back, she saw suddenly. She’d been so intent on protecting her own bruised feelings, waiting for him to come to her instead of opening her heart and telling him how she really felt. And now she might never have a chance. Fighting against the growing tremors in her body, she took a final step toward him, holding the knife out and closing her fingers over his when he reached out to take it. “It’s got ‘heirloom’ written all over it,” she said huskily. “You can hang on to it and give it to our children someday.” It was the word children that finally did it. Ryder’s eyes flared open, and the spark of sudden awareness in them made her want to cry out in relief. But she knew it was too soon for relief. There was still no way to get together on any kind of plan—if, in fact, any plan in the world could get the better of the two armed and increasingly suspicious men at Ryder’s elbows. But at least Jayne and Ryder were on the same side again. And the elation of it—the sense that their passionate, unspoken partnership hadn’t vanished during the night—gave Jayne new strength. “Children, huh?” It was hard to believe how cool he sounded, looking down casually at the knife half-hidden by their hands, for all the world as though nothing was going on under the surface. She wondered if he was feeling the same exhilaration, the same strength that had always blossomed when their two hearts had merged into one. If he was, he wasn’t letting it color his voice. But Jayne could see the telltale glitter in his eyes as he asked, “Boys?” He tilted his head very slightly toward the agent nearest to him as he said the word, and then inclined it just as slightly the other way as he added, “Or girls?” She got the message. “Boys for you, I think,” she said. Her own voice was breathless, but there wasn’t a thing she could do about it. “And girls for me.” It happened so quickly that the landscape became a blur around her. All of a sudden, Ryder was pulling the knife away from her, jerking it out of its scabbard. She saw him half turn, the blade of the knife shining in the watery sunlight. His arm swung high and hard, and a split second later the heavyset mobster yowled in pain. The boom of a gun going off enveloped them all in sound and the acrid smell of burned powder. Jayne didn’t have a chance to see where the noise had come from, though. As Ryder started to move, she did the same, hurling herself as hard as she could at the second agent, as their subtle signals had determined. She caught the man in the midriff and they landed hard on the pavement. She had to gasp to get air into her lungs, and for a moment the force of the landing left her dizzy and uncertain which way was up. She couldn’t tell if the gunshot had come from the other man or from the one she was wrestling with. He’d gotten one hand on his weapon and was flailing it in the air, despite her best efforts to pin him down. She heard the sharp crack of a fist landing on bone to her left, but there was no chance to see whose fist it had been. The man she’d tackled was getting his wind back now, and starting to struggle in earnest. Where was Greg Iverson? Which side would he come down on now that Jayne and Ryder were fighting for their lives? He would know by now that they’d seen through his lies. Would he help them, or keep trying to salvage his own reputation? The second gunman swung his free arm and landed a punch in Jayne’s midsection. She gasped with the pain and surprise of it, and tried to maneuver herself so that she had a clear shot at kneeing him in the most vulnerable part of his masculine anatomy. She didn’t get a chance. He hit her again, knocking what was left of her wind right out of her. She could feel him starting to scramble to his feet, and she tried desperately to get her breath, to find enough strength to stop him. If Ryder was hurt— He wasn’t, not yet. She saw his navy polo shirt at the edges of her vision as he came to her rescue, stepping hard on the mobster’s gun hand, knocking the weapon out of reach. Ryder was reaching for it himself when the second shot came. Jayne saw him shudder, as though something had hit him from behind. At first she thought the shot must have missed, because he barely paused, grabbing the man she’d felled by the lapels of his jacket, lifting him slightly off the pavement, then delivering a punch that made her own head ring when the blow struck. It was enough to put the second man out of action. And the first one was virtually unconscious now, too. She glanced behind her and saw him slump to his side, landing facedown on the pavement. But the shot he’d fired hadn’t missed, after all. Jayne had just enough time to look over her shoulder and see Greg Iverson standing with a gun in his own hand, looking at the scene in horrified fascination. And then she realized something was wrong with Ryder. They were both still half kneeling. But Ryder was swaying now. She felt him lurch against her suddenly, and saw him look down at his side. “Damn.” His voice was already faint. Jayne felt abruptly cold again at the sound of iL “Jaynie, I’m sorry. I wasn‘t—quick enough—” The hole in his dark blue shirt was ridiculously