Even though temperatures had pushed into the mid-nineties, Jerome was rocking and rolling that afternoon. The crowds spilled out of the Spirit Room and flowed into the side street that ran along the bar’s western side, turning the narrow lane into an impromptu block party. Local law enforcement didn’t seem too worried, but just let the people go where they wanted.
The pounding bass line got into my blood, and I grasped Grayson by the hand and pulled him toward the music. Already, people were dancing in the street, keeping themselves hydrated by passing around bottles of water and sometimes dumping the water right on their heads or down their necks. Looking bemused but game, he followed along after me as I pushed my way into the throng.
“Don’t suppose you remember dancing, either,” I said, raising my voice so he could hear me over the music.
“No.”
“It’s easy.”
My daring probably had its origins in that second glass of pinot grigio I’d drunk, but I wasn’t going to worry about it right then. The music settled down into a slower piece, and I put my hands on Grayson’s shoulders and drew him to me. He gave a quick glance around, as if to observe what other people were doing, and then wrapped his arms around my waist, bringing me even closer.
This close, he was far more intoxicating than the wine. I could sense the heat of his body through the T-shirt — which was getting damper by the second in the brutal July sunshine — feel his muscles moving under my fingers as he swayed with me to the music. When was the last time I’d danced with somebody like this? Years, definitely.
Scratch that. I’d never danced like this, out in the sun and the wind, energy seeming to swirl and shimmer in the very air. And I’d certainly never been with anyone like Grayson. Truth be told, I didn’t think there could be anyone else like Grayson.
He seemed to feel it, too, his smile flashing white as he gazed down into my face, watching me closely. God knows what I must have looked like, with sweat plastering my hair to my brow and lips bare of gloss, since I’d forgotten to put some back on after lunch…but he didn’t seem to mind too much. If anything, he moved closer, our bodies now locked from shoulder to hip. Once upon a time, I might have cared about such a public display of sensuality, but everyone around us was doing pretty much the same thing.
The force of the desire that passed over me was so strong, I would have staggered if he hadn’t been holding me so tightly. It reminded me of the one and only time my mother had taken me to California and brought me to the beach. No real altruism there — Marybeth Swenson had been pursuing some man or the other at the time — but still, I had gotten to stand in the water, feel it rushing around my legs and feet. And then I’d gone out a little farther and almost been knocked down when a wave came out of seemingly nowhere and engulfed me up to my waist.
The sensation was similar now, of being surrounded by a force I couldn’t control or even resist. And that wasn’t like me. Not Careful Kara, who always looked before she leaped.
Grayson’s hands slipped from my waist, and I realized the song had ended. I put my hand up to my forehead and felt how overheated I’d really become.
“I think we’d better go inside for a cool drink.”
He smiled at me.
“Not that kind of a cool drink. Just some ice water.”
“All right.” His tone was casual, and if he’d had the same kind of physical response to me that I’d had to him, he sure wasn’t showing it.
We went in the bar and overpaid for a couple of glasses of ice water, but I didn’t really care. It was only fair to give the place some custom, considering we’d been dancing to the lounge’s musical offerings for free. And after we’d cooled down sufficiently, we headed back out to the street. Not to dance; I thought I’d skirted the edge of danger there, and since Grayson hadn’t shown any particular interest in going another round, better to head on to something a little less…fraught. A storefront just down the hill from the Spirit Room seemed to catch his eye, and he paused.
“Wine tasting?” he asked, staring at a sandwich board propped up on the sidewalk. “Isn’t that what we did at lunch?”
“Not really,” I said. “We ordered wine with lunch. When you do a wine tasting, you generally get a sampling of the different wines from one particular winery. We’ve got quite a few around here, believe it or not. A lot of them are down in Page Springs, but there are wineries all over the Verde Valley.”
“Let’s try some. I want to see what a wine tasting is like.”
“I’m not sure I’m cooled down enough for that — ”
“You like wine, don’t you?”
Since I knew he wouldn’t believe me if I answered in the negative, I only lifted my shoulders. “Sure I do. But we can only buy one bottle if we find something we like. I couldn’t fit anything more than that in my bag.” I’d transferred everything to my one purse that was backpack-style so I could wear it over my shoulders while we rode, but since it wasn’t a true backpack, it had a limited carrying capacity.
“No problem.”
