Embracing Danger (8 page)

He simply wasn’t sure he was strong enough to go there. If she walked away again…hell, he’d barely survived the heartache last time. Round two would be even more painful and devastating.

The fact was he’d never been as happy in his life as he was that summer with this woman. He’d pretended that everything was great but deep inside he’d missed her more than he could articulate. Now he’d agreed to help her because, let’s face it, he was weak and wanted to be with her even though he knew it was stupid as shit to see her and spend time with her. He was dumb as a bag of doorknobs.

He’d never stopped loving Arden.

‡

A
rden was making
herself crazy. One second she hated her father and then the next she wanted to hug him after all he’d been through. Clearly he’d been trying to protect her from growing up as the “girl whose mother had been shot” and that was admirable, but he should have told her the truth when she became an adult. As it was, she had so many questions and there was only one way to get the answers.

After her last class on Friday, she’d stopped into the principal’s office for a chat. Keith Centers was a good man and admitted he’d heard that her father had left town under somewhat mysterious circumstances. When she filled in few details he was more than willing to give her what she asked for. Time off. She was only a substitute, after all.

Dammit, she hated herself for asking. She’d wanted this job and now a month into the school year she was asking for a leave of absence, but this was important. If she was fired, so be it. Finding her father and learning about all that had been kept secret from her had to take priority over everything else in her life.

Back in her classroom, Arden cleaned the dry erase board and straightened up the room before leaving. She was finishing up the last of her work when a noise made her look up.

“I’ve been standing here awhile.” Shane stood in the doorway looking like he’d spent the day on the ranch. “You were completely engrossed in your writing.”

Quickly emailing the notes to Keith, she closed the laptop with a loud click. “I was making assignment notes for the new substitute next week.”

Shane took off his hat and tossed it onto a desk. “
New
substitute? Are you sick?”

Arden didn’t have to have spent the last fifteen years with Shane to know how this conversation was going to go. He wasn’t going to stop her but he was going to try.

She began packing away her papers and books into her messenger bag. “No, I’m not sick. I’m going to meet my family that I’ve never met and find out about my mother’s murder.”

She was also going to have a long talk with her grandmother when she came back, but not before. Elaine wasn’t going to be allowed to make excuses for what she’d done and then try and talk Arden out of this trip. Angry with her grandmother for lying all these years, Arden wasn’t ready to face her yet without losing her temper.

“I had a feeling you’d say that.” Shane squeezed himself into one of the desks, dwarfing it with his large frame. “That’s why I made arrangements for someone to cover my office next week. We leave as soon as you can get packed.”

Mouth hanging open, Arden couldn’t believe her ears. “You’re not going to try and stop me? Talk me out of it?”

Chuckling, Shane stretched out his long legs. “Doubt it would do any good so I might as well just go with it. You’ve found out some very disturbing things and it’s only normal that you’d want to check all this out for yourself. I’m going to help you.”

Arden fell back into her chair, still not believing her ears. “I thought you’d try and stop me. I thought you’d tell me all the reasons I shouldn’t go.”

“Seems to me the only reason would be that you might lose your job by taking time off so early, and I don’t think that would compel you to stay.” He grinned, showing off the Anderson dimple in his cheek and looking so darn smug she wanted to kick his shin. “It would appear, princess, that you’ve forgotten quite a bit these last few years, especially about how I indulge your every whim. When have I ever been able to say no to you unless it involved your health and safety?”

Searching the nooks and crannies of her mind, she was surprised that she couldn’t think of one time that he had. He only put up barriers when he thought something might be dangerous or unhealthy, like the time she wanted to bungee off a bridge with a few of her friends. He’d been right of course, as they really didn’t know what they were doing and would have managed to get them all killed if he hadn’t talked some sense into them.

“You’re going with me?”

It shouldn’t make her happy but a thrill shot through her body. This friendship stuff was not too bad. She could get used to this.

“I certainly cannot let you go alone. Ben is still missing and we don’t know why. Until then, I think it’s prudent for someone to keep an eye on you and that someone is me. Are you okay with that?”

Her brain said no but her heart screamed yes a helluva lot louder. As painful as it was being with him, she learned it was even harder when she wasn’t.

“I’m fine with it, but don’t you have a business to run?”

“A good executive makes sure the people who work for him are smarter than he is. The company will be fine and they can reach me by phone if they need me. So I’ll pick you up at the house in an hour? Can you be ready?”

She opened her mouth to ask all sorts of questions about the travel arrangements he’d made but changed her mind. The fact was she trusted him to take care of it. He might have been a womanizing playboy but he’d also been organized and on the ball. All she needed to do was sit back and enjoy the journey.

“I can, friend. Thank you for everything.”

He ran his finger around his collar as if he was embarrassed. “We’ll figure out this friendship thing. In the meantime, we have a plane to catch.”

“I meant what I said. Thank you, Shane. You didn’t have to do this or any of it. You’re helping me because I begged you to when I’m sure you’d rather be doing eight hundred other things, but please believe me when I tell you that I am grateful. I know I couldn’t do this without you.”

She hoped he could hear the sincerity in her voice. No matter what she’d said to him in the past, she was truly appreciative of what he was doing for her.