small and neat. The bullet had caught him high in the rib cage. He pressed one hand there, looking up at her. His eyes were terrifyingly blank again as he started to lean to one side. She caught him, still trying to pull enough air into her lungs to keep up with her frantically pounding heart. As she eased him onto the pavement, she looked back at Greg Iverson again. “Greg, get help.” It felt so good to hold Ryder. She’d thought she would never have a chance to hold him again. “Don’t just stand there, for heaven‘s—” The third gunshot was like pulling a cork out of a bottle. It was a quiet pop, nothing like the noise of the two gangsters’ guns. And as it faded away, Jayne realized there were a lot of other noises that she hadn’t noticed until now. It was people shouting, mostly. She was aware of voices from the canal, of people running, calling to each other. Maybe they were calling to her. She wasn’t sure. She only knew that the sight of Greg Iverson crumbling into a heap on the pavement seemed unreal, unfathomable. Her mind refused to take it in. And the rest of her was wholly consumed by the need to hold on to Ryder, to press her hand over his on top of the wound that was leaking his life out onto the parking lot. His eyes were closed now, his face even paler than when she’d seen him a week ago in the hospital. But he was still alive. She could feel his heart beating against her own chest. She held on to that—the distant, erratic thump-thump, thump-thump, and told him over and over again, silently, urgently, that this wasn’t finished yet, and she had no intention of sticking with him this far, only to see him miss the ending now. Chapter 15 “Have you got that?” He tried to nod and realized he couldn’t do it. It wasn’t only that he hurt, although he definitely did. He just felt so groggy. It was as though someone had tied weights to all his limbs, including his head. He couldn’t get it to move, despite his certainty that he had to respond to the voice he’d just heard. It was a low voice, husky with a kind of half-buried sensuality. It acted on him like a magnet, dragging him slowly, but insistently, out of the shadowy place where he’d been floating for what felt like a very long time. And it sounded impatient. “I know you want me down there, Arnie. I’ve told you, I can’t leave.” There was a brief pause. “All right, then, I won’t leave. The point is, the hospital’s fax machine is tied up. And unless you can get somebody up here to pick up my copy in the next half hour, this is the only way you’re going to get it.” He tried to open his eyes. It didn’t work. But he could see a hazy brightness around the edges of his eyelids that made him think there was daylight out there somewhere. Inside, he seemed to be lost in a dark cloud, unable to grab hold of any thought for more than a second or two. Even the mellifluous voice that had pulled him up toward the light faded into a gentle murmur now. He felt himself sinking into the shadows again, away from the gentle, husky voice and the pain that was starting to nag at him from somewhere in his midsection. Then a word caught his attention. “Brady...” He struggled back toward consciousness, somehow certain the name was important. It took an effort, but he managed to focus his concentration—what there was of it—on the flow of words coming from somewhere to his right. “Along with Justice Brady, who is expected to be arraigned today, several Miami police officers, including two detectives and a member of the Internal Affairs Department, have been implicated in the scandal.” Her speech sounded very slightly formal, as though she was reading rather than conversing. What she was saying seemed strangely familiar, though he couldn’t figure out why. He wasn’t even certain who or where he was at the moment. He felt a spurt of frustration at the thought, but didn’t have enough energy to maintain it. He lapsed into listening again as the woman’s voice went on. “But by far, the biggest shock in the case was the suicide of Miami Deputy City Attorney Greg Iverson. Iverson, a highly regarded young lawyer who was widely considered to have a bright political future, was pronounced dead on arrival at the same Broward County hospital where injured police detective Nick Ryder was taken following the canalside shooting.” There was a tremor in her voice this time. He could feel his own body answering it. Something deep in his gut—something that came from far below the nagging pain in his left sido—quivered with an instinctive empathy he couldn’t quite understand or control. He blinked, and tried again to open his eyes. It still didn’t work, but he could feel himself moving closer to consciousness with every attempt. The velvety voice had become firmer, as though to counteract the slight quaver he’d heard in it. “Iverson, like Brady, was apparently a target of a systematic attempt to gain control over key members of the law enforcement and judicial systems,” she was continuing. “Where John Brady’s weak spot was his ill-advised investment in a land development scheme, Iverson’s downfall was his taste for low company. FBI investigators searching Iverson’s Miami apartment