The Cabin (44 page)

He put the top back on the roses and tucked the box

under one arm. “Might as well go along with the pro-

gram, darlin’. If I have to throw you over my shoulder

and carry you out of here, I will.”

He’d do it. He had that look about him. Over his

shoulder, down three flights of stairs with a box of long-

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stemmed roses. He wouldn’t bother with the elevator.

More fun taking the stairs. All in a day’s work.

“Sam tried to get me to take handcuffs,” he said, his

eyes very, very dark.

“Jack,” Susanna breathed, “this is about the sexiest

thing—”

“Romantic,” he corrected, and his half smile just

about undid her. “I’m wooing you.”

She turned off the coffeepot, grabbed her jacket and

followed him down to the lobby. A sleek, black car was

waiting for them at the curb in front of her building. The

driver opened the back door, and she and Jack got in. A

few seconds later, they sped off into the city traffic.

“Do I get to know where we’re going?” Susanna asked.

“Airport.”

She shook her head. “This isn’t the way to the airport.”

“Small airport west of the city. My plane’s there.”

“Your
plane?
”

He glanced at her and winked. “If you can buy a

cabin in the Adirondacks without telling me, I can buy

a plane—”

“But how? How did you get the money?”

“It’s in my name, too.”

“We don’t have that kind of cash in our checking ac-

count. You don’t have the necessary information and

access—”

“I hope Maggie and Ellen put their minds to good use

in college,” he said, “because if they turn to larceny,

we’re all in trouble.”

Susanna sat back against the leather seat. “I see. They

stole my passwords and hacked into my computer.”

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“Said it was a piece of cake.”

“How big a plane?”

“Our daughters are making noises about going to

Harvard. They say they can come back to Texas for

graduate school and the rest of their lives. That’ll mean

a lot of flying back and forth, and with your grand-

mother up here and your folks spending summers on

Lake Champlain—”

“Jack?”

He slipped an arm over her shoulder and drew her

against him, kissing the top of her head. “It’s a damn

fine plane, Susanna.”

“You’re flying it?”

“I am.”

“Can I ask where?”

His gaze darkened slightly, and his hold tightened on

her. “We need to go back to Blackwater Lake.”

Most of the ice had gone from the lake, and the snow

had melted in the open areas and along the hillsides that

got the most sun. The rivers were full. It was the time

of year for ice jams, floods, sap runs and mud, one of

the quietest seasons in the Adirondacks, when even

many locals liked to get away.

For Jack’s purposes, it was the perfect season.

He thought the plane was a damn fine idea. A five- or

six-hour drive would have done him in. He’d have had to

pull over and make love to his wife on the back seat, and

that probably wouldn’t meet Maggie and Ellen’s basic

test for what was romantic and what was not. Although

he had the feeling Susanna wouldn’t have minded.

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He had arranged to have a car waiting at the Lake

Placid airport. Susanna was asking about her luggage.

“Gran and the girls packed your bag,” he told her, then

added, “except for what I packed for you.”

He heard her small intake of breath and saw the flash

of anticipation in her very green eyes, and he knew the

flowers and the car and the plane weren’t what were get-

ting to her. But, he’d promised Maggie and Ellen he

wouldn’t skimp on the romance. He’d woo her, good

and proper.

They didn’t know he’d decided to take her back to

Blackwater Lake. That was his idea, not theirs.

When they arrived at the cabin, Susanna shot out of

the car and ran down to the lake. He followed, sensing

the change in her mood, expecting it. He saw her sink

into the soft spots in the wet ground, but she paid no at-

tention, making her way to the lake shore, clambering

over rocks. Finally, she stood on a flat boulder, the wind

catching her hair, the sun setting in streaks of deep or-

ange and purple that surrounded her, enveloped her. The

mountains rose around the lake, still capped in snow.

Jack walked out to her rock, and she turned abruptly

to him, tears shining on her cheeks. “It’s beautiful here.”

“Yes.”

Her hands were balled into tight fists, and she shifted

back to the lake. “If I’d told you about Beau McGarrity

from the beginning, Alice never would have tried to use

the tape to blackmail him. She wouldn’t have come

north. He’d have stayed out of our lives.”

“He was already in our lives, Susanna,” Jack said, care-

ful. “And Alice would have found another reason to come

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up here, because on some instinctive level, she knew this

was where she’d find the answers she wanted. Maybe you

did, too. And me. Maybe your grandfather pulled us here

so we could finally put all the pieces together.”

“You don’t believe that. You’re all facts and hard

evidence—”

“There are so many things each of us could have

done differently, and probably should have, but you did

nothing that endangered anyone. Nothing, Susanna.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“Everyone does. I’ve gone through this entire story

in every detail with law enforcement and prosecutors in

three states for the past six weeks. Beau McGarrity was

an infection in our lives before any of us knew it.” Jack

tried to keep his voice from getting too hard. “We can

both beat ourselves up forever for not seeing it sooner.”

“I don’t want that,” she said.

He touched her cheek. “Then you’ll come inside?”

She nodded. “I should put my roses in water.”

But once they were inside, Jack made sure she real-

ized she had more to worry about than roses. He’d made

a few arrangements ahead of time. Chocolate, cham-

pagne, wine and enough food for three days. He’d in-

structed Gran and the girls not to pack any hiking

clothes. This was to be an indoor long weekend.

After she got her flowers into a pitcher of water, he

handed her the small bag he’d packed himself. “Take

a look.”

