Thieves In The Night (17 page)

They both noticed the breach at the same time, and Jaz shot her a disquieting look, the sensually playful mood they’d been cultivating coming to an abrupt halt. No snowmobiles were in evidence, but they both knew how easy it was to hide one in the forest.

“Stay here,” he commanded softly, sliding out his side of the Jeep. He left the motor running and the door open.

Chantal watched, barely breathing, as he inched his head around the doorway, then slipped inside. Her instincts were to follow him. Caution and the knowledge that if they needed help she could give it better by remaining free kept her in the Jeep, for about thirty interminable seconds.

During those seconds a hundred different scenarios flashed through her brain, and she came to a painful decision. She had to let him go. Having Jaz hurt wasn’t part of the risk she’d been willing to take. If it weren’t for her, he would be in Mexico, working on his tan and chasing down unfaithful spouses, not putting his life in danger again. She had no illusions about her worth, and it came up far short of his life.

Sandhurst might be after his papers, but it was her home he’d traced them to. Reality time, babe, she thought bitterly, knowing the dream was over.

She eased out of the Jeep and sneaked up to the door, grabbing a piece of firewood on the way.

It was a patently useless weapon, but it increased her courage. No sounds of a struggle reached her ears, which meant one of two things: They were gone or they’d caught him off-guard.

With all the stealth at her disposal, she edged along the porch, keeping her profile below the window. She took a quick peek through the pane and stifled a gasp. The cabin had been wrecked inside. Jaz was nowhere in sight, but neither was anybody else.

Feeling slightly less trepidation, she slipped inside, and was immediately captured in a powerful grip. Her foot came down hard and her elbow slammed back.

“Oomph . . . Chan—”

“Jaz.” Her voice was a contrite wail. She turned in his arms. “Oh, sweetheart, are you okay? Did I hurt you?” Her hands raced over his body, touching, pressing. When she reached his seventh rib, he winced and snatched her hand up in his.

“We can play doctor later, sweetheart. Pack your bikini. We’re blowing this pop stand, getting the hell out of Dodge.”

Chantal’s gaze roamed over the shambles, the busted clasp on her hope chest, the junk strewn across the kitchen floor, the disarray of clothes streaming from the bathroom. Every drawer and cushion had been overturned, and she felt a sickening wave of nausea from the personal violation.

“How . . . ?” Emotion kept her from finishing the question.

“The way I see it, you and the Palmers are the only ones living within a two-mile radius. Sandhurst knows you, knew you’d been in his house. It’s not much, but he obviously thought it was worth checking out. Thank God there wasn’t anything here for them to find.” He paused and looked around the cabin. “They were thorough. I don’t think they’ll be back, but just to be on the safe side, I think we should take a little vacation someplace warm. Who knows? By the time I get you tanned all over, maybe the government will have pulled together enough pieces to put Sandhurst away.”

He rubbed his hand along her nape and placed a kiss on the top of her head. Chantal barely felt either. Sandhurst had done this to her, torn her sanctuary to shreds, touched everything she owned. And as her glance took in each encroachment, all the hours of her past came back to haunt her. All the victories of generations of Cochards settled over her consciousness like a dark, heavy shroud, perversely making the future crystal-clear. The Cochards played by tidier rules, but the game was the same.

Bitterness and anger threatened to blacken the shattered pieces of her heart beyond redemption. She didn’t fight them, not this time. She paid the piper, using her guilt as a shield, her love as a sword.

“Get out, Jaz.” Her voice was flat and hard. “Get out of my life.”

She jerked free of his grasp and strode across the room. Under the blankets, under the torn sheets where they had made love, she found his duffel bag. Against every mental command, her fingers lingered on the worn khaki canvas, the last touch of what was his. Her hand shook, and she clenched it into a fist around the leather strap.
Fate’s perfect fool.

Stilling her features into a blank mask, filling her eyes with indifference, she slowly turned to face him. Utter confusion slackened his mouth and crinkled the corners of his eyes. She tossed the duffel bag at his feet.

“It’s been fun, but the party’s over,
babe
. Get out.” The razor edge of sarcasm was calculated to draw blood. She meant to hurt.

