Looking for Trouble (16 page)

“Do you want to walk up a ways? Get an idea of where he was?” Shane asked.

“No,”
Alex snapped before he could temper the word.

“The truck’s gone. It’s just a clearing.”

“No.” He crossed his arms to hold back a shiver. This was the place. The mysterious spot their mother had searched for. The place that had kept her husband from her for reasons she couldn’t understand or sympathize with. This canyon had swallowed Wyatt Bishop whole and kept him from his family for so many years.

“She was right, after all,” he murmured.

“What?” Shane asked.

“He really didn’t mean to leave.”

“No. He didn’t. They were taking the trailer up to that clearing by the old settler’s cabin. It’s the only place that road led.”

Alex couldn’t figure out why it didn’t make it better. It should. He could recognize that. But it didn’t change anything, somehow. All the things he’d felt as a kid, they were still there. And he still hadn’t had a father for a dozen years. Not until he’d met Oz.

Alex shifted a rock and saw the moisture underneath, waiting just beneath the surface. There was no creek here that anyone else could see, but it was there, flowing slowly just beneath the rocks, making its way down the mountain.

The real flow of the world was always beneath the surface. Oz had taught him that.

“We’d better get back,” he said.

He turned before Shane could answer and headed back down alone.

CHAPTER TWELVE

A
LEX WATCHED THE
sun creep past the trees next to the motel parking lot and wiped a hand over his eyes before crouching back over his bike. That little trip down memory lane had exhausted him. Alex made a point of not looking back in his life, but he didn’t have much choice these days. There wasn’t a present in Jackson. Or a future. It was all his past and he couldn’t get away from it.

The two hours they’d spent in the office with Merry going over the details hadn’t helped either. His mother had wept bitter tears when he’d insisted—eventually, in a very loud voice—that he wasn’t giving a goddamn speech about his dad. She accused him of rejecting his father and everything the man had ever done for his children. Alex had just barely managed not to counter that at least he hadn’t changed his name like some people in the family. He’d avoided reverting to childhood levels of immaturity, but just barely.

He’d tried to lose his mind in work after, studying the reports for the site he’d be visiting in Alaska, but he hadn’t been able to shake the tension, so he’d washed his bike instead. He’d lost himself in that, finally, then found himself tinkering with the throttle for an hour.

That was something he loved about his bike. He could ride it, fix it, maintain it. He didn’t have to depend on anyone else. If it broke down, he ordered a part and fixed it himself. He knew his bike inside and out. It never changed. It was the one constant in his life, waiting for him whenever he got back from his travels. It centered him, somehow.

By the time the trees completely blocked the sun, Alex was totally relaxed. He stood up and stretched, feeling the breeze against his neck. A warm front was shaking off the cool that had settled in that morning.

Perfect.

Sophie had said she got off work at seven. Alex got out his phone.

Interested in a sunset drive?
he texted her.

YES!!!!
she wrote back immediately.

Alex could picture her delight perfectly. She took such joy in pleasure. Of course, everyone liked pleasure. But she was
fed
by it. Wine, pretty dresses, wicked underthings, travel, motorcycles, sex. It was all beautiful to her.

He wished he could see more than Jackson Hole with her. He wanted to watch her face the first time she saw Alaska, the ocean, the world. If she ever left this place, she’d come alive.

Considering how alive she already was, it’d be a fucking wonder to behold.

But all he’d get was Jackson, so he’d take it.

When should I pick you up?
he texted back.

7:15 at my place. Or maybe around the corner?

He smiled.
I’ll sneak up.

Perfect.

Yeah. One more perfect night with her before he had to go.

* * *

S
OPHIE ENJOYED THE
look on his face when she stepped outside.

“You look different,” he said simply, but his eyes took their time sliding down her body.

She didn’t often wear jeans and boots, but this time she wanted a long ride on the bike, and heels and a skirt wouldn’t cut it. “Have I lost all my feminine mystique?” she asked.

“You’re made of feminine mystique,” he said as she slid on her favorite bright pink coat, “and you know it.”

She laughed because she did know it, but then she pressed a hand to her mouth and glanced down the street. “Where’s your bike?”

“Around the corner.”

“Let’s go out the back.” She led him through the house and out the back door. “This feels like high school. Except I was never bad in high school. Were you?”

He grinned and said nothing. Sophie took in the rough stubble on his head and the wide shoulders and leather jacket and big hands and shook her head. “Yeah, you were really bad.”

