Killing Casanova (10 page)

Jake groaned inwardly. Isolation was exactly what he wanted; no one looking at him, no idle hands or thoughts to prick at the hollow in his heart that the fire had left behind. No questions to answer about who he was and where he belonged …
or with whom,
he thought bitterly. His phone and messages had been full and unopened for over a week now, and he didn’t want to talk about any of it. The reservoir was perfect escape and excuse for hiding his restlessness.

“It will be after three when they get there, and they have to go before sunset so it won’t be that long. Just help out Miriam since Troy is down with the flu, and I’ll leave you to your moping for another couple of weeks.”

Debra’s voice was pleading and Jake’s distracted thoughts scrambled to keep up with her speech.

“What?” he asked, uncrossing his arms and stepping back from her. “Who is coming after three? Coming where?”

His mother frowned, and Jake thought he could see her mentally making an appointment with a therapist for him. His thoughts drifted more and more lately, and just yesterday she asked him if he needed to be signed up for sessions at The Rocking J along with Heidi.

“Miriam wants to take her muscular dystrophy kids swimming, and I volunteered the San Madera Reservoir. I just need you to spend a few hours helping … and maybe flirting with her counselors … today.”

Jake scowled openly now and started to push past her. Reaching out and grabbing him around his broad shoulders, Debra begged him with her eyes.

“Please, Jake, if you’re there, Heidi will go, too. I don’t know how to get her to go back to working with Cassie.”

Jake rolled his eyes and glanced at his sister’s long hair swaying as she sang along with her MP3 player at the kitchen table.

“What are you talking about, Mom? For the past few weeks she’s bugged me every day to go see Cassie so she can make sure she’s okay.”

Debra glanced backward at Heidi, then turned back to Jake, dropping her voice. “She has been to check on Cassie, but every time Cassie wants to get on the horses with her, Heidi wants to go find you. I’m lucky I got her to agree to go swimming. When she found out Cassie was going, she said she would only go if you went, too. Please, honey,” Debra said again. “It’s just a couple of hours.”

Jake growled low in his chest and fought off the urge to cough with the sound. Maybe Cassie would be a buffer between him and Miriam’s girls if she had to work with him.

As much as he had been avoiding the world, Cassie had been his exception. She was safe, she didn’t care, and she wasn’t any more interested in impressing him than he was with impressing anyone else right now. Miriam had taken Ruiando, Starlight, and the colt, Firestorm, onto the ranch after the stables had been demolished. The only human interaction Jake had allowed himself since then had been checks of the horses with Cassie. She had not pushed him for more, and he had not tried. Their quiet ability to be together but separate was something he found comforting. It was this companionship that teetered the scales for him now.

“Fine, Mom. Three o’clock.”

• • •

Jake watched from the edge of the dock as the van and truck from The Rocking J pulled up to the ramp leading onto the wooden surface that would allow the wheelchairs access to the San Madera Reservoir. The van’s sliding door opened, and Miriam jumped from the driver’s seat as Jake approached. With her back to him, she began chattering excitedly about the reservoir and her thanks to him for being there. She had managed to lower two of the chairs on the lift and was strapping a third to the base when Jake began moving a pair of blond girls away from the lowering lift, smiling and winking at the blushing girls. With their shrunken musculature and weakened frames, it was difficult to assess their age, but Jake figured they were mostly between six and twelve years old. The smallest was a dark-haired boy with an angry scowl etched into his deep set eyes and sunken cheeks.

“We are all going to drown,” he complained in a high plaintive voice. “This is nuts.”

Jake smiled conspiratorially at the boy, then pointed toward a small narrow fiberglass boat dockside. “If you put one of those life jackets on,” he promised, gesturing towards the pile in Jana’s arms, “you and I will go out in the skiff and run lifeguard patrol. Then you will be safe in your jacket, and I can keep anyone who is crazy enough to brave the water from drowning. Deal?”