“What in the hell are you talking about?”

“You’re the Academy boy, Jaz. Figure it out for yourself,” she drawled, turning her back to him and flipping the blankets up on the bed.

“Look, Chantal, you’re upset. Anybody would be upset—”

“Save the condolences,” she snapped.

A long, heavy silence stretched out behind her, and her hard-won cynicism began to tremble and weaken. He’d shown her love, not brutality. But the best love she could give him was the self-sacrificing kind, and he would see any hesitation, any lies, in her eyes.

She gave the cabin a dismissive gesture with her hand and went in for the kill. “This is all your fault. You screwed me up at Sandhurst’s and then laid a trail to my front door. I don’t need that kind of help. In other words, no matter how great you are in bed, you’re more trouble than you’re worth.”

Jaz summed up his opinion of her speech in one foul word and came across the cabin for her, kicking the duffel with each stride.

She whirled around and flashed him a steely glare. “Back off, Peterson. I mean it.”

With an action worthy of Pele, he flipped the bag up on the dais. “The luggage stays. I stay. Or you and I both get out. Take your pick,
babe
.” Granite-flecked eyes dared her to contradict him.

He wasn’t making it easy, but his anger fueled hers, gave her something more to fight with. And she fought dirty.

“What do I have to do? Hit you with a brick?” she asked incredulously, lifting both hands, palms up, in a helpless shrug. “Hey, I admitted it was fun. You’re a great lay, babe. But that’s it. I’ve got a good life here, and with Sandhurst off my tail, maybe I can get on with it. Is that clear enough for you, Peterson?”

No, it wasn’t clear enough for him. Nothing was clear, and it was all he could do not to reach out and shake her. The maddening impulse made his muscles twitch, turned his hands into tight fists at his sides. The royal elf possessed a whiplash tongue, and she had laid him open like a cat-o’-nine, cruelly, in his least-protected place—the part of his heart he’d given to her.

His fault? Maybe. She’d been the one with the mirror in her hand, but he knew she wouldn’t have slipped up if it hadn’t been for him, and he’d been doing his damnedest to make it up to her. More trouble than he was worth? Probably true. But together they were worth more than each of them apart, and it angered him that she’d reduced their magic to the lowest physical denominator.

Or are you the only one in love, Jaz, old boy?

The first ripple of doubt drained the tension out of his hands as he searched the unrelenting depths of her eyes. Had he wanted her so badly that he’d fooled himself? Did he have that much naïveté left?

She held his gaze steadily, without any tenderness. What had made him so cocksure that she belonged to him? he asked himself. He found no answers in her eyes, and if there were lies, he couldn’t find them, either, in the cool emptiness. Many times she’d told him to leave, and of all the times for him to start believing her, this was the worst.

He took one more look in her blue-ice eyes and knew he had lost.

“Okay, Chantal,” he said, walking toward the phone. A pencil and a pad of paper hung from a string on the wall. He jotted something down and ripped off the top page. “This is General Moore’s private line. Cut your own deal, but get out of town for a while.” He came back across the cabin and shoved the paper in the front pocket of her pants. “A smart lady like you will be able to find me if you want me. Cozumel. I’ll stay for a week and close up my shop. Then I’m out of there and you’re on your own.”

He raised his hand as if to touch her, but he didn’t. His fingers were only an inch away from the curve of her cheek, and slowly they curled into his palm. He squeezed his eyes shut for an instant, blowing out a deep breath. The effort of his actions tightened his face with strain. Then he opened his eyes to a narrow, piercing gaze, his thick lashes meeting at the outside corners.

“One week, Chantal.” His voice was harsh.

She didn’t make a move to stop him, didn’t open her mouth to cry his name. She flinched when the door slammed behind him, but it was the only weakness she allowed herself. Her feet remained motionless and her heart remained empty long after the sound of the Jeep faded away.

Noon chimes drew her attention to the grandfather clock. One hour until her lunch date with Elise, an hour she’d meant to spend wrapped in Jaz’s arms, stealing his love, touching her mouth to his and making the world and the past go away. Instead only Jaz had gone away.