have found copies of several compromising photographs of the deputy city attorney with employees of a Miami call-girl establishment. Agents have speculated the photographs may have been sent to blackmail Iverson, who apparently then used his influence to obtain lighter sentences or acquittals for indicted mob members.” There was another pause. When she spoke again, there was a new tightness to her voice. “That’s easy to say now, Arnie,” she said. “But those people were fully capable of hurting him if he so much as pretended he was going to defy them. You know that as well as I do. And Greg was—” She seemed to stumble a little over the word. “He had very high hopes for his career. You know that, too. It was just—” There was definitely distress in her tone, although she was doing her best to disguise it. The quiet anguish of it made him want to reach out and comfort her, to soothe away the sadness troubling that throaty, musical voice. “I know he was a bastard, Arnie. He was prepared to let those people kill Ryder just to cover his own trail. When I think about how close they came—” She was shaking her head. He was sure of it, although his eyes were still closed. He had a very clear image of a head of short, tousled dark hair, of a gesture halfway between impatience and supplication. “But he was also one of my oldest friends,” she said. “And I can’t forget that, either. Look, can we just get on with this? I thought you wanted to go to press twenty minutes ago.” He had to wake up. It didn’t matter that something seemed to be stabbing him in the ribs every time he pulled in a breath. His need to make a connection with the husky-voiced woman was nearly overpowering. It was even stronger than the need to piece things together, to know why every phrase she spoke seemed to strike the same disturbing, half-remembered chord in his memory. Even the thought of being stabbed in the ribs had that urgent, almost-familiar feeling to it. Getting his eyes open was excruciating. The light was too bright, the pain in his midriff too demanding. And the cobwebs still clung to his brain, making it almost impossible to listen to what the woman was saying. But some of it sunk in, anyway. “The FBI has now confirmed that it was Detective Nick Ryder’s undercover work in prison which has enabled them to link corrupt justice department officials definitively with organized crime. Upon his release from prison, Detective Ryder was pursued by mob assassins, who attempted four times to kill him before nearly succeeding early Wednesday morning. “The first three attempts are believed to have been abetted by corrupt officers within the Miami police department, colleagues of the injured man. Using police department information, these officers were able to keep mob gunmen informed of Detective Ryder’s whereabouts from the moment he left prison. “When he survived an arranged ‘accident’ that left an FBI agent dead, he was followed by a mob gunman, first at the hospital where he was taken following the accident, then at a mall north of Miami where he had paused in his escape. When neither attempt succeeded, both mob and police insiders focused their attention on Greg Iverson, who was known to be close to the detective, in the hope that Iverson would lead the killers to their quarry. “Detective Ryder’s testimony is expected to be the cornerstone of the federal government’s case against the indicted conspirators.” As she paused, Ryder finally got his eyelids to move. He couldn’t make out details yet, just light. “No,” the woman was saying firmly. “I don’t want to appear in this at all. I’m only filing this piece because I happen to be the one with the information. It’s really Nick’s story, not mine.” Nick... The name sounded so sweet as she said it. Even the determination in her tone wasn’t enough to keep him from responding to it. “I don’t care,” she was continuing. “I just—it’s too raw, Arnie. All of it. I don’t know where it’s going.” She paused, then gave a short, unamused laugh. “I know that. Probably exactly the same place it was before he was arrested. But I can’t say for sure until he wakes up.” He could hear her trying to wrap up the conversation as she added, “Look, you’ve got what you wanted, right? You’ve got my story, and even if I didn’t get any pictures you’ve got as juicy a corruption scandal as any crusading editor could possibly want. So could you go and put the paper out and let me get a little rest? I‘m—well, tired isn’t the right word for it anymore. I got past tired about a day and a half ago.” The instant he saw her, it all came flooding back. His vision finally came into focus as she hung up the phone next to his bed. As she’d told her editor, she looked tired and tense. There was weariness in her gesture as she pushed her hair back from her forehead with the heel of one hand. And her eyes had dark smudges under them. But they were still the most astonishing eyes—glittering, soulful, the color of amethysts. “Jaynie...” His first attempt at speaking was a failure. He couldn’t seem to get air to move out of his lungs. And the effort of lifting his head to get her attention was beyond him. Cursing inwardly, he