Toni shifted in Lane’s arms.
“What happened?” she mumbled as her hand moved toward her jaw and the pain that she felt there.
What happened? I nearly lost you, lady. But the thought did not fit the decision that Lane had already made. He couldn’t lose something that he’d already given away.
Lane caught her fingertips before they centered upon the swiftly darkening bruise and held them to his lips without caring how it might look to the gathering crowd. All he could think of was the living, breathing woman that he held who had survived the ordeal. He had no way of knowing how long she’d been in Rice’s clutches, or what she’d had to endure, but at this point, he didn’t care. She was alive.
“You're safe, baby,” Lane said softly.
Toni’s heart thumped erratically as she blinked to clear her vision. She knew that voice. She recognized the touch.
“Lane? Is that you? How did you...” Toni jerked, and started to fight her way out of his arms. “There was a man!” she cried. “He came up from—”
“He’s gone. It’s over. He can’t hurt you again,” Lane said, and felt satisfaction from the knowledge.
Justin knelt, and without asking, pulled his sister from the lawman’s embrace. “Come here, sis, don’t be afraid. You're safe now.”
Toni let herself be traded from one man’s arms to the other’s because it was not in her at the moment to think straight. But when Lane had turned her loose and walked away, she knew a bit of her heart had gone with him.
Lane had given her up to Justin because he had no right to object, but it was a cold, empty feeling that he took with him as he returned to the scene of the crime. There were things to be done that only he could do, and the one that satisfied him the most was giving a positive identification to the man who was lying in a spreading pool of blood.
“Justin, where did you come from, and better yet, where did they?” Toni shuddered, staring around in dismay at the gathering of people and cars.
“God, Toni, I thought you were dead.”
Toni vaguely remembered seeing the man’s fist and then everything going dark. It could just as easily have been a permanent “lights out” for her. She had never realized before how fast a person could die.
“It seems that Lane Monday wasn’t the only man who survived the plane crash,” Justin informed her. “The body the authorities fished out of Pigeon River wasn’t Emmit Rice, after all. It was old man Sumter. They're speculating that Rice was responsible for the thievery.” He shuddered and clutched his sister tightly. “We figured he was trying to steal your pickup for a getaway. He was going to take you with him as a hostage.”
“Oh, my God!”
Toni wouldn’t let herself think of what might have been. Suddenly, she was very glad that she’d been unconscious. Having to deal with remembering something like this might have taken a while to get over.
“How did they stop him?”
Justin bowed his head. “Monday did it. He saved your life.”
Toni’s heart leapt in her chest. It was a strange and telling thing to know that she now drew breath because of another person’s actions. Now I know how he felt, she thought.
“Justin, help me up,” she said, and started to struggle to her feet.
“No, Toni! The ambulance should be here any minute. Let them check you out first and see if—”
“I have a sore jaw. Nothing more. The dirt on me was already there before he came. I was changing a flat. Now damn it, Justin, help me up!”
Justin sighed. “Just be careful,” he warned, but she was already gone, walking through the heat and dust toward the tall, dark-haired man who was standing in the center of the nearby crowd.
Toni’s legs were shaky, but her need to get to Lane was strong. She hadn’t expected to see this man ever again, and now, to have it happen like this was almost too much to bear. When he’d left last week, in her mind, they had been even. She’d saved his life and he’d granted her a last request.
They were an unlikely couple with an impossible situation between them. He had more than made it plain to her that he didn’t want entanglements, and as hard as it had been to accept, she’d taken from him what he was willing to give and told herself it was enough. Yet why, she wondered, did fate keep throwing them together? What good could ever come from the pain of continual parting?
But the knowledge that she could see him, be with him, even if it was only for a short space of time, was worth more sleepless nights, because Lane Monday had stolen a piece of her heart.
“Lane.”
In the middle of a crowd, in the middle of a sentence, Lane froze. The soft sound of his name on Toni’s lips sent him spinning around as the people surrounding them blurred out of focus. All he could see was her face and those eyes, dark and compelling, asking more of him than he was willing to give.
He looked over the heads of the people around him, searching for Justin, for the paramedics, someone... anyone...to explain why she was not under someone’s care. And then she touched his arm and it was too late to stop the flow of feelings that swamped him. He could no more stop himself from touching her than he could have ceased taking his next breath. His palm cupped her cheek, and gentleness was in every nuance of his touch and voice.
“What are you doing up, lady? You should be lying down taking it easy. You've had a hell of a scare.”