“Come on. I wouldn’t say bad. I’d just say that I took smart advantage of the benefits of living in a ski town.”

“Spring break?” she asked wryly.

“Man. I had a great affection for college girls at that age.”

“Player,” she tossed out, feeling a little jealous. Not that he’d had his fill but that she hadn’t.

“I’m not surprised you were a good girl in high school,” he said as they sneaked through her neighbor’s bushes to the sidewalk beyond. “So when did you get so naughty?”

Now she flashed her own grin. “A girl doesn’t kiss and tell.”

“No? Does she fuck and tell?”

“No.” She stopped next to the bike and waited while he got out the helmets. Glancing around to be sure they were alone, she leaned close to his ear to purr, “And she doesn’t say things like ‘fuck’ either.”

She loved the way his eyes immediately went dark. “God, I love the way you say that word. Your mouth makes it sound like a whip.”

“A whip, huh?”

One big shoulder rose in a shrug. “If that’s what you want, bring it on.”

“I’ll try anything once,” she said, her heart speeding a little at the idea of hurting him. Not because she wanted to, but because it would piss him off. She wanted to see him pissed off. He’d be fucking magnificent.

“All right, my little dominatrix. On the bike.”

She mounted up behind him and slid her arms around his waist. He smelled good. And felt even better.

“Do you want me to teach you how to ride?” he asked over his shoulder.

Yes! her brain shouted. Yes, she wanted to learn how to ride. But... She shook her head. “There won’t be time. You can’t teach me in just a few days.”

He was still for a moment before he nodded. “You’re right.” He flashed a smile. “Next time?”

“Next time,” she said, both of them in on the joke. There’d be no next time.

As he urged the engine into a roar, she closed her eyes and felt the rumble of power around her. Under her ass, between her thighs, shivering up into her whole body through his back. He pulled onto the street and sped toward the highway.

It was strangely soothing to her, the danger of this man she barely knew flying her through the world. It felt like she was real.

That was what sex was like for her, too. The good kind anyway. The brutal, messy, dirty kind. It felt
real
. No pretenses or pretending. Just taking and giving pleasure. Just losing your thoughts and fears and
feeling
.

That was where Alex took her every time. They wanted the same things. They needed those feelings. They were animals together. In bed, yes. Or against a wall, or on the couch. But here, too. Running, flying, feeling the wind tearing at your body, trying to slow you down. But they didn’t slow down. They reached the highway and Alex hit the throttle and they were gone.

Sophie opened her eyes to a sky on fire. The sun burned behind high clouds above the Tetons. The mountains were dark, jagged spears stabbing into that orange sky, sending out flames of red and pink and silver.

Tears pricked her eyes. She pretended they were from the wind and held tighter to Alex’s body.

“Where do you want to go?” he shouted over his shoulder.

She pressed her cheek tighter to his back. “Anywhere,” she answered, and meant it to her very soul. Anywhere. Just away.

The sun dropped as they drove, sliding down until it touched the peaks of the mountains before it began to disappear behind them. The oranges and pinks blazed even brighter for a moment, then deepened to fiery red. Alex slowed just as the fire darkened to purple.

He set his foot down and Sophie stretched behind him. “Where are we?” she asked over the rumble of the idling engine. Desert grasslands stretched out toward the foothills that surrounded them.

“You’ve never been here?”

She looked around in confusion until she finally saw the sign that pointed toward the east. Providence, it said. She set her mouth and nodded. “Only once.”

“When they found them?”

“Yes.” His back was a straight, hard line against her.

“I was here today. For the first time since...”

She nodded, but didn’t say anything. He’d have to spend the whole day here tomorrow, but she hadn’t planned on ever coming back. Still, it was something being out here at dusk, the quiet broken only by the occasional car that passed.

“Would you mind?” he asked, and she knew what he meant, but didn’t know how to answer it. She didn’t want to go, but she was ashamed of that. She was too strong to cower away from something so harmless, and yet she wasn’t strong at all, was she?

Sophie swallowed her reluctance and nodded. “Not at all.”

He turned the bike down a lonely ranch road and off they went, driving toward the darkness this time. The first stars were just rising above the hills. The sky was all purple and blue here, just edging toward black. By the time he slowed the bike and pulled into a gravel lot, the sunset was nothing more than a lightness at their backs.

It was twilight, her favorite time. Not dark enough to be night, but nothing close to day. But when she took off her helmet, the twilight didn’t feel peaceful. It felt eerie. Too quiet now that they were far away from the highway and close to that
place
.