eased back onto the pillow and tried to get his breath. He remembered it all now—the grim scene at the picnic area next to the canal, the days of hiding at his grandfather’s old property, even the feeling of waking up in the hospital days ago, without his memory or any idea how he’d gotten there. He knew how he’d gotten here this time. And the realization of how close he’d come to dying—how close they’d both come—shook him from head to toe. “Jayne.” This time his voice was stronger. It was as though some of the adrenaline that had coursed frantically through him at the picnic area was still kicking around in his system. He knew he sounded hoarse as hell, but he didn’t care. The only thing that mattered was to get Jayne to turn toward him, to look at him with those dazzling eyes, to prove to him that she really was all right. She turned instantly at the sound of his voice, and seated herself on the bed next to him. He noticed a chair beside the bed, but from the way the sheets were rumpled at his side, he thought she’d been sitting there, too, perhaps staring down at him as he slept. Her fingers twined quickly, warmly, around his. The feeling of her skin against his palm was more than enough to offset the nagging pain in his left side. But her eyes didn’t look the way he’d been hoping. They were as brilliant and intelligent as ever, fringed by those impossibly long lashes. He could just see the sprinkling of freckles across her nose, darkened slightly by their hours on the water over the past few days. She was looking at him with an intensity that made him feel instantly stronger and more alive. But her expression was uneasy. She kept her voice level enough as she informed him, “You’re ahead of schedule. They said you probably wouldn’t wake up until tonight.” He started to ask what day it was, then realized he didn’t care. There were more important things he needed to know first. “Are you all right?” He knew his words were hard to understand, but she seemed to know what he meant. He held on harder to her hand, loving the feel of her slender fingers between his. She was shaking her head again, in exasperation, it seemed, not in answer to his question. “That’s my line, Nick,” she said. “You’re the one lying there with two holes in your body and a bunch of wires and tubes in you.” He couldn’t see the wires and tubes, which suited him just fine. He frowned. “Two holes?” he said. He only remembered one shot. She reached her free hand across his chest and pointed carefully to his left side. “One coming in,” she said, “and one going out.” For the first time he realized that he was propped half on his side, so that his weight was tilted toward his right. “Hit anything important?” he asked. “No. You were lucky.” Before he could stop her, she tugged her hand free and stood up. He felt bereft, alone again. It was obvious from her face that her matter-of-fact tone was covering a lot of feelings she wanted to conceal if she could. But some of them got through in her voice as she said, “I can’t believe you’re so cool about this, Nick. If that bullet had been just a few inches to one side—” She turned away from him, moving toward the window. Ryder couldn’t see anything beyond the glass, which probably meant he was on an upper floor of whatever hospital this was. Just like last time, he thought. For a moment he was confused, picturing himself standing at the window instead of Jayne, turning to see a beautiful stranger in the doorway telling him in the most disapproving tones that she was his wife. It seemed like an aeon had passed since then. And inside, aside from whatever damage the mobster’s bullet had done, there were parts of Ryder that were very different than they’d been that first time Jayne had come to a hospital room to claim him. Before that first accident, he’d actually convinced himself it might be possible to let this woman out of his life. Now he knew better. But was it too late to change Jayne’s mind? “The FBI wants to talk to you as soon as they can,” she was saying. “I was able to give them some of the details, but there’s a lot I still don’t know.” “Jayne—” Either his voice had failed him again or she’d simply decided not to hear him this time. Leaning against the windowsill, propping herself on her wrists, she went on speaking. She wore a pair of jeans not nearly so clingingly revealing as the pair she’d bought in Narvaez, and a white blouse that was badly wrinkled, as though she’d been sleeping in it. Her hair was disheveled, her face devoid of makeup, her stance cautious and tense, as though perhaps the man she’d tackled had hurt her more than Ryder wanted to think about. And yet the mere sight of her still turned his blood to fire. It was hard to keep his thoughts on her words when all he wanted to do was look at her—hold her close to him—whisper promises he’d been too foolish, too afraid, to whisper before now. But she was continuing, sounding very practical again. “And I’ve learned some things from Agent Disenza that you and I didn’t know,” she said. “For one thing, I found out why nobody had been looking at John Brady’s records before we stumbled onto them. All the FBI’s