He held the door open for me as I went in, and I had to smile inwardly at his contradictions. He didn’t seem to notice or care that I was dropping a good chunk of change during this little outing of theirs, and yet he always made sure to open doors or do the sorts of things my grandmother used to refer to as “gentlemanly.” Oh, well, I could afford to splurge every once in a while…although if he suggested dinner at L’Auberge or Rene’s once we were back in Sedona, I’d have to put my foot down. Enough was enough.
Any irritation I might have felt evaporated once I crossed into the wine-tasting shop. The space was light and airy, with high-beamed ceilings, but what immediately drew the eye was the amazing full-wall window on the southeast side of the building. It looked out over the Verde Valley, offering an incredible vista of desert canyons and golden-brown hills. The day was clear enough that you could see all the way to the San Francisco Peaks in Flagstaff, although a mass of bruise-colored clouds had begun to build up above the Mogollon Plateau, bringing with it the threat of the monsoon storms. I’d have to keep an eye on that — riding back in the rain didn’t sound too appealing.
We crossed to the bar and made our selections, a mix of whites and reds. I liked both, and obviously, Grayson didn’t recall enough of his previous existence to have a preference one way or the other. For all I knew, he’d been a beer-drinking guy back in the day.
He didn’t show much evidence of that as he sampled the offerings with me, though. All of them seemed to meet his approval.
“Just one, remember?” I said.
A flash of those green eyes as he grinned. “All right, if I have to choose, I like the red blend. The one with the moo — ”
“Mouvedre,” I supplied.
“That one.”
The shop’s proprietor — I got the feeling he was the owner, too — packaged up the wine for us. If he was a little disappointed that we were walking away with only one bottle, he didn’t show it.
“You two have a nice rest of your afternoon,” he said.
We thanked him and headed out. I was surprised to see that the sun had already begun to dip behind the mountain. Sunset was still a few hours off, but I hadn’t thought we’d spent so much time in Jerome. I glanced down at my watch and saw it was pushing on toward six o’clock.
“That was a great view,” Grayson commented. “Any place else we could find something like that?”
“Almost anything in town, probably, but I think I remember there being a lookout spot a few levels up. Ready for a climb?”
Another one of those quick, flashing grins. “Are you?”
“It’ll give me a chance to work off lunch. Come on — I think we need to take those stairs over there.”
The narrow little concrete staircase did in fact lead up to the next terrace, but the overlook in that spot was still crowded with tourists, so we gamely pressed on to the next one, which was deserted. It figured. People in general were only willing to go so far to get a great view.
Up here the wind was stronger, pulling at my loose hair. It whipped around my face, and I had to reach up to push it back. Good thing my sunglasses did a decent job of protecting my eyes from the wayward strands.
Grayson gazed to the east toward the Mogollon Rim, which was now barely visible beyond a dark mass of thunderheads. “Is that a storm?”
“Looks like it. With any luck, it’ll keep blowing west. It won’t be fun to drive through a downpour, but it’s sort of a hazard in these parts at this time of year.”
He nodded, fine profile outlined against the mottled sky. Even here in Jerome were faint traces of high cirrus clouds, the outriders of the storm front. I squinted eastward, gauging the strength of the wind and the size of the mass of clouds building some forty miles away.
“It’s not looking too good,” I said. “Maybe we should head back now, try to — ”
I’d been about to say, try to outrun it, but I didn’t get the chance, because Grayson had turned to me with one swift movement and pulled me against him, then buried my mouth under his.
A brief second of shock, and then I let myself fall into the kiss, tasted him as he kissed me with an urgency and a thoroughness I really hadn’t expected. Not with the way he had walked so casually away from the dance, as if our bodies hadn’t been pressed up against one another for all the world to see. His hands moved through my hair, fingers strong as they moved down my neck, brushed against my collarbone.
The air was thinner up here in Jerome. That had to be the explanation for my sudden lightheadedness, for my difficulty in drawing enough breath into my lungs. I clung to him, feeling the strength of his body, the coiled power in those muscles.
Gently, very gently, he released his hold on me, letting me drift away just enough so he could look down into my face. I could only stare back up at him, at the green eyes with their heavy fringe of dark lashes, the high cheekbones with the smooth brown skin pulled tightly over them, the trace of dark stubble along his jaw.
Anything I might have said would have been woefully inadequate. So I settled for, “Wow.”
