Higher Than Eagles (Donovans of the Delta) (3 page)

“Everything you do is my concern, Rachel. Don’t you know that?”

“Why? If you don’t want me, for heaven’s sake, why?”

He picked up another flower and took his time patting it back into the rich black earth. “Everywhere you go, I’ll be there. Every song you sing, I’ll be listening. Every move you make, I’ll be watching. I’ll dog you from here to the ends of the earth until I learn the truth.” He sat back on his heels and took his time viewing his handiwork. Then he turned to her, and she felt as if she were looking into the blue-hot fires of a furnace. “It’s the only way I can ever be free of you.”

She felt chilled, even in the ninety-degree heat. “You really mean that, don’t you?”

“It’s a promise, Rachel.”

She lost control with him, just as she had the night before. Losing control had always been so easy with Jacob.

“I won’t have it.” She snatched a handful of petunias out of the ground and flung them at his chest, dirt and all. “Who do you think you are to come barging into my life after six years?”

She reached down again and came back with only a clump of weeds and soil. It didn’t matter. She drew back her hand and watched with satisfaction as the whole dirty mess drifted over him. She was getting as soiled as he, but she didn’t care. She simply wanted to get him out of her well-ordered life.

“I won’t let you ruin everything I’ve worked for.”

“Rachel.”

He caught her hands as she aimed another chunk of dirt at him. She struggled, and she was almost his match. Tall and slim, she was just one inch shy of Jacob’s five ten.

They rolled together in the dirt, and she hit him with every weapon she had, knees, elbows, fists, feet.

“Stop it, Rachel.” He pinned her beneath him. The breath whooshed out of her.

“No. Dammit, Jacob Donovan. Let me go.”

“Not until you calm down.”

She wriggled a fist loose from his grasp and aimed it at his ear. It missed by a city block.

He chuckled. “If you’re going to take up street fighting in your old age, you’d better get a few lessons.”

“I don’t lessons from you.”

Still laughing, he kept her pinned down. “You used to say you wanted to be a Donovan because you admired the Irish spirit. Show me your Irish, Rachel.” He leaned closer and got a whiff of her fragrance. His laughter ceased. He tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “Rose perfume to garden in?”

The unexpected tenderness of his voice made her stop struggling.

“You always did put your perfume in the most provocative places. Where is it now, Rachel?” He nuzzled her ear. “Here?”

He smelled like soap and mint toothpaste and freshly turned earth..

“Or here?” His lips touched the base of her throat, right where her pulse was doing a crazy fandango. “Here?” His voice was hoarse as his tongue traced a hot line across the tops of her breasts.

She fell in love all over again with the man she’d never stopped thinking about for six years. His audacity, his boldness, his wicked good looks, his Irish temper, his great boom of laughter, even his recklessness—all caught her up on the same giddy merry-go-round she’d known when she was twenty-three.

He lifted himself on his elbows and looked down at her. There was no laughter in his face now. What she saw scared her.

“Rachel?”

“No, Jacob. I’m not a wide-eyed innocent anymore. I don’t believe in fairy tales. Let me go.”

For a second, she thought he was going to release her. Then his face hardened.

“And I’m not Prince Charming anymore.” He caught her hands, pinning them above her head. “I’ll let you go, but first I have to find out just how much you never loved me.”

He caught her to him fiercely. His mouth was demanding. It possessed, it punished. And it was impossible to resist. As hard as she tried, she couldn’t make her body verify the lies she’d told him.

When he was finished with her, he lifted his head.

“You kiss like a hungry woman, Rachel. Are you?”

She added one more lie to her web of deceit.

“No. I’m merely an experienced woman, Jacob. Six years of experience, as a matter of fact.”

His hands cupped her face, and she guessed they would leave prints on her cheeks, one of the many complications of skin that was so fair you could almost see through it. But she didn’t care. Jacob had already left his mark on her, a mark she would never be rid of.

“I don’t need any reminders that you married another man.”

“I did, Jacob. You can’t change the past.”

He leaned close, studying her as intently as if he were committing her features to memory. She thought he was going to kiss her again, but suddenly he released her. He stood up and walked quickly across the lawn and down the brick path.

He strode through the gate without ever looking back.

