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On the short flight back to Vancouver, Tara asked Jake the question that’d been nagging her since she’d recovered from Grace’s surprise appearance and the emotional fallout of her connection with Hannah.
“Did you maneuver me into talking about the island and then visiting?”
“No,” he said. “Seriously. I was trying to get to know you better, and I admit I was curious, because if I owned an island, I’d be spending time there. And a great spot like that? I’d have trouble staying away.”
“How did you know what it looked like?” She studied his profile, wishing she could trust him the way she wanted to. But there was that place deep inside her that reminded her she’d been duped before.
He grinned at her. “You have heard of Google Earth, right?”
“It seems like such an odd coincidence that we were going there and Grace made the connection with Hannah.”
A softly commanding voice slipped into her mind. We are connected, but you must leave it be, little one.
Hannah! Tara waited for more but nothing came and, suddenly realizing she’d been holding her breath, she let it out in a rush.
“What’s wrong? You just went stark white.”
She shook her head and Jake’s warm hand closed around her frigid one.
“Wait,” she whispered.
Why now, Hannah? Why weren’t you there for me when Mom died? When I needed you so desperately?
I couldn’t then, and shouldn’t now. We cannot be connected. I love you. Know how much I love you. I have to go.
Tears rolled unchecked down Tara’s face while the scent she’d been enjoying since that moment in Hannah’s room faded. Hannah was gone.
Grateful Jake was busy getting landing clearance from the Vancouver tower, she struggled to compose herself. How many times had she wished she could have another chance to talk to her mother? She’d pleaded with unknown gods for the tiniest of opportunities. Longed to feel her presence and say, “I love you,” once more?
That was what those few moments with Hannah had felt like. A last goodbye. And it ripped a hole in Tara’s heart.
She dug tissues from her bag to mop her face, and Jake reached behind the seat, plucked a bottle of water from the cooler and passed it to her. She drank deeply, soothing her burning throat while he lined up and cut power in preparation for landing on the narrow river alongside the international airport.
She stayed with their bags while he took care of the paperwork required upon returning the aircraft, then joined him in the golf cart that would deliver them to the apron where they’d left the Citation early that morning.
By the time they were in the air again and at cruising altitude, she was well recovered from her telepathic moments with Hannah and the sadness had eased.
“You’ve been learning a lot about my family. Tell me about yours.”
He glanced over as though assessing her mood.
“Really, Jake. You’ve seen my skeletons.”
“Actually, I haven’t seen anything like that.”
Because, of course, she hadn’t told him the truth yet. “What are your parents like?”
Jake grinned. “My dad lives and breathes fly-fishing. Drags my mom up to Canada once a year for a big steelhead run. You ever get locked in a room with him, ask him what kind of flies are his favorites. He’ll go on for hours. The man has a passion.”
“You said he drags your mom. She doesn’t like fishing?”
He grinned. “She likes going well enough, and they have a great group of friends they hang with out there, but she’s terrified of bears, and well, bears love fishing too, so they’re often in the same area which means Mom spends a lot of time in the motorhome. Swears she’ll drive off and leave Dad there if a bear comes along.”
“Sounds like a smart lady.” And someone she’d like.
“Oh, believe me, she’s got smarts and attitude. We’re convinced if a bear happens by, she’ll put the run on it instead of the other way around. She’s tiny, but mighty.”
“How tiny?” Jake was tall. It seemed funny to think of him towering over his mom.
“Swears she’s five two, and we’re smart enough not to argue.”
He loved his mom. She could hear it in his voice and just a tiny bit of jealousy crept in because he still had a mom to love. “Was she at home while you grew up or did she work?”
“She taught at our school, so we all went together.”
That must have been fun. A big happy group going to and from. “I thought teachers started earlier and finished later.”
“Mostly, we were in sports and clubs from the get-go, so we went early with her and stayed later.” He glanced over. “You were home-schooled, right? What was that like?”