She sat on the floor in front of the fireplace, and he

built a fire while she went through her bag. Lavender

soap, bath salts, bubble bath, essential oils whose labels

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promised an enhanced sense of romance, scented can-

dles and a ring—a very expensive ring he knew his wife

would never buy for herself. Davey Ahearn and Jim

Haviland had talked him into it. They said she needed

more sparkle. She wore too much black.

Jack smiled at her look of pleasure mixed with shock

at the ring. “Sam says you’d only be worth five million

if you weren’t so tight.”

“That’s a logic all Sam’s own. I’d like to dig into his

finances—”

“No, you wouldn’t. He gives away most of his pay-

check.” Jack nodded at her. “Keep going. There’s more.”

She found the scrap of silk he’d picked up at a

pricey store and held it up.

“Maggie and Ellen insisted a pretty, romantic silk

nightgown was a must.”

“This isn’t a romantic nightie.” Susanna cleared her

throat, and he saw this woman he’d loved for so long

blush and smile, almost as if she were nineteen. “Jack,

this is a sexy
negligee.
”

“Well,” he said, unrepentant, “at least it’s silk.”

She balled it up in her hands, gathered up her good-

ies and retreated to the bathroom. She didn’t stay gone

long. When she returned, she smelled of lavender and had

on her little scrap of a nightgown, and Jack knew the night

was lost. There’d be no candlelit dinner as he’d promised

the girls, no champagne, no chocolates. He wouldn’t last.

“Susanna…”

“One thing about this pretty, romantic silk nightie,”

she said, sliding onto him in front of the fire. “It’s easy

to get off.”

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But amazingly, he took his time, starting there in front

of the fire, exploring every inch of her with his mouth,

his tongue, his hands, as if for the first time, until she was

liquid and he thought he’d explode. Then he swept her

up and carried her into the bedroom, but when he laid

her on the bed, she said, “Enough of this torture,” and

started on his shirt and pants, finally pulling him onto

her, into her. “I love you, Jack…I love you so much.”

“I want you back,” he whispered. “I never want to

lose you again.”

“You never lost me.”

He kissed her long and hard, moving slowly, deeply

inside her. “No more secrets.”

“No more,” she said. “Never again.”

They’d have three days of this. Talking and loving,

recuperating from the long months of their ordeal…but

by his calculations, he had one more secret to drag out

of her.

Susanna sat out on her patio in San Antonio on a

warm mid-April afternoon, drinking a margarita, easy

on the salt. She’d made a pitcher. Jack would be home

soon, but right now, she was alone. The south Texas sun-

set was incredible. It was Maggie and Ellen’s April va-

cation, their last vacation as high school students, and

they’d flown down with Gran, who’d insisted on taking

a commercial flight because she didn’t trust small

planes. To prove her point, she recited the details she’d

read of small plane crashes she’d heard about in the past

few years. One was at least twenty years old.

Jack hadn’t let that go and teased her unmercifully.

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“And I thought you were Iris Dunning, Adirondack

Mountains guide, a legend in your own time.”

But Gran had held her own. “I don’t like guns, and I

don’t like small planes.”

“I’ll bet you could take on a bear with nothing but a

jackknife.”

“I could,” she said, sniffing at him, “but that was a

long time ago.”

She was in Austin now with the twins, visiting her

son and daughter-in-law. Jared Tucker had flown in

from Philadelphia, and there were discussions of what

to do with the Herrington property on Blackwater Lake.

Kevin and his older half brother wanted to create a na-

ture preserve and name it after their father and Iris.

Gran was opposed. In Jared’s name was fine, but she

wasn’t having anything named after her while she was

still alive.

Susanna knew her grandmother was secretly pleased.

This visit, the talk of a nature preserve—they were a

way for her to integrate the young woman she’d been

on Blackwater Lake with the woman she’d become, the

woman she was now. They weren’t separate. She hadn’t

just landed into Boston sixty years ago and started from

nowhere. She’d carried on. That was the way Maggie

and Ellen put it. Carrying on. As if they took some mea-

sure of comfort—of inspiration—from what their great-

grandmother had done after the tragedies she’d faced on

Blackwater Lake.

Jack walked out onto the patio, still dressed for

work, tall against the golden sunset. She saw his

badge and smiled, thinking that all that was important

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in their lives was still intact. “It feels good to be

home,” she told him. “Once the girls graduate, it’ll be

permanent.”

He sipped the beer he’d brought out with him. “Will it?”

She sat up straight, reading his expression, that fa-

miliar note in his voice. “You already know, don’t you?”

“I have spies everywhere.”

She’d spent the day looking at historic houses in

downtown San Antonio. “You’re a born-and-bred

Texan. You’ve always said you’d like to restore an old

Texas house.” She stretched out her legs, enjoying the

April warmth. Boston was still a little cool for her tastes.

“Andrew Thorne’s an architect, you know, and Tess said

he’d be happy to look at anything we might want to buy,

provided it’s not too close to when she has the baby.”

“That’s nice of them.”

He seemed to mean it, but he obviously had some-

thing else on his mind. Something else he was after. Su-

sanna sipped her margarita. It was her second, and she

probably should have had something to eat first. She

was beginning to think Jack might have the advantage

on her. That she’d missed something after all.

“What else did you do today?” he asked smoothly.

“Damn,” she breathed. “You know that, too?”

His dark eyes settled on her, but he said nothing.

He was enjoying this, she thought. But so was she.

She’d managed to keep from admitting this one last se-

cret through their three days in the cabin. “I took your

plane for a little spin this afternoon.” She got up and