The fear and doubt in the boy’s eyes suddenly fled with Jake’s offer, and Miriam nodded approval as she finished unloading those willing to swim.

Jana began strapping life preservers on the small-framed kids, and Jake squatted on his heels to do the same for his new first mate.

“I’m Jake,” he said, grinning at the gap-toothed boy. “What’s your name?”

Jake kept his eyes on the boy as he lifted him out of the awkward machinery and began carrying him to the water craft.

“Kyle,” the boy squeaked anxiously as they drew nearer to the boat.

Jake walked into the shallow water by way of the rocky beach until he stood thigh deep in the cold mountain run off. He lowered Kyle into a seat strapped to the stern. Jake buckled him to the back rest and kept one hand on the boy’s shoulder. Jake pointed to the line tethering the boat to the dock and smiled warmly at Kyle again. “That rope will keep you right here while I go help with the others. Can you keep your eyes on it until I get back, and shout my name if you need me?” Kyle nodded with a bite of his bottom lip, and Jake slowly backed out of the water.

Keeping one eye focused on Kyle, Jake helped Miriam and Jana ready the other kids and lower them into the group flotation device.

“Where’s Cassie?” Jake asked looking around. “Where’s Heidi?”

Miriam smiled as she sat on the dock next to where Kyle bobbed in the boat.

“They are both still in the truck with Chris. Cassie convinced Heidi to bring Applesauce and Jackpot up for a trail walk, but now Heidi is refusing to get out of the truck.”

Jake frowned darkly and looked back at the windshield silver in the afternoon light. “Should I go try to help?” he asked as the repetitive sound of Cassie’s cane tapped onto the dock behind him. Jake turned toward the approach of Cassie’s auburn hair, burnt orange in the light. “Is Heidi all right?” he asked, moving toward her and reaching out his hands to stop her march toward him. As Cassie struck Jake’s outstretched palms she paused, planting her feet and then stepping back from him.

“Jake, when you are finished with the kids could you come help me with Heidi?” The frustration in her voice rubbed at Jake’s nerves.

“If you’re not in the mood for her today …” Jake said cautiously, crossing his arms in front of him.

Cassie’s expression flashed shock for a moment, and then she frowned. “It’s not her, Jake. I just don’t like feeling that her progress is reliant on anyone else. I feel as if I’m encouraging codependence in her by even agreeing to ask, but I think we can get her on Applesauce today if she knows you are close by. I may be able to teach her to trust the horse and relinquish her grip on you.”

Jake nodded and looked into the silver surface of the truck’s windshield. Jake narrowed his eyes suspiciously at the truck, and he turned slowly back to face Cassie.

“Tell her that I have made a promise to a six-year-old boy, and I expect her to work with you while I keep it.” Cassie broke into a wide smile as she turned away from him. He continued, “Tell her I expect her to trust me, and that means she is going to do this without me.”

Jake shook his head as Cassie disappeared behind the horse trailer. He knew Heidi was just punishing him for teasing her about leaving for Wyoming.
This is ridiculous,
Jake mentally complained as he pulled his T-shirt over his head and jumped into the cold water beside the boat.

The warm air and chilled water sent a shiver across his back. As he turned and climbed into the boat behind Kyle, he caught Jana’s wide-eyed stare. With the quiver of his flesh and a brief rekindling of his old confidence burning across his cheeks, he smiled into her dark brown eyes. She dropped her eyes into the rubber float, and Jake felt satisfaction. Women looked at him like that all the time; he hungered for that expression to cross a woman’s face, it meant he had her.

The sound of Cassie and Heidi emerging with the horses from the trailer reminded him that Cassie had looked at him that way, too, when he had talked of his promise to Kyle. He had never seen that look on her face before, and she had discarded it as quickly as it had appeared.

Jake consciously took stock of it as he started the motor and steered the boat out beyond the buoy, far enough away to keep Kyle entertained and near enough to jump to the rescue if necessary. Jake pointed out to Kyle the bubbles coming to the surface as the trout saw the flash of sunlight dappling the water and rose to nibble at its color above them.