She dusted the dirt off her shorts and went back to her flower bed. Only when she heard the plane in the sky did she realize she was crying. When she shaded her hand over her face to look up, she felt the tears on her cheeks.

“You can’t change the past, Rachel Devlin,” she told herself. But as she watched the World War II plane circle, she wished she could.

 o0o

Flying had always made Jacob feel free.

But not today. No matter how fast or how high he flew his P51 Mustang, he still felt like a Christmas box that had been flattened and thrown out with the trash.

Served him right, he thought. He’d rolled Rachel in the dirt as if she were a common tramp. He’d manhandled her and fought with her. What was wrong with him anyway? All he wanted to do was to get the two-timing woman out of his life.

 
Then how come you get all heated up every time you see her?
He ignored the voice of his conscience. Sarcastic little toad.

Banking the plane, he turned back to fly over her house again. There was no mistaking it. Set on a wide expanse of lawn, it shone like a gleaming jewel. Whatever else Bob Devlin had done, at least he had kept Rachel in style. Jacob supposed he should be grateful to the man.

Abruptly he pulled back on the throttle and shot high into the sky. But the sense of freedom eluded him.

 o0o

When he landed, he went back to the Broadwater Beach Hotel and called his office.

His specialized fire-fighting team was headquartered in Greenville now. When he’d first become a troubleshooter, he’d been part of a team based in Nashville. After Rachel had jilted him, he’d formed his own team, basing them in Dallas near where his brother Tanner lived. He hadn’t wanted to remain in Mississippi, because everything about the state had reminded him of Rachel. Through the years, as Rachel and her manager-husband had moved all over the country—Seattle, Chicago, San Francisco, back to Seattle and finally Biloxi—there had been no reason not to move his business back home.

And so he had.

“Rick, how are things on the home front?”

“Is that you, Jacob? Let me turn down the radio.”

Jacob grinned. Rick McGill would be leaning back in the old cane-bottomed swivel chair, sipping an orange soda straight from the bottle, his feet propped on the scarred desk, his blond hair looking as if it hadn’t been combed in two days, listening to his favorite radio station, WOLD, the station that specialized in golden oldies.

He could hear the scrape of Rick’s chair, the sound of his boots against the tile floor. At the other end of the line the voices of the McGuire Sisters faded into the background.

“I’m back. What’s up, buddy?”

“I’m still in Biloxi. There are a few things down here I need to take care of.”

“Not to worry. Jack’s servicing the equipment, and Mick’s giving the Learjet the once over. The rest of us are sitting on our fannies thinking about those sweet little numbers down in Maracaibo.”

“Take it easy. All of you deserve it. And let me know if anything comes up.”

“I will . . . wait a minute. That’s the Lennon Sisters. Let me turn them up.” The swivel chair squeaked loudly, footsteps tapped across the floor. “Man, that Kathy Lennon is something else.”

After Jacob hung up, he showered, changed, and went to Baricev’s for a hug dinner of red snapper. He’d fully intended to catch Rachel’s show, just as he had promised, but their afternoon encounter had shaken him more than he liked to admit. He wasn’t ready to see her again so soon.

After dinner, he changed into jogging shorts and raced along the gulf, running himself into exhaustion so that he could fall into bed, too tired to think about Rachel. He needed time to get some perspective. He’d deal with her tomorrow.

 o0o

By the next evening, when she hadn’t heard any more from him, Rachel thought Jacob had given up and gone home.

She should have known better. There he was, standing in the shallow water, gazing up the beach. Those stubborn Donovans never gave up. She dragged her feet in the sand, slowing her jogging pace almost to a crawl. She briefly considered turning around and going back to the house, but she knew that wouldn’t stop him. Nothing would.

She knew the precise moment he spotted her. His head came up, and his whole body tensed. Finally he started toward her, walking at first, then jogging, then sprinting, spewing the white sand up behind him. In the sunset, it looked like a plume of fairy dust.

The fairy tales she read to her son came to mind, but she was too old to believe in fairy tales. Jacob could never be hers again. No amount of longing would restore things to the way they had been.

“How did you know I would be here?” she asked when he stopped in front of her.

“I gambled, Rachel.”

“Gambled?”

“Yes. You’re a creature of habit; you like to take a good, hard run before a performance. The beach in front of your house seemed the logical place.”