evidence pointed to someone in the prosecutor’s office, not on the bench. The mob. apparently saved Brady’s services for special cases—like yours—when they couldn’t afford to take a chance on a verdict. Otherwise they left things to the city attorney’s staff—to Greg—” She was still having a hard time realizing how deeply enmeshed her old friend had become in the deadly business that had nearly claimed Ryder’s life, and her own. Swallowing, she went on quickly, “Anyway, that’s where the FBI was focusing. Until you and I started checking into Brady because you’d recalled his name, nobody in the judiciary was under any kind of suspicion. “And another thing—remember that witness who came forward to say that you and the FBI driver had been struggling with each other just before the car went over the bridge last week?” “Vaguely.” “Well, it seems the witness was a plant. When the police went looking for her at the address she’d given them, they found it didn’t exist.” “Doesn’t surprise me. Listen, Jaynie—” “So the whole accident was rigged to kill you if possible, and to pin the blame on you if by some chance you survived. And it almost worked.” Jayne was having a hard time keeping her mind on the hard facts of the mystery that had enveloped them for the past few days. Ryder looked so haggard, so defenseless—and so gorgeous that it made her want to weep. Those turbulent blue eyes—those defiantly high cheekbones—the sensuous slant of his mouth—everything about him had become painfully precious to her since those awful moments when she’d been afraid she was going to lose him forever. He might never be hers in the way she had once hoped for. But at least he was alive. She tried to remind herself that that should be enough. Asking for more was only courting heartache. She swallowed to get past the tightness in her throat when she let her eyes wander over Ryder’s broad shoulders. This hospital gown was, if anything, even skimpier than the one he’d worn last week. And if she was going to stick to her plan of getting back to her own life, she couldn’t afford to let herself be seduced by the beauty of his battered body and his stormy eyes. “The FBI checked your grandfather’s old house on Monday and decided we weren’t there,” she told him. “But then, when there hadn’t been any reports of us anywhere else after twenty-four hours, they came back on Wednesday with a helicopter, and spotted the cabin. If we’d just stayed put, we’d have been safer.” “We didn’t know that at the time.” “I know.” “So we ran right out of the frying pan into the fire.” ’ She loved the rough music of his voice, she thought, and the way his eyes could catch and hold hers with an intensity that made her limbs weak. “That’s about the size of it,” she replied. “And now? What happens now?” The suddenness of the question caught her by surprise. She’d been about to tell him everything she’d uncovered while investigating this business on the phone over the past day and a half. But the look in his eyes made her think he had other things on his mind. She still wasn’t completely certain what they were. “Now you lie here and don’t move until your side heals up,” she said. “And then—” She shrugged, and wished she hadn’t. The second gunman had landed some painfully accurate blows at that parking lot. “I don’t know what happens then,” she admitted. “You go back to work, I guess. And so do I. Right now, we’re both local celebrities because of this thing. It’ll probably do our careers good. At least, I guess it’s good.” She hadn’t meant to expose her own uncertainties quite so plainly. But between the ache in her body and the turmoil in Ryder’s blue eyes, it was difficult to maintain the composure she’d been aiming for. “Is that what you want, Jaynie?” With an effort, she pulled her gaze away from his. “I want a good night’s sleep,” she said, with an effort at sounding lighthearted that didn’t quite come off. “I won’t know what else I want until after that.” “How long have you been here?” “Since they first brought you in. Thirty-six hours.” “Why?” Again, the question was so simple she wasn’t sure how to answer it. Caught off guard, she settled for the truth. “I couldn’t leave you until I was sure you were all right.” She lifted her chin as she said the words, waiting for his inevitable answer. I’m all right. This is my business, not yours. There’s no point talking about this. But the familiar phrases didn’t come. Instead, Ryder seemed to be shifting himself in the bed, moving closer to the edge of it. “Why?” he asked again. She’d been asking herself the same question for the past day and a half, every time someone tried to suggest that she go home and let the hospital staff look after Ryder. Why had she stayed with him, when he’d already made it so clear he didn’t want her in his life? Because she loved him, that was why. But she couldn’t say that to him, not after how he’d pushed her away from him only a couple of days ago. “I—wanted us to end this properly,” she said instead. “I didn’t want you just to disappear again. We‘ve—been through too much together to—” She stopped, frowning. “Ryder, what on earth are you doing?” He’d slid his long