Pain incised her heart, just a small nick cutting through the protective layer of ice, but it was enough to scare her into action. She couldn’t stay there and wait for the hurt to engulf her. Grabbing her purse and her car keys, she stumbled out of the cabin, pulling the door closed behind her.

Her fingers shook on the busted lock. “Damn them. Damn them.” She forced her concentration onto Angela’s crude boys. All it took was a lockpick and a modicum of skill. It wasn’t like breaking a safe. Anyone could learn how to pick a lock. Anyone! It had probably taken Jaz less than a minute.

Don’t start, Chantal. Don’t start thinking, not yet, not so soon.
She dropped the lock as if it were fire and ran down the porch stairs to her car.

* * *

“Do you want me to hold the Jeep until you get back again, Mr. Peterson?”

Jaz looked up from the papers he was signing and into a pair of blue eyes. They were paler, more like aquamarine than sapphire. Her hair was blond, but thick with a hint of red, not gossamer gold. Her nose was straight, without the slight upturn he’d traced with his tongue the night before.

Forget her.

“Mr. Peterson?”

She had freckles. Chantal didn’t. He’d never seen, touched, or tasted skin like Chantal’s, satin softness, all over. Especially the hollow of her throat, the tender side of her breasts, behind her knees, the lithe curve of her inner thigh.

Forget everything.

“Mr. Peterson?”

Jaz blinked and actually felt a blush steal over his cheeks. Lord only knew what the clerk had read in his eyes. “No. I won’t be coming back.” Chantal had to come to him.

“Too bad. I’ve got two free days starting tomorrow.”

She’d read too much. “Sorry. My heart’s already been broken once in Aspen,” he said harshly, too distraught to hide his feelings. He finished signing his name and dropped the pen on the counter.

The clerk checked his signature against the credit card and handed it back to him. “Well, Jasper. If you ever get back this way, look me up.” She smiled, and Jaz found enough of himself to grin back. No one except the military and his mother ever called him Jasper. Even his dad called him Jaz.

He slung his duffel over his shoulder and searched the waiting area, finding the bank of phones on a far wall. There was one more thing he had to do before he left. Actually two, whether she liked it or not. Foolishly, he’d trusted her with his love. He didn’t trust her to leave town.

Chantal finished her second hot buttered rum and checked her watch. Elise was late, by five minutes.

She shifted in her chair and debated whether or not to leave. Maybe two showdowns in one day was one too many. More like two too many, she thought on a pained breath. At least she and Jaz hadn’t been to this particular restaurant. Hell, they hadn’t been anywhere except to heaven and back on an emotional roller coaster.

Lifting her hand, she signaled for another rum. With his appetite and her cooking, they would have hit every eating place in town before the week was out. If she stayed out of the Hotel Orleans, O.B.’s, and her own home, she could avoid the memories sparked by reality. The chances of her ever ending up on the roof of the Sandhurst mansion again were absolutely nonexistent.

The other memories, the ones brought on by a lapse of conscious effort, she fought every second and would continue fighting until his face blurred and the sound of his husky voice didn’t echo in the chambers of her mind.

But it was too soon for him to be part of the past, and the echoes were strong and painful.
Don’t panic, babe . . . I love you . . . I love you.

She drowned the words with a long swallow of rum and pushed herself away from the table. Elise could take her apart later. She had to go someplace, do something, be with someone. Her feet carried her all of three steps before the grim realization hit her. She had no place to go except home, and she wasn’t ready to face the emptiness and violation there. She had nothing to do. Lodestar Realty was off limits. And worst of all, she had no one to be with, no one who meant enough to take her mind off Jaz’s smile.

Frustration evolved into distraction as she stood in the middle of the dining room, frowning and wondering how to outrun loneliness.

Mexico, she told herself. Run to Mexico and lie like your life depends on it. Take what you can and forget about what you can’t give. The selfish thoughts insinuated themselves into her heart, pushing hard against honor and rightness. The memory of her own cruel words made her wince. Her need to protect him had opened up many parts of her personality, some very hard parts. Those hadn’t been the words of a meek woman content to let other people or fate rule her life. They hadn’t been words of weakness. She’d live without him. How long could it take to forget two days of your life? How long could it take to forget he loved her?