“You didn’t mind?”
A shaky laugh bubbled its way up my throat. “Mind? No. That is…no, I didn’t mind at all.”
“I’ve wanted to do that all day.” He shook his head. “No, actually, I’ve been wanting to do that ever since I first saw you.”
“Even though you were almost dropping dead from dehydration and exposure?”
“Even then. When I saw you bending over me, I thought you must be an angel. No one else could be that beautiful.”
From anyone else, I would have thought that was the mother of all lines, but as I watched him, saw the earnest expression on his face, I realized he spoke simply, from the heart. Something inside me seemed to turn over, and my breath caught. Could it be that finally, when I least expected it, something pure and lovely had come into my life?
I wouldn’t call it love. It was too soon for that. But it was…something.
The moment was too intense. I wasn’t ready for this. Better to take refuge in brittle, ironic words. “I think even Nurse Ratched would have looked beautiful to you right then if she’d been carrying a glass of water.”
“Who’s Nurse Ratched? And you are beautiful, you know. Then, and now.”
Heat flooded my cheeks, and I stared out into the wind, hoping the rising breeze might help to cool my blush. As I watched, I saw the clouds racing, dropping lower, the blurred darkness beneath them a sure sign of a desert downpour.
“Okay, if you say so. But I really think we need to get going. It’s starting to look pretty grim out there.”
He followed my gaze, appeared to take in the looming clouds to the east. “I think you’re right. It’s probably the kind of evening where you want to stay in.”
Since I was already a little flushed, I couldn’t do much more than nod without looking straight at him and then head down the narrow, treacherous staircase. No one else seemed to be in much of a hurry, but maybe they’d come from points west and north, or maybe they were willing to stay and see if they could ride it out.
After all, desert storms, while spectacular, were usually short-lived.
Lance
He picked up the Ruger, aimed it at the can on the rock some thirty yards away, and pressed the trigger.
Blam!
The can flew up into the air and fell with a metallic clank among its brethren, which now numbered an even two dozen. With no sense of satisfaction, Lance re-sighted, fixed his aim on the next can in the lineup, and squeezed the trigger again.
Again, the can shot skyward and then dropped to the earth. He paused for a second to wipe away the sweat from his brow, replaced the clip, and went on to the next one. Blam! And so on.
Usually, a few hours spent in target practice helped to settle his mind. Today, even though his aim was as unerring as always, he couldn’t quite achieve the Zen-like state he’d hoped for. His thoughts swirled in his head, bringing with them unwanted images of Kara in some stranger’s arms. It didn’t seem to matter whether he was shooting the Ruger or the rifle or his beloved Glock — he couldn’t force his mind to more useful subjects.
At least he was alone out here. The gym had been hectic and noisy, typical for a Saturday, and he’d packed it in after only forty-five minutes. A cold shower hadn’t helped, either, so he’d loaded up the Jeep and headed out to one of his favorite spots above Oak Creek, along one of the trails that led up into U.S. Forest Service lands. You could shoot safely there, and most of the time, the place was pretty deserted. It was cooler, too, up above the heat in Sedona proper. The sky was starting to look ugly, though. He guessed he had maybe half an hour at most before he’d have to stow everything in the Jeep so it wouldn’t get soaked.
It was stupid for him to be this upset. For all he knew, that Mrs. Martinez had just been yanking his chain. And even if she wasn’t, he didn’t have a claim on Kara. She could do whatever the hell she wanted.
Nice try. But it wasn’t working.
He remembered the first time he’d really noticed her. Oh, sure, she’d been in and around Jim Swenson’s shop during her college years, which was right after the time Lance had relocated to Sedona. He’d liked Jim but of course hadn’t paid any attention to Kara. Lance was many things, but a cradle robber wasn’t one of them. Besides, trailing after Jim’s college-age granddaughter would have been a little bit too much like pissing in the guy’s pool. Then she’d gone up to NAU for her last two years of undergraduate work, and appeared ready to stay on for several more years so she could get her master’s. But when Jim had his stroke, she came right back to Sedona, leaving a bad breakup with her fiancé and a half-finished post-graduate degree behind her.
After Jim died, she took over the shop, got involved with Sedona’s UFO community. And it was when she came to one of the local MUFON meetings for the first time that Lance realized sometime in the intervening years she’d gone from a girl to a woman…and a beautiful one at that. It wasn’t just her looks, though — it was the way she’d carried on and made a life for herself, picked up her grandfather’s work even though it had been his passion, not hers. Took over raising her little sister after both her grandparents were gone. Lance respected that.