She covered his hand with her own and shook her head. “I'm not the one who got scared. I got off easy. I don’t remember a thing after a swinging fist until I heard your voice.”
“Ah, God.” He pulled her into his arms and crushed her against his chest. “I was nearly too late,” he said, and let himself go as he started to shake.
Toni wrapped her arms around his waist and allowed herself the fantasy that this was where she belonged. His heartbeat was rapid beneath her eardrum. His clutch seemed desperate as he held her fast. She pretended it was more than relief with which they embraced.
“This time it was you who saved my life,” Toni said. “I don’t know how to say thank you, but I...”
The words died on her lips. A sensation of having already been in this place, saying these words, made her head spin as a wave of embarrassment sent a rapid flush to her cheeks.
Lane went still. Only days ago he’d been saying the same thing to her. And the memory of what she’d asked was uppermost in his mind as he tilted her face to his and stared long and hard into her eyes. Could he? Should he?
“I do,” he said, and felt her shock even though she did not move.
Dear Lord, Toni thought. Please let this be what I think.
“You do? What?” she asked.
“I know how you can say thank you.”
She closed her eyes and swallowed. If she was wrong, there would be no way to get out of the shame of letting him know that she cared too much. She opened her eyes. When she looked up, she was staring into a wall of blue fire.
“What are you saying?” she whispered.
He tried to smile, but it got lost in his pain. “Once more...just for fun?” he whispered, and kissed the corner of her mouth.
“Toni! The ambulance is here,” Justin said, grabbing her arm as he demanded her attention.
Startled by the interruption, Lane stepped back and resisted the urge to punch Justin Hatfield in the nose.
Toni didn’t argue. She was too busy trying to assimilate the implications of what Lane had asked. Oh, God, if I do this again, will I have the strength to pretend it doesn’t matter when he leaves?
She answered her own question when she suddenly stopped, then turned and looked back to Lane, who was still watching her.
“I suppose there will be all kinds of paperwork,” she asked, and knew it was the last thing he might have expected her to say.
“A fair amount, I suppose.”
She nodded. “It will probably take at least a day or so, won’t it?”
Lane’s eyes widened. Suddenly he knew where she was leading, but he couldn’t help himself, or hide his expression of shock. She was going to say yes.
“At least,” Dan Holley added, overhearing and answering for Lane as he walked up. “It’s good to see you up and walking, girl,” he said, and patted her gently on the arm. Then he grinned. “And you had better believe there'll be paperwork. Local reports, state reports and federal forms that I don’t even want to consider. I've already got this man a room at the Smoky Mountain Motel. He’s not budging from Chaney until he has dotted the last i and crossed the last t.”
Toni nodded without looking at Lane again, but it hadn’t been necessary. In his mind it was what she hadn’t said that counted. She hadn’t told him goodbye.
* * *
Toni wished that she were in her own home this evening, instead of under the caring, watchful eye of Justin and enduring the noisy romp of family running in and out of the house. Her thoughts were on Lane and what he’d asked. And she knew good and well that she’d complied simply by asking about his location. Inwardly, they read each other all too well. It was what they couldn’t say aloud that was making all of this so difficult.
Justin pretended to be reading a paper, but Toni knew that he hadn’t missed one of her fidgets since bringing her home. But her family was simply going to have to worry, because there wasn’t anything she could say or do to help. It was going to take time for them to learn how to accept that the ugliness of the outside world had come into their small, rural community and changed their perception of safety forever.
As for herself, she’d already come to terms with losing more than a woman deserved to bear. For Toni, all she had left was her life. Her parents were gone. The man she’d foolishly fallen in love with was leaving her again. She had nothing but years stretching ahead of her. Single, lonely years, unless...
She took a deep breath and rose from her chair, unwilling to let hope get in the way of consequences. She and Lane had made love, but for all the wrong reasons. She’d wanted something from him that he wasn’t willing to give, and had taken something he didn’t know that he’d left. It remained to be seen whether anything would come of their union, but one thing was clear. Baby or not, she would never forget Lane Monday.
A tiny squeak, followed by a rather loud cry, was all the impetus that Toni needed to pick Lucy up from her crib.
She clasped the baby close against her, loving the feel of downy hair brushing against the skin on her neck. “What’s wrong, little girl? Is there too much noise for you to rest?”
Judy walked over and gave her baby’s rump a comforting pat. “Noise is the last thing that bothers her,” she said. “It’s probably my fault. I've done nothing but cry all evening. I'm sure she senses the unrest. Here, let me have her. I'll rock her a while. Maybe that will calm her down.”