She shrugged. “Schoolwork was boring. It was just something I had to get done so I could go outside and play. I had a tree fort and all kinds of imaginary friends to keep me entertained.” She didn’t tell him about the birds she got to know, or the bugs she watched. “I had a certain amount of stuff to complete each week. Usually, I did schoolwork for two to three hours every morning—that’s about as long as I could stay still. But sometimes, if we were travelling, we’d work on my lessons for extra hours before we left so I’d be free.”
“But then you went to high school?”
One more thing Brady had stolen from her. “Stan enrolled me after Mom died. But when I got back from the farm, I refused to go. I’m a high school dropout without ever having been in the first place. I did get my GED, though.”
“So you never sat in a classroom until college?”
“Never made friends, never learned to play, or party like a normal teenager, so college was awkward. I related more to the instructors than the students because I’d had no exposure to people my own age. Took everything I could by correspondence, but I did love the labs and getting my vet tech certificate meant everything to me.” She’d had such pride in that accomplishment.
She smiled at him. “I’m betting your mom made sure you were a good student right from the beginning, and you were probably popular. On the football team right through to college graduation, and probably with a degree in criminology to follow in your dad’s footsteps. One day you’ll retire to live and breathe fly-fishing.”
And would she be in the RV hiding from the bears? Her heart pounded hard. No point getting years ahead of herself. She stared at the dozens of small islands below them.
He laughed. “I hated football because I wasn’t one of the really big guys, so I tended to get beat up a lot. My passions were flying and surfing—they have a lot in common. I didn’t graduate from college. I quit a year short of, yes, a crim degree, because I’d been accepted into the Justice Institute to train in law enforcement.”
“Did you go to LAPD like your dad?” She’d asked these questions before but needed to keep her mind on something besides the upcoming visit with Chewy.
“Yep, but two years in, I got accepted into the FBI. Again, two years into that, I changed paths and teamed up with a buddy to open a highly specialized private investigation business.”
“That sounds exciting.”
“It was for a while. Huge corporate clients, making money hand-over-fist, and living the high-life. What’s not to like?”
“Something, obviously, or you’d still be rubbing elbows with the rich and famous.”
“Grew jaded, I suppose. Lost my taste for corporate espionage, insider trading, embezzlement, and the ever-popular screw-around spouses with elaborate pre-nups. Late nights and fancy clubs became mundane.”
He hesitated before meeting her gaze. “Then I met someone whose face and attitude followed me around, and I couldn’t seem to have fun anymore. Other women became plastic and uninteresting in her shadow.”
“That’s why you gave up your business? Are you nuts?” She’d been clear about there not being a future for them.
He grinned. “See? That’s what I like about you. No beating around the bush, no hinting. You say what you mean and damn the consequences.” He turned his attention back to the instrument panel and the open sky beyond the windscreen.
“I’d already had enough of the job, and losing interest in my life away from the work showed me I no longer belonged, so I sold out to my partner.”
She wasn’t sure what to think, let alone what to say. “Pretty drastic move.”
“Not really. Meyers Security treats the law with respect, but with the blessing of the powers-that-be, they step around rules if and when necessary. They’re not radical like black ops, but they do color outside the lines. And they make a difference. I’ve worked small contracts with them for years and it always felt like a good fit.”
The man wasn’t a stayer. He’d changed jobs every few years and that made him a bad bet when it came to a relationship. So why did she want to be in one with him?
“You’re frowning.”
“What’s the chance you’ll leave Meyers in a couple of years and take up something new?”
“What, like basket weaving?” He adjusted course ever so slightly.
“Have you ever stayed at anything longer than four years?”
“Well, let’s see. I’ve had my surfboard since I was sixteen, never wanted to trade it in for a newer model. I’ve loved planes for as long as I remember.” He looked down. “These boots have been re-soled three times, and I spend at least a few days with my family every year at Christmas time. You think I’m high-risk because I haven’t chosen a career and stuck with it? Not the same thing as relationships with people.” He lifted her hand to his mouth and ran his teeth across her knuckles. Her gut clenched and her system hummed.
