Reconsidering Riley (37 page)

"I wish this damned thing would get going.
I'm only headed as far as Dallas," K.C. said, naming the city that
would be Riley's second stopover once the Sedona-to-Phoenix flight
got underway. "Got grandkids I'm visiting there."

"Oooh, grandbabies!" Everyone in their small
group brightened and talked faster. Wallets were produced,
snapshots were unfolded in arrays of clear plastic, and one
grandmotherly type even passed around her camcorder with footage of
"the little darlings."

Instantly, Riley felt shut out. Cast aside.
Forgotten. It occurred to him that this kind of shutting out
was—literally—what Jayne had done to him this morning. Being left
behind was what he'd always dreaded most. No wonder he'd instantly
gone on the offensive. No wonder he'd pretended he'd never changed
his mind about going to Antigua.

No wonder he was alone now.

Miserably, he looked at the faces of the
people grouped around him. Older and younger, they all glowed with
happiness while sharing images of the people they loved.

He
had people, Riley told himself
defiantly. He had photographs, too. Although it went against his
every instinct, he grabbed his backpack and made ready to share
some of his photos with K.C. and the gang.

He reached inside. "Look, everybody! Here's
my—"

"Self-help book?" K.C. interrupted.

Their stunned expressions gathered on the
hardbound book in his hand. Not the thing he'd expected at all, it
was instead a...copy of
Heartbreak 101: Getting Over The
Good-Bye Guys
?

Riley frowned. Jayne must have slipped the
book into his backpack at some point during their trip. Probably,
she'd been hoping he'd absorb some of her techniques through
osmosis and become a Sensitive Guy. He almost would have tried it,
if it would have kept her from pushing him away this morning. He
almost would have done it, if...awww, the hell with it. It was too
late, anyway. He crammed the book back into his pack.

"Don't be embarrassed," the grandmotherly
type cooed, trying to stop him.

"He's prone to that," K.C. confided, "but
he'll tell you he's not." He offered a sympathetic look.

"It's okay. I loved that book!" said another
of his fellow travelers. She tugged his arm until Riley relented,
then took the book from him. Exclaiming over how the techniques
inside had helped her divorced daughter overcome heartbreak, she
showed it to her husband. "It's a runaway bestseller, you know. I'm
hoping the author goes on "Oprah" someday."

Riley rubbed his palms on his thighs. "It's
not my book—it's a...friend's. I don't read that kind of stuff.
Real men don't need to. Right, K.C.?"

The older man looked doubtful. "If it would
make my Ada happy, I'd read the dictionary. Twice. Standing on my
head."

They all nodded. "Me, too"s were heard.
Riley couldn't believe it. Shoving their protests from his mind, he
decided to stick with his original plan. He reached into his
backpack. His fingers groped for the familiar item he sought.
Instead, he touched something smooth and cool and round, and
withdrew it.

A leopard-print mirrored compact.

Jayne's
leopard-print mirrored
compact.

He had the wrong backpack, he realized,
scanning the contents for the first time since leaving. How had he
taken the wrong pack? Sure, they were identical on the outside.
Sure, Riley hadn't exactly been thinking clearly when he'd left the
lodge this morning. Sure...sure, he could believe it.

While the others talked and passed around
Jayne's book, he sat in his chair and examined the compact in his
hand. He ran his fingers over its glossy surface, remembering
Jayne's "primp!" battle cry. He rubbed his thumb over the catch,
thinking of Jayne perched on a rock, bombshell style, fixing her
makeup. He opened the catch and peeked inside.

Geez, he looked like hell. His face was
pale, his eyes red-rimmed, his features miserable. Was this what
love did to him?

No
, he answered himself instantly.
This was what the lack of love did to him
. He'd really
believed Jayne was the one.

Angrily, he snapped the compact closed and
put it away. At the same moment, the grandmotherly traveler turned
to him.

"It's going to be a while 'til our flight
gets here," she said. "We're all going to get a bite to eat at Taco
Tillie's. Would you like to join us?"

The others had risen. They waited
expectantly. K.C. met Riley's gaze and nodded in encouragement.