“So you’ve found me. What now? More questions?”

Instead of answering, he reached out and touched her hair. She stood very still as he lifted the blond strands and let them sift back through his fingers.

“While I was reading your Dear John letter, do you know what I thought about?”

She closed her eyes, wanting to shut him out. But his image seemed to be stamped on her eyelids. Taking a deep, steadying breath, she dared a look at him.

“What did you think about, Jacob?”

“The way your hair looked in the sunset, Rachel. Gold with touches of fire. And the way you smelled. Always of roses.” He leaned close, smoothing her hair back from her face. Abruptly, he stepped back. “The memories were enough to drive a man wild.”

“I’m sorry it had to be that way, Jacob.”

“Are you?”

“Yes. An ocean separated us. A letter was the only way.”

“Couldn’t you have waited? What difference would a few weeks have made?”

“I couldn’t wait.”
For reasons you’ll never know
, she thought. “I thought that what I had to do was best done quickly.”

“And callously. Dammit, a
letter
, Rachel! I had no way of defending myself.”

She lifted her chin. “Are we going to fight again, Jacob? If we are, tumble me quickly in the sand, because I have an eight o’clock performance.”

Jacob looked at her the way he used to, in admiration tinged with amusement. She squelched the quick surge of hope that tried to spread through her.

Suddenly he laughed. “I hope Bob Devlin appreciated the feisty side of you.”

She grinned. “Not the way you used to. He preferred docile women to hell raisers.”

“Then he must have been a fool.” Quickly contrite, Jacob put his hand on her arm. “I’m sorry, Rachel. He was your husband. I have no right to speak ill of the dead.”

She covered his hand with hers. She’d always thought one of the most endearing things about Jacob was the heart-tugging innocence of his quick apologies. “It’s all right.”

She caught a brief flash of tenderness on his face before he pulled his hand away. “Don’t be sweet to me, Rachel.”

“Why?”

“It makes me forget.”

“Forget what?”

“That I don’t love you anymore.”

Standing there in the sunset, she longed to wrap her arms around him and beg,
Love me, Jacob. Love me.
But she knew that would be insane. Instead, she waited with all the dignity and self-possession she could muster.

Jacob’s piercing blue eyes caught and held hers as a thousand memories flooded back. Overhead a sea gull cried out to its mate, then drifted away over the water.

“Don’t you, Jacob?” she whispered.

“If I loved you, Rachel, I would show you in a thousand ways.” Jacob reached out and cupped her face. “I would touch you” —his thumbs gently massaged her chin— “and kiss you.” His mouth covered hers in the briefest, tenderest kisses she’d ever known. “I would hold you” —he pulled her into his arms and buried his face in her hair— “and cherish you.”

For one glorious moment, their heartbeats joined. Then Jacob moved away. His arms dropped to his side, and he stepped back. The tide came in and washed between them.

“If I loved you, Rachel, you wouldn’t have to ask. You would know.”

Jacob turned and walked down the lonely beach.

CHAPTER THREE

It was early when Jacob walked through Rachel’s gate.

She wouldn’t be up yet. He knew, because he’d sat through both her shows the night before. She hadn’t finished the late show until two. And she’d looked tired. He hoped his presence in Biloxi had something to do with that. He selfishly wanted her to be losing as much sleep over him as he was over her.

He wanted her to be yearning, too.

The gate swung shut behind him, and he walked to her nearly naked flower bed. There were great bare patches where she had uprooted her petunias. Setting his box on the ground, he grinned sheepishly.

He could understand his sleeplessness and his motive for revenge. What he couldn’t figure out was why he’d conned the owner of a landscape nursery to open his gates at seven and sell him a big box of petunias.

Still grinning like a penitent schoolboy, he knelt beside the flower bed and dug a hole for the first petunia.

“What in the world are you doing?”

He looked up, and what he saw took his breath away. Rachel was standing on the front porch, her honey and butterscotch hair tumbled over her shoulders, her green eyes still dreamy from sleep. The filmy pink concoction she was wearing couldn’t be called a nightgown and robe by any stretch of the imagination. To Jacob, it looked more like a bit of cotton candy or a pink cloud or even a chunk of heaven that had fallen from the sky.