body to the very edge of the bed, and was looking back at his left side, assessing the assemblage of wires that connected him to the various monitors next to the bed. “I’m getting up,” he said. “You’re crazy. You can’t get up.” “The hell I can’t.” He seemed on the point of unclipping a wire attached to a round foam pad on his chest. Jayne took a step closer to the bed. “Ryder, you’re all patched together and—” The pleading look in his eyes stopped her in her tracks. The Nick Ryder she’d loved so completely—the man who’d made her his own so many years ago—was suddenly looking out at her again, hungry, open, searching. “Then get over here, damn it.” His voice sounded anything but pleading. “I can move if I have to. And I will, if you’re planning on staying so far away from me.” Away from him... Jayne almost laughed. The only place in the world she’d ever wanted to be was with him. But— “Are you sure you’re feeling okay?” She took another step toward the bed. “The surgeon said the anesthetic might—” “No. I’m not feeling okay.” He reached out his left arm, grimacing as he did it. But the strength in his fingers was as powerful, as compelling as ever. He circled her wrist and drew her nearer to him, pulling her over to the bed. “I feel like hell,” he went on. “But that’s the least of my worries at the moment.” “Then what—are you worried about?” She sat in the spot on the bed where she’d kept most of her solitary vigil over the last thirty-six hours. Then, Ryder might as well have been a million miles away, drugged by anesthetic and worn out by everything his body had been through. But now... Now he eased her against him, avoiding the worst of the damage but keeping a close enough hold on her that she could feel his heart thudding against the hard wall of his chest. His skin was warm, his eyes seeking hers as though he wanted to peer directly into her soul. “I’m worried about hearing you say we’re ending things,” he said. “Hell, I’m more than just worried. Jaynie, is that what you really want—an ending?” The sudden wild hope that filled her was mixed with trepidation. She’d worked so hard to fight against these foolish dreams. If she let herself hope again... “I thought that was what you wanted,” she said slowly. “When we talked about this back in the boat, before we met Greg...” She paused, still shaken by the realization that the friend she’d been so close to had not been what he’d seemed. Like Ryder, Greg Iverson had hidden a lot of secrets behind his handsome facade. But there was no sign of any facade covering Ryder’s emotions now. She’d been so certain that his openness, his tenderness, would all disappear with the return of his memory. But his memory was back. And so was that seeking, ardent expression that stirred her so deeply. “You said then what you always used to say when I wanted to talk about the future—about having a family together,” she went on, forcing herself to think past the intensity of Ryder’s dark blue eyes. “You always said it was the wrong time to talk about it—until I realized there was never going to be a right time. I can’t go back to that, Nick. I can’t watch you bury yourself in your job and ignore our future—especially when your job—” She broke off and shivered, leaning gladly into his embrace when he pulled her a little closer. “I thought I was going to lose you forever,” she whispered, discovering too late that her voice wouldn’t work above a whisper. “You won’t lose me—untess you want me to go.” His words rumbled against her ear, and she realized she was pressing her face against his shoulder as though she wanted to recapture the intimacy they’d shared in the old cabin for those few precious days. From the way he held her, Ryder seemed to be trying to do the same thing. His bullet wound hampered him, but he still managed to lean over far enough to kiss the curve of her cheek as he said, “Jaynie, I was wrong—from the beginning. I just thought—well, hell, I don’t know what I thought.” That surge of hope wouldn’t be repressed this time. “You thought you had to prove yourself to the whole world before you deserved a chance to be happy yourself,” she said. She couldn’t see his face. But she knew—oh, how intimately she knew—the feeling of his expressive mouth curving into a smile against her forehead. “Yeah,” he said gruffly. “Something like that. And I guess I just didn’t trust that what we had would last. I couldn’t stand the thought of losing it. And so I—” She finished the sentence when he halted. “You retreated to the point where we started to lose everything, anyway,” she said gently. Shifting her body, she looked up into his face and saw all the doubts and hesitations that he’d finally admitted to in the old cabin in the woods, chasing each other around and around in his storm-blue eyes. But there were other feelings there now, too. She could see him marshaling the strength and fierceness he’d poured into his job, finally directing it toward himself—toward themselves. The thought of it made her almost dizzy. “Ryder, are you saying you want us to try this again?” “If it’s not too late.” “And—you want to have children? A family?” “I want us to have children.” He