It had been hard to appear uninterested, to be just another piece of the UFO network here in Sedona, when what he’d wanted more than anything was to get close to her, to be there for her so she wouldn’t have to keep going it alone. But he knew all too well the consequences of getting too close. He was on too many radar screens. So far, he’d skated along, tried to appear as harmless as possible. Just a washed-up relic of a now-defunct program the Army didn’t even want to claim, one that was something of a laughingstock.
It had been real, though. It had all been real. Too real. He’d thought he could have it both ways, and she’d paid the price.
Natalie.
Try as hard as he could to remember the good things about being with her, what had been burned into his brain cells for all time was that last image he had of her lying sprawled out on the kitchen floor in the house they’d just rented together. Blood trailed away from the back of her head, and those dark eyes he’d loved so much stared sightlessly at the ceiling.
And a small piece of white paper with block letters printed on it, placed carefully on her chest.
LEAVE IT ALONE.
He’d tried hunting them down, had a good idea who was behind the hit. But the problem with dirty government agents was that they could hide behind a huge, faceless bureaucracy. They were quicksilver. So he’d gone along, hating in his heart, hoping one day he could get his revenge.
In the meantime, he had to play it safe. No attachments. Present the appearance of a washed-up operative who’d thrown his lot in with the tinfoil hat–wearers. And in the meantime, disseminate as much information as he could, by means of data so heavily encrypted he knew no one could hack it. Sometimes it helped to have savants like Jeff Makowski on your side.
And if the current casualty appeared to be his heart, well, he could live with that. Better to have the pain and know that Kara was safe.
He could handle a lot, as long as he knew she wouldn’t get hurt.
Kara
The storm hit us just as we passed the turn-off for Page Springs. It pounded down, soaking right through my T-shirt, turning the road into a slick nightmare. Thank God Grayson seemed to have no trouble with the sudden change in conditions; he throttled back slightly, but the tires held as we continued down 89A, the rain a drumbeat on my helmet.
I clung to him, eyes slitted behind my sunglasses. Hopefully, he could see better than I was able to, because right then the whole world looked like one big blurry mess.
He turned off 89A onto Soldier Pass Road. Funny how I didn’t even have to remind him of the route. Somehow, he just knew. Another turn, and we were in the neighborhood of modest but well-maintained homes that had been my world for almost the past two decades.
As we turned the corner onto my street, I let go of Grayson with one arm so I could reach in my bag and fish out the remote control to the garage. Sheltering the device from the rain as best I could, I hit the button and sighed a little in relief as the door opened. The motorcycle slowed to a stop in the empty spot to the right of my Prius.
I stowed the remote back in my purse and reached up with chilled wet fingers to undo the strap of my helmet. Underneath, my head was more or less dry, although the ends of my long hair, unprotected by the helmet, dripped with rain. The rest of me was a sodden mess. Blue jeans did not improve with soaking.
Gingerly, I climbed off the bike and watched as Grayson removed his own helmet and stood up as well. Like me, he was pretty much soaked from the neck down, but he didn’t seem fazed by that. He flashed me a grin and said, “Some ride, huh?”
“It was something,” I agreed. I got the house keys out of my purse and went to unlock the door that led from the garage to the house. The alarm immediately went off, but I typed in the code without thinking.
Gort came rushing toward us, panting and doing the little half-jumps that indicated he wanted a walk.
“Not yet, kiddo,” I said, pointing toward the window. “It’s pouring rain. Give it a half hour or so.”
The dog let out a resigned whine and padded out of the kitchen to the living room, where he could take up his favorite spot on the Navajo rug and wait out the storm.
“It’s always something — ” I began, but I didn’t get much farther than that, since Grayson had come up behind me and turned me around so he could kiss me once again.
That was all well and good, but now that I was out of the wind, my jeans and T-shirt had begun to stick to me, soggy and cold and more than a little uncomfortable. I came up for air and said, “Grayson, I have got to get out of these clothes — ”
“Good idea.”
And he grasped the bottom of his sodden T-shirt and pulled it over his head, revealing a stomach so hard and flat, I had a feeling I could have bounced a quarter off it. He dropped the shirt on the floor and reached toward me, taking hold of my own tee so I had no choice but to raise my arms so he could pull it off as well.