“How many people will be here tomorrow?” she asked just to chase off the silence.

“I have no idea. Hell, I’d thought it would be no more than however many people are on that damn board, but now... Who knows.”

“The lawsuit,” she murmured.

“Yeah. Not great timing on your brother’s part. Though it’ll make my mom happy if we’re mobbed. She’s been under the impression that the whole town will turn out to honor him.”

“Why?” she asked in surprise. He’d been dead for twenty-five years and even though his grandfather had been an important man around town, Wyatt Bishop had just been an average citizen.

“Why?” he repeated with a humorless laugh. He tipped his head up to look toward the stars. “Because she’s just as delusional as she’s always been.”

“I know she’s always been, um...staunchly defensive of him.”

“Jesus, it’s more than that. Do you know that after he disappeared, she had my brother and I convinced that our father had been kidnapped and held hostage and that’s why he wasn’t home?”

“Kidnapped?” she asked in shock. “What do you mean?”

“I mean after he’d been gone a week and there was no sign of him, she decided something had happened to him. That he’d seen some sort of corruption or crime and he’d been taken to keep him quiet.”

“But...why would she think that?”

“Because she needed him not to have abandoned her. More than that, she needed him to be a hero. She always did. So she made him into a hero however she could.”

“But he was with my mom. What did that have to do with anything?”

He shrugged. “For a while, my mom just left her out of the story. She was convinced your mom’s disappearance had nothing to do with Dad. It was coincidence. And she had us convinced, too. But I finally wised up.”

Sophie heard the bitter note in his voice and recognized it. “School?”

“Yeah. There were a lot of stories. I guess you know that.”

“I do.” She’d always assumed they’d been crueler to her because it was so easy to call a woman a slut, a whore, a jezebel, a man-stealer. Not to mention all the things they’d called her dad, too. But she realized then that Alex and Shane had been older, so they’d probably heard more. There were only so many names that a first-grader knew, and by the time she’d gotten older, the story had had less shine on it.

“I’d say kids are cruel, but you know that,” she said softly.

“Kids are cruel, but it was way crueler for my mom to give us that kind of hope.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. She wasn’t sure if she should touch him, wasn’t sure they had that kind of relationship. But he was telling her something secret, wasn’t he? He was sharing a pain that maybe only she could understand. Sophie wrapped her arms around his waist and laid her cheek on his chest. “It was scary, wasn’t it?”

His arms folded her in tighter. “Hmm?”

“It was scary,” she whispered again. It had terrified her. She’d been scared for years. Not because Sophie had thought someone had kidnapped her mom or killed her or taken her away, but because she thought they hadn’t.

His arms were so warm around her. He surrounded her. He filled up all the terrifying doubts inside her for that one brief moment. She held on and listened to his heartbeat and she didn’t think about how cold it was up there on the trail. How dark and terrible.

When she pulled back again it was fully dark and a million stars shone above them. The moon hit the pale gray wood of the closest buildings, and the walls caught just enough light that they looked like ghosts lurking in the distance.

“I shouldn’t have brought you here,” Alex said.

He shouldn’t have. She’d wanted to go
away,
not come back to this place.

“Let’s just ride,” she said. “Just a little farther. Okay?”

“Yeah. That sounds good.” She’d started to move to the bike, but Alex said her name. She turned back to face him.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t plan to come here. I just looked up and there it was, and... Shit. I don’t know. There’s this ridiculous dedication tomorrow, and I fucking hate it and I realized that at least you’d understand. That I could tell you.”

“You don’t have to apologize. I do understand. Tomorrow’s going to be hard.”

The outline of his shoulders slumped a little. He was facing away from the moonlight. She couldn’t see his face, just the glint off his scalp and the delicate scallop of one ear.

“I know you can’t talk to anyone else about it,” she said. “I can’t either. You have your brother, at least.”

His head tilted. “You have your brother, too,” he said wryly.

“Ha! Okay. I see your point.” She turned and faced the town, thinking this was the time to talk if she ever wanted to. Alex would be gone soon. Tomorrow or the next day. He’d be gone and she’d go back to her life. Librarian and daughter and sister by day. Her real self once or twice a year with men who’d never know anything else about her.

Alex was the only one who really knew there were two Sophies. Lauren knew a little bit, but only a little.

So she looked at the ghostly wisps of the town and the black edge of the hills rising above it.