said the words so slowly, so softly, that she knew how deeply he meant them. It was a vow, a promise. And maybe it was better and stronger than the one he’d made so many years ago as a younger, brasher man. His next words confirmed it. “I feel like I’ve lived ten years in the past few days,” he said. “It’s almost as though—when I lost my memory, I had a chance to start all over again.” “That’s how I felt, too.” Jayne stroked his forehead, pushing a lost strand of hair back into place. “But I was so sure it would all end when your memory came back.” “It did—at first. I was so scared when I remembered what was happening. All I could think of was going back to the way I’d always been, shutting everybody out, relying on myself and nobody else. It was how I survived my childhood. It seemed safer, smarter that way.” He shook his head and the dark blond strand she’d just caressed came right back where it had been. “But when I realized at that parking lot that I might never have the chance to tell you that the only thing I want is to spend the rest of my life with you—that I never stopped loving you, not even for a minute—” She couldn’t tell whether he finished the sentence or not. Her own answer was swallowed up, like Ryder’s words, in the sudden urgency of their embrace. She could feel the muscles in his left arm quivering where he held her. But whatever pain he might be feeling seemed to be of less importance to him than the need to hold her close. Forever. She thought her heart might come apart from the sudden joy filling her. Everything she’d longed for—every dream she’d reached for and had never quite been able to hang on to—it was all starting to come true. It was— “Mr. and Mrs. Ryder!” The voice from the doorway startled them both. They half turned, still folded in each other’s arms, to see a stern-looking nurse with a scandalized expression on her face. She hurried into the room, anxiously checking Ryder’s dressings, his monitors, his bedding. Through it all, Ryder held tight to Jayne, refusing to let her move away from him. She saw a gleam of his old reckless humor in his face as he submitted to the nurse’s none-too-gentle poking and prodding. And when the woman was finally finished with her inspection and the lecture that had accompanied it, Ryder glanced at her name tag and said, “Actually, Nurse Adams, I owe you a favor.” “You do?” Her narrowed gaze said clearly that she didn’t trust the renegade grin in his eyes. “And why is that?” “Until you called us Mr. and Mrs., I’d almost forgotten we were still married.” He tightened his arm around Jayne and eased himself closer to her again on the newly smoothed sheets. “I was about to pop the question all over again, and now I realize I don’t have to.” He kissed the side of her temple, and Jayne closed her eyes, lost in the rightness of his lips against her skin and the vision of everything their love might finally blossom into now that they were letting it flower at last. “I still owe you a wedding ring, though, Jaynie,” he added. “We’ll go get it back just as soon as I’m out of here.” He’d pitched his voice lower, but Nurse Adams obviously had ears like a cat. “Which will be none too soon,” she said firmly, “especially if you intend to carry on like this just hours after you’ve had surgery.” “It’s a waste of time telling him to do things,” Jayne felt compelled to tell the nurse. “Once he’s made up his mind—” “Even if it does take him ten years to do it—” He grinned down at her, and Jayne caught her breath, seduced by the gleam of tenderness and laughter in his eyes. She traced a fingertip along the line of his cheekbone, stopping at the corner of his jaw. “Nick, I love you,” she said. “Have I told you that recently?” His face changed at her words. But the humor in it didn’t fade completely. “You might have,” he said. “I don’t remember. It’s this darned amnesia—very liable to relapse, you know. Maybe you’d better tell me often, just in case.” He cocked one sandy eyebrow toward Nurse Adams, who had moved away and was trying briskly to get a bouquet of iris to stand up straighter in their vase. “And I love you, Jayne Robards.” He ended the sentence on a gentle kiss. “Shall I prove it to you again?” The pure suggestiveness in his tone was enough to drive the nurse back out into the hallway, leaving the flower arrangement half-finished and Jayne and Ryder laughing into each other’s eyes with a joy that felt strong enough to last forever this time. They were alone in each other’s arms, with a future that was beginning at last. ISBN : 978-1-4592-7235-4 A MARRIAGE TO REMEMBER Copyright © 1997 by Cathy Stanton All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the editorial office, Silhouette Books, 300 East 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017 U.S.A. All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A. ® and TM are trademarks of Harlequin Books S.A., used under license. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries. Table of Contents Table of Contents His bead was pounding Letter to Reader Also by About the Author Dedication Prologue 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 Copyright