Reluctantly, Toni gave up her niece, and turned toward the door, unwilling to stay inside another moment under her brother’s scrutiny.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
Toni sighed, pausing in the doorway. “Outside, Justin. Only outside. I need some space. Okay?” Without waiting for his permission, she walked out, closing the door firmly behind her as indication that company was not invited.
* * *
The next morning, when the sun was barely over the horizon, Justin walked out of the house in time to see Toni loading her overnight bag into her pickup.
“Where are you going?” he asked. “You haven’t even had breakfast.”
Toni hugged her brother’s neck. “I'm going home, Justin, where I belong. I want my own bed. I need to check on the livestock. I want to eat a bowl of cereal in peace without looking to see if you're watching me eat.”
He flushed. “I didn’t mean to...I just wanted to make sure that you were...” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Oh, shoot, Toni. You know what I mean.”
She grinned as two of his children burst out the front door in a fit of shrieks and joy at the sight of a new day.
“And you know what I mean,” she said.
He looked over his shoulder at the noise, then shrugged and answered her smile with one of his own. “I guess I do,” he said. “It is hard to get over a headache in this house.”
She cried all the way home, thinking of the quiet that awaited her, wishing it were not so.
* * *
Lane put down his pen and hung up the phone. There was nothing left to be done but wait for tomorrow and leave the same way that he’d come. It was amazing how well law enforcement agencies could work together when called upon to do so. He’d been through a number of cases where the difficulty in the job came not from the crime itself, but from having to fight for the right to do his job and not step on someone else’s territory and toes.
Tomorrow.
The word was, in itself, an abomination. If she didn’t come tonight, he wouldn’t see her again. He’d promised himself that much. She deserved to be able to make the choice. And while he’d found himself and his thoughts wandering far too often toward a tall, dark-eyed woman and the way she fit in his arms, he couldn’t—wouldn’t—let himself forget Sharla, or the way that she’d died.
Remember the disbelief on her face. Remember her pain...and the blood. Remember, you fool, that it was all your fault.
Lane shuddered and buried his face in his hands. How could he forget? He didn’t need to be reminded that she’d died because of him. What he needed to remember was the vow that he’d made when it had happened. Never again. Never again.
“Are you finished?” Dan asked.
Lane lifted his head. Probably, and I just don’t know it. But he didn’t say it, and thankfully, the sheriff did not remark on the lonely expression in Lane Monday’s eyes.
“I am now,” Lane said, and handed the stack of files to Dan. “I do reports, but I don’t do files.” He grinned to soften his remark. “Besides, I don’t know where you want them.”
Dan took them and tossed them on his desk. “Time enough for filing tomorrow. Come on, man. I'm treating you to the biggest steak dinner Knoxville has to offer.”
The thought of food made him sick. “I think I'll pass,” he said. “I’d rather grab a sandwich and an early night. The chopper should be here by daybreak tomorrow.”
Dan nodded as he extended his hand. “Monday, we've had one hell of a ride the past two weeks, from pulling you out of Chaney Creek to sending Rice home in a body bag. I can’t say that I'm sorry this is over. My fishing is way behind schedule as it is.”
Lane smiled back and took the handshake that the sheriff offered. “Take care, Holley, and remember my invitation.”
“Yeah, right. Palm trees. Cold long-necks.” He grinned as he walked away.
And I would trade every damn one of them for a long night with a sweet woman named Antonette, Lane thought.
Moments later he was gone, retracing the path that he’d worn between the Smoky Mountain Motel and the sheriff’s office in Chaney. Hours later, he was inside the room with his back to the wall, watching a door that he feared wouldn’t open.
* * *
It was almost dark. Toni paced her living room floor, telling herself that she was simply asking for heartache, and then reminding herself what she would get in return. What was a little heartache compared to the joy of making love with Lane? How could it hurt to give it one more try?
“All right, mister. It can’t possibly hurt me any more than it has already,” she muttered as she grabbed her purse on the way out the door. “Besides, I pay what I owe.” And she owed him her life.
Minutes later, the silence of the night was broken by the sound of her truck as she drove away, and then all was quiet on the hill above Chaney Creek.
* * *
Four cabins sat in a neat, straight row, facing away from the main street of Chaney. Four distinct little bungalows that had been built during the late fifties when it was “cute” to have awnings on every window. Little, white, one-room houses with green shingles and shutters and small picket fences.
The Smoky Mountain Motel was not doing a booming business. Three of the bungalows were dark and shuttered. It was the one on the far end with the light that drew Toni like a moth to a flame, pulling her closer to a fire that she knew could destroy her, if she let it.