“Chemistry isn’t enough.” She’d had feelings for him right from the beginning. Something she’d barely admitted to herself until now. But what about him?
“The problem as I see it is that we started off wrong. You were emotionally strung out about the Brady connection, and then we got snowed in, caught up in the chemistry, and things went too far, too fast.”
“So you regret having sex with me.” Talk about feeling like—
“Hell no. What I regret is the time I’ve spent since then, trying to figure out what the roadblock between us is about, and until you tell me the truth, I don’t know how to get around it. We’ve got something special here, Tara. But you need to decide what you want to do about it.”
“Why me?”
“Because I already know I want to have a relationship with you. Now, you have to figure out if you’re willing to let go of some of your secrets so that can happen.”
Even if she’d had the words, before she could say anything, he turned his attention to flying. He spoke with the tower in Portland, got landing clearance, then was occupied for the next ten minutes while he joined the queue and eventually set the aircraft neatly on the runway.
Jake was glad that once they were in the rental car, Tara was ready to talk about their destination.
“Chewy’s owners don’t know about what happened to him, right?”
“They’re aware that the horse was abused and that you’re the person who saved his life.”
“But I didn’t. I gave him meds but did nothing to get him away from the abuse.”
“Tara, when you ran to Doc, you started a process and that’s what saved the colt from a worse fate. You made the difference.”
“I felt so helpless at the time. Terrified.”
He hated seeing that tortured look in her eyes again. “Courage is doing what needs to be done in spite of your fear.” Would she ever see herself the way he saw her?
“Carrots.”
Well that came out of left field. But he nearly laughed out loud, because he was beginning to understand this frustrating woman. When conversation got too close to her, she’d latch onto anything to change the subject.
“You need to take carrots to him?”
“Yes, please. Could we stop somewhere?”
“We’ll get off at the next exit and find a grocery store.”
“Good,” she said. “That’s good.”
Time to play her game. “Do you read?”
She frowned. “Of course.”
“I meant books. As in for pleasure. Reading used to be my favorite pastime if the weather wouldn’t let me either surf or fly.”
“Sure, I read a lot. Especially when I’m working because there’s so much time spent waiting and not a lot to do when I’m in the air with horses. I even bought myself a headlamp because there isn’t much light to read by on a cargo deck.”
“So what’s your favorite book?”
“Birthright by Nora Roberts.”
“Why?”
“It has lots of interesting stuff about archeology, or is it anthropology? I always get those two mixed up. Anyways, there are lots of details about a dig, plus a big mystery with a bunch of smaller mysteries wound up in it. And a great love story.”
“What made it great?”
She smiled. “The hero and heroine had been married to each other, but split up. They had crazy mad chemistry, but their relationship needed work.”
And didn’t that sound familiar... “But they got to have a happily ever after?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“You believe in happy endings?”
“Well, in books, yeah. Life sucks sometimes, but I can count on happy endings when I read certain authors.”
“Ever wonder if they’re possible in real life too?” He parked in front of a store with big bins of produce out front.
“Maybe.” She wrenched open the door then hesitated. “Real life can be damned complicated sometimes, but once in a while I like to think about what might be possible.”
And that, he thought as he watched her march toward the store, was the closest she’d ever come to saying she was interested in having a happy ending of her own.
Just before going inside, she stopped and looked back at him for long enough to give him the impression there was something more she wanted to say.
When she came back out with a bag of carrots and one of apples, she was frowning.
“What’s up?” he asked when she got in.
“Nothing.”
“Tara.”
She sighed. “You’re trying so hard. And there’s so much you don’t understand about me. I’m not whole, Jake. There’s stuff about me I just can’t talk about yet.”
“Tell me then, am I wasting my time?”
“I hope not.”