"No, thanks," Riley said. "I'm...not hungry.
You all go ahead. Enjoy yourselves."

"Sure?" asked the man Riley recognized as
the divorced daughter's dad. "They've got an enchilada plate that's
only four ninety-nine."

"You've got to keep up your strength, you
know," said another woman. She patted his arm, apparently not
noticing Riley's biceps was twice as big as her hand. "You don't
want to get too thin, now."

"I'll get something later, I promise," he
said. "First I have to take this book back to my Suburban—" Riley
indicated the copy of
Heartbreak 101
that had just been
handed back to him. "—and rustle up some traveling supplies. It
turns out I've got the wrong pack."

He'd already shipped some equipment to the
Antigua site—cameras, tripods, lenses, basic essentials—and with
the additional clothes to be found in his Suburban, he could
manage. Anything else he could buy on location. After a walk to the
long-term parking area, he'd call Mack and ask him to send someone
from the Hideaway Lodge to pick up Jayne's pack and deliver it to
her.

"I'll bring you back a doggie bag," K.C.
said with a wink.

"Okay. Thanks." Riley watched as, after more
assurances from him that he wouldn't starve to death, the group
headed for the airport restaurant. Then he gathered up his—okay,
Jayne's
pack—with every intention of taking a walk
himself.

He only made it as far as the next row.
There, Riley sank into a chair and pulled out the book again. Drawn
by some mysterious but powerful impulse, he gazed at the author
photo on the back. He touched the name embossed in pink script on
the front, and ruffled through the pages. A sentence caught his
eye, and Riley began reading.

It was exactly like talking to Jayne, he
discovered—minus the flirty looks, the warm touches, the smiles.
Still, it was closer than he was likely to ever come again, and
Riley had time to burn.

Assuring himself that reading this self-help
book did
not
make him an official Sensitive Guy, he turned
to the first page and read the introduction. Two paragraphs in, he
realized he was getting sucked into Jayne's prose. Riley glanced up
worriedly to make sure no one was staring at him strangely.
Apparently, he hadn't grown a sweater with leather elbow patches, a
couples-therapist style beard, or an intense urge to redecorate.
Relieved, Riley dove back into page two.

It was a very long time before he glanced up
again.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Perched atop her sleeping bag, Jayne let her
campfire die down. All her attention was for the thing she'd found
in Riley's backpack—the thing in her lap, right now.

She'd been stunned to find it. Especially in
Riley's pack, since he was the epitome of an essentials-only guy.
According to his own philosophy, he should have been carrying only
those things required for basic survival. From the looks of it,
though, he'd considered
this
item essential for a very long
time.

It was a photo album. Protected by a
zippered waterproof outer covering and about an inch thick, it was
small enough that Jayne could hold it easily. Inside, it was bound
in leather. At first, she'd thought it was some kind of
professional portfolio, meant to display his photography work.

Her initial, tentative glance at the
pictures inside had made her realize the truth. This was a personal
collection, one not meant for any eyes except Riley's.

The first photo was a slightly yellowed one.
In it, a long-haired man and woman stood side by side, dressed in
late Seventies clothes—Earth shoes, flared jeans, and ponchos. A
small heap of mismatched luggage rested at their feet, plastered in
travel stickers depicting exotic locales. Jayne had never met
Riley's parents, but this had to be them...just as the dark-haired
boy at the edge of the frame had to be Riley himself.

She leaned closer to peer at his image. He'd
had longer hair then, its side-parted, over-the-ears style badly in
need of a trim. His little face looked serious as he confronted the
camera. In one fist, little Riley clutched his own luggage, covered
in decals identical to those of his parents'—right down to their
placement on his bag.

If not for the matching luggage, Jayne
mused, it would have been hard to tell Riley and his parents
belonged together. They stood so far apart,
seemed
so far
apart. The same was true in the subsequent picture, a snapshot
taken on what looked like a fishing boat. Again, Riley stood
separate while his parents put their arms around each other and
smiled for the camera.