Her truck’s engine was barely running above idle as she coasted to a quiet stop near the edge of the mini-picket fence in front of Lane’s bungalow. When she killed the engine and slipped the key into her pocket, she had a moment of anxiety, wondering if she was making a mistake, and then knew that the only mistake would be in leaving. For her, the decision had already been made.
But having come, it did not stop her legs from shaking, or make her heartbeat slow down. It didn’t make it any easier to knock, and then stand and wait for him to appear.
But when he opened the door, blocking the opening with his size and intensity, the look on his face was of such overwhelming relief that she knew she had not been the only one in fear. When Lane stepped silently aside to allow her to enter, she did so with a graceful finality that was not lost on the watching man.
Toni took his silence as what it was intended to be, filling her mind with the sight of this man to remember when he would be gone.
“Ah, God, lady. You know how to make a man weak. I didn’t think you would come.”
Moments later, she was in his arms. I didn’t know how to stay away, she thought, and then thought became impossible.
Lane couldn’t get past the fear of yesterday when they had come around the curve in the road and he’d seen her in Emmit Rice’s arms. So limp. So still. The experience made her presence here now that more precious.
“Are you all right?” he asked as his hands traced the path of her spine down to the curve of her hips. “Maybe we shouldn’t be doing this after what you went through yesterday.”
Toni smiled through her tears. “Oh, no, Lane. That’s exactly why we should. Yesterday, I realized how easy it was to die. Tonight, I want to remember what it feels like to live.”
How easy it is to die. My God, my lady, if you only knew.
“I want you to make love to me again, Lane Monday. One more time.”
Her chin quivered and she hid her face against his chest when he whispered against her cheek, “And just for fun.”
If that was all it was to him, so be it.
But when their clothes fell away, and they met in each other’s arms, what came next was not in the name of fun. Their clasp was as urgent as the heat between their bodies, their breaths as short as the fuse on Lane’s control. Gentleness and foreplay had no part in the fierceness with which he took her to his bed and buried himself inside her. There was nothing left but an overwhelming need to forget everything and everybody except the now in which they lived.
Cognizant thought had come and gone, leaving Toni weak and helpless to everything but the need to meet Lane’s every demand. His weight came hot and heavy upon her as he thrust between her legs, using the skill of his sex to tell her what he could not say. That he wanted. That he needed. That he loved. That he would leave.
And when the wild, unfettered spiral of pleasure began to unwind low in her belly, and when his mouth was on her lips and his hands beneath her hips, she felt a splintering joy and at the same time a rage that this was over before it had ever begun.
Lane thrust a final time, then shook from the effort as he died a slow death in her arms. It would be justice if he did, he thought, and a fitting place in which to go.
“Ah, lady. You take my breath away,” he whispered, and rained kisses across her face and neck, tasting her tears upon his lips.
Their foreheads touched in mutual understanding and agreement for what had transpired. Their bodies had joined, but it was their souls that had met. Yet, for Lane, there were no words to be said to change what was.
Twice more before morning, they awoke. Once it was Lane who turned to her in desperation. And once it was Toni who rolled over and on top of him, taking him into her before he’d opened his eyes. But the pleasure was too brief and the ending incomplete. They had made love, but could not say the words, leaving Toni feeling cheated and Lane with a burden of guilt.
But it was only one more time...and just for fun.
* * *
The sky outside was turning gray, losing the shadows of night at an alarming rate. Toni had only a matter of minutes in which to leave before the early risers of Chaney caught her in the act.
She dressed without conscious thought, pulling on clothes simply because leaving this room naked was against the law. But in effect, she had already stripped herself, heart and soul, for the world to see. Loving a man who made no promises was as revealing as it got.
She turned at the doorway. Her lips twisted bitterly as she faced the pain of losing this man once again to a life in which she had no place or part.
“We're even, Lane Monday. Fly safe and fly high. I won’t be around next time to save you.”
Moments later, she was gone, unaware that he had been awake from the start, listening to the careful, quiet manner in which she’d dressed, absorbing every breath she’d taken and each step that she’d made away from him. But it had been her parting remark that he knew he might not survive.
“Next time, sweet lady, I won’t even care,” he muttered, and rolled himself out of the bed.
Within the hour he was airborne, up in a flurry of dust and dry grass, above the green cover from the treetops below, back to a place where there were no foggy-top mountains or narrow dirt roads leading to a quiet country farm above a place called Chaney Creek.