“I have a hamper for that stuff, you know,” I said in mock-prim tones, but inwardly, I could already feel the heat rising in me, the need.
“Show me, then.”
With a laugh, I dashed away from him, running back toward my bedroom. He followed close behind and caught up with me a few paces away from the bed, his fingers feverishly working on the button of my jeans. Since everything was soaked through and clinging together, my underwear came down along with my pants, but somehow I didn’t mind. All I could think of was getting rid of Grayson’s jeans as well, removing the last obstacles to this, the inevitable end to our day.
His pants dropped on top of mine, and then we were on the bed together, his hands moving over my body, finding the clasp to my bra so he could remove my final piece of clothing. And oh, God, the feeling of his breath hot against my chilled skin, the delicate sensation of his lips moving down from my neck to my exposed breast, his mouth warm on my nipple, sucking….
I let out a cry and moved myself closer against him. His arousal was as hard as his muscles against my hip, and I reached down so I could take him in my fingers, move my hand up and down, listen to him moan, the sound muffled somewhat by my breast. One of his hands traced its way down past my hip bone, down across my thigh, and then in between my legs, stroking me, using the wetness of my own arousal to intensify my pleasure.
This was crazy. Some part of me knew that, but my body had taken over, was clamoring for the release it had been denied for so long. I let myself relax into his touch, pressed against him, surrendered to the heat and the delicate yet insistent pressure of his fingers. And when the climax came, I had to bite back a sob, and instead kissed his arm, his chest, anything to keep myself from completely falling apart.
He shifted so he could kiss me on the mouth, his tongue insistent, strong as the rest of him. I could tell he wanted to push into me, but I wasn’t that far gone. Not yet.
“Wait,” I whispered and he paused, looking at me with curious eyes.
It had been a while, and I had to hope that condoms didn’t have a shelf life or something. But the little foil containers were still there in my nightstand drawer. I pulled one out and ripped it open.
“What’s that?” he asked.
I didn’t bother with the conundrum of him knowing how to repair a motorcycle but not recognizing a condom when he saw it. “For protection — against pregnancy, against disease. You know.”
“No, I don’t. How could I have a disease? I’ve never been with anyone else.”
“That you remember.”
His frown told me he didn’t quite know how to reply to that remark. Luckily, his confusion seemed to be entirely mental — his erection hadn’t flagged at all. So I bent over him and rolled on the condom. He didn’t seem fazed by the procedure, and even let out a little sigh of his own as my fingers brushed against him.
“It’s okay now?” he asked.
“Very okay.”
And then he was on top of me, face close to mine, as he pressed inside me and I rocked my hips to take him in. Oh, yes, this was what I’d wanted, had hoped for since he’d held me in his arms on the street in Jerome only a few hours earlier. Or maybe it had been even before that, if I wanted to admit the truth to myself.
No time left for any self-examination, any doubt. It was only his body and mine, joined in a consummation that seemed ever so right, sweat and rain mingling as our disparate selves became one. He cried out as he came, a guttural, shocked sound, as if he hadn’t known what was about to happen. Maybe that was yet another thing he had forgotten. My own climax came almost immediately afterward, a wash of red heat throughout my entire body, better than I had ever remembered.
Better than it had any right to be.
We both lay there for some time afterward, too spent to move. Finally, I kissed him on the cheek and murmured, “I need to go clean up.”
He shifted off me then and lay sprawled on the bed as I got to my feet and went into the bathroom. My legs shook a little as I staggered to the sink and splashed some cold water on my face. Even the shock of the water wasn’t enough to quite dispel the afterglow, however. I looked at myself in the mirror then, at the fair hair plastered to my forehead and cheeks, at the inky stain of mascara below my eyes. The Kara I saw in the mirror didn’t appear all that different, although I did look, as my grandfather used to say, as if I’d been rode hard and put away wet.
Well, both of those statements were equally true.
But as I stared at myself, some of the glow began to ebb away. Oh, it had been great sex, marvelous — better than I’d ever had with Alan, if I wanted to be perfectly honest. So what was the problem? I should be ecstatic. After all, Grayson was pretty much my perfect man: fun, honest, sweet…and amazingly good-looking.
Why, then, did I feel so guilty?