“I think you could do anything you set your mind to.”

She watched his retreating figure, listening to the echo of his boots on the tile floor. She’d always wanted to believe what he said but she knew better. There was one thing she could never do.

Make Shane fall in love with her again.

*     *     *

After a smooth
takeoff, Shane unbuckled his seatbelt and sat his briefcase on the table in front of him. They had an almost three hour flight ahead of them to Indianapolis so he might as well take the opportunity to get some paperwork done and out of the way.

The smiling air hostess stood next to his seat and leaned down, showing off a bit of cleavage. She was a lovely woman with straight brown hair and blue eyes along with a nice figure, but what she didn’t understand was that no one could hold a candle to Arden Cavendish. When she was in the room, every other female ceased to exist.

“Anything else I can get you, Shane? Coffee? Tea? Maybe another whiskey?”

Shane lifted the half-full highball glass. “This should do it for now. Thank you, Sherry. Arden, is there anything you’d like besides your water?”

Looking up from her magazine, she shook her head. “I’m fine, thank you.”

“Then that’s it. We’ll call you if we need anything.”

He didn’t think he imagined Sherry’s look of disappointment as she left the main cabin. He’d never given her much, if any, encouragement but the mirthful expression on Arden’s face said she thought the opposite.

Shane rolled his eyes and took another sip of his whiskey. “What?”

Peeping over the top of her magazine, Arden’s lips were pressed together in what appeared to be an effort to keep from laughing. “Nothing. Nothing at all. Do your paperwork or whatever it is that millionaire tycoons do on their corporate jet.”

“Stop acting like you’ve never flown in a private plane. I know better.”

She didn’t answer, going back to reading her magazine. Shane tried to concentrate on the contracts in front of him but he felt a pair of blue eyes gazing at him. Finally he slapped the papers down on the table with a growl.

“What?” he asked again, intending to get an answer this time.

“You,” she replied with a barely suppressed laugh. “This important businessman is a far cry from the boy in cutoff jeans and torn t-shirts I used to know. You even have the flight attendants flirting with you. Are you and she…”

“No, we are not. And as for how I look, I suppose we’ve both grown up and changed but I do still have t-shirts and cutoffs. I only wear them on the weekends now or when I’m doing yard work.”

Arden’s gaze lingered on the door Sherry had exited through. “You always did have women panting after you. Even for an Anderson, you overachieved in that category.”

A small bit of hope began to unfurl in his abdomen. It sounded like Arden was jealous. Maybe just a little bit.

“I do not have women panting after me. And as for Sherry she was just being polite and helpful. Getting us food and drink is part of her job description.”

Arden closed the magazine and shook her head. “She bent down so you could get a good look at her chest and maybe her bra.”

Black lace. Probably a front-closure but he’d been fooled before.

“I’m not interested,” he stated flatly because it was the God’s honest truth. Not even if Arden hadn’t been there would Shane have taken Sherry up on her offer. He didn’t mix business with pleasure and she was an employee of Anderson Industries.

“She’s very beautiful. And tall.”

Chuckling, Shane shoved his paperwork into his briefcase. “You think everyone is tall.”

“Compared to me everyone is.” She played with her water bottle. “So what’s the plan when we get to Indianapolis?”

He tucked his case away and reached for his highball glass. “We’ll get a hotel for the night and then in the morning we’ll rent a car and drive to Hemingdale. Once we get there, I thought you might want to visit your mother’s grave first thing.”

Arden gave him a misty smile. “That’s thoughtful of you. I’d like that.”

His heart lurched in his chest but pointedly ignored it. “It’s all part of our new friendship.”

“Then you’re a good friend.”

If she called him the brother she’d never had he’d jump from the plane without a parachute.

“After that, I thought we’d try and see your mother’s best friend. I’m sure she has a lot of information that wasn’t in any file.”

Arden slowly stood and walked up and down the aisle a few times. Shane didn’t say anything, content to let her work out whatever it was she needed to. Eventually, she sat back down and gripped the leather covered arms of her seat. “What if I find out something truly horrible? I mean, something even worse than my mother being shot? If Dad went to all that trouble to protect me then the truth could be totally devastating.”

“That certainly did occur to me,” Shane conceded. “Do you want me to have the pilot turn the plane around? I can do that if you’re scared.”

Her face flamed with outrage. “I’m not scared.”

He didn’t mind admitting to himself he liked to push Arden a little. Every now and then he’d see flashes of the spirited girl he’d known, but too often she was quiet and subdued. He wanted to see the fire and passion that had made her the most exciting woman he’d ever known.

“If you say so.”

Arden leaned forward, her eyes narrowing. “I do say so. I’m not afraid.”

“You said that. Do you want me to turn the plane around or not? We can be back in Montana in a few hours.”

Hopping up from the chair, she turned her back to him, her arms crossed over her chest.

“You are such a jerk, Shane Anderson. I do not want to turn around and I am not scared.”

“Being afraid isn’t a bad thing, honey. This is an unusual situation and there is a high probability that you’re going to learn things about your family’s past that you aren’t going to like. You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t have some trepidation.”