Studying the pictures that followed, Jayne
developed a new understanding of what Riley's childhood must have
been like. His parents, while friendly-looking and undoubtedly
engaged in worthwhile environmental and cultural pursuits, seemed
to have refused to let a child change their life. It looked as
though they'd simply picked up baby Riley after he'd been born and
carried on with what they'd been doing, leaving Riley to keep
up...or be left behind.

At the thought, Jayne's heart ached for him.
She knew only too well what it was like to feel on the outside in
your own family. What it was like to feel like an imposition, a
hanger-on, in someone else's plans. In all the time she'd known
him, Riley had never confided in her much about his childhood—but
suddenly, so many things made sense.

His traveling. His unease with groups of
people. His need to stay on the move. More than likely,
globe-trotting felt like home to him...just like getting lost in
her social whirl felt like home to Jayne. She and Riley were alike
underneath, she realized. Both struggling to avoid their
loneliness. Both veering, in the process, too far in the wrong
direction.

Wiping away a few sad tears, Jayne cleared
her throat and looked through the photos again. Within them, she
saw a collage of all that was most important to Riley—snapshots of
Alexis, black and white prints of Gwen and Bud, images of a
dark-haired man who must be Alexis's father—Riley's younger
brother. There were photos of Mack and Bruce together with Riley on
a mountain peak. Photos of Riley with other guides, on other
adventures. And on the last page...

A photo of her
.

Jayne blinked. She stared at the picture,
finally recognizing it as a shot of her getting dressed for one of
the nights out they'd shared. She'd paused amid putting on
lipstick—the tube was still in one hand—and her hair was wild from
her mousse-and-blow-dryer routine. Her eyes sparkled. She
remembered Riley having caught her off guard for that photo—she'd
been puckering up to blow him a kiss when he'd snapped it. When
she'd complained about not being photo-ready, he'd shrugged and
claimed there wasn't any film in the camera anyway.

Liar
, Jayne thought now, impossibly
moved by the fact that he'd carried an image of her, all this time.
There were no other women (save Gwen and Alexis) in the album. No
other women except
her
. Did that mean what she hoped it
meant? That there were no other women in Riley's
life
,
either?

Swallowing hard to bring her tumultuous
emotions under control, Jayne stared up at the tree branches
overhead. This had been such a difficult day. If this revelation
had come earlier, if Riley had explained a little further...maybe
things would have been different between them. As it was, all she
could do now was put away the photo album, gather up Riley's pack,
and return everything to Gwen and Bud when she got back to the
Hideaway Lodge.

Except Jayne didn't want to. Her gaze
lingered on the pictures as she flipped through them again. Her
imagination took flight as she peered at the images, one more time.
Truth be told, she had her own secret mementos of Riley. Movie
ticket stubs. Flower-delivery cards. Matchbooks from clubs. And
(most prized of all), a cast-off T-shirt he'd lent her to sleep in,
which Jayne had never returned because it reminded her of him.
She
had never fully let go, either. Not even when she'd
decided to write her book, using herself as the ultimate example of
how to overcome a broken heart.

A part of her had always felt she and Riley
were meant to be together. That same part of her had been defeated
twice now by Riley's leaving.

A sudden sound in the nearby bushes
interrupted her thoughts and put Jayne on full alert. Before she
could so much as grab her self-defense stick and guard her
territory, though, the intruder tramped into her campsite.

Alexis
.

"Hey, Jayne," she said cheerily, waving as
she took in the embers-only campfire, the tent, the fluffed-up
sleeping bag...the photo album in Jayne's hands. "How about some
company?"

Jayne boggled. "How did you know I was
here?"

The girl hesitated. "I followed your trail."
She hunkered down, perfectly at ease in the outdoors, and shucked
her backpack. She withdrew a pair of sandwiches from inside it and
offered one to Jayne. "PBJ?"

"No, thanks. I'm not hungry."
I'm on the
heartbreak diet. Nothing but salty tears, tart regrets, and
sweet-and-sour memories
. "You go ahead."

"You need to eat, you know. To keep up your
strength. That's what my mom always says. 'Don't let the bastards
get you down,' she says."