The afternoon sun shone on the placid water like lemon-drop diamonds against the deep blue of the mountain lake. The chatter of birds and excitement of screaming children broke the warm sky for the next two hours. Jake spent the time keeping an eye out for Miriam and Jana, but the majority of his long hours were spent focused on Kyle.

He motored the small boat slowly around the reservoir, pointing out the lava dam and spillway, the intricate tangle of pipes and spigots protruding for the irrigation system, the rushing inlet of higher creeks and the marshy stretch of forest east of where the bold San Madera thundered through the canyon.

While he and Kyle were catching frogs along a sand bar, Jake noticed Cassie and Heidi seated in a deep green meadow beyond the gray edge of the access road. Applesauce and Cassie’s Jackpot were bridled and saddled, but Jake could tell from Heidi’s pinched features that she wasn’t happy about it. Sighing in disappointment, Jake took an empty bait can from the bottom of the boat and placed Kyle’s newest bullfrog into the bottom. Scooping in a handful of water and handing it back to the bright-eyed boy, Jake turned his attention back to the shrieks of laughter from the flotation.

Taking the frog and the boy back to the buoy, Jake settled back into the boat to watch the swimmers and chase the icy chill from his shoulders, where he had immersed them in the water for frog duty. He was tempted to lay his head back and close his eyes, but the boat rocked beneath the excited little boy’s feet as he played with the irritated swamp frog, and the splashing of his charges kept his mind too alert to relax into the summer heat.

Heidi appeared at the edge of the dock before Jake had registered her movement, diving into the cold water and swimming to Miriam and Jana. Her formerly pinched features were smooth now and light as she splashed and dove beneath the float, tickling the feet of the children. When Jake looked back up again, the horses were tied to the fence beside the truck where Chris Barben fed and unsaddled them, and Cassie was making her way with her red-tipped cane down the dock. Kyle handed Jake the bait can, insisting he needed more water for Bullworth, and Jake leaned over the side to scoop some more into the can as he watched Cassie walk closer and closer to where the dock ended and the deep water of the reservoir began.

Panic swelled through Jake as he saw her nearing the drop off. His mind never considered the idea that even if she went over the side, she could probably swim. She was blindly, literally, heading for danger, and Jake was about to jump to his feet to keep her from falling from the dock. Then he remembered he was in the boat with Kyle, too far away to stop her, and he watched helplessly.

Cassie walked slowly but confidently down the wooden planked dock until her cane struck the edge, two steps before she would have stepped off. She dropped the cane beside her and shimmied her jeans over her hips and knees until she stepped out of them. She folded them carefully and set them beside the cane, then pulled her T-shirt over her ginger hair.

Jake clamped his jaw tightly as the sinking sun illuminated her from behind and her body became silhouetted against the burnished sky.

She was tall for a girl, and her long legs were lean and sculpted into an hourglass at her hips. Her skin was tanned from the summer sun, and her long hair fell over slender shoulders and a graceful neck. She was … beautiful. He had always thought she was pretty, but he was surrounded by attractive women, and she had never stood out from the rest before. As he watched her lean lithe form move to the end of the dock and slide smoothly into the water, he really looked. Against her beige skin, her pale blue eyes picked up sparks of blue flame from the water and flashed in the light. She had piled her long reddish-brown waves in a twist at the top of her head; a wisp or two escaped to fall beside her cheeks and jaw as she held onto the float and chatted with Jana and Miriam.

He was mesmerized by the sight. Jake felt himself let go of something as he stared at her face. She was gorgeous, sexy, a vision that would have rivaled some of the women he knew from Hollywood. Why had he never seen it before?

A screech from Kyle brought Jake’s mind back to the boat as he realized he’d dropped Kyle’s frog habitat into the water.

Kyle’s shrieks and the splashing descent of the can brought Jana and Miriam’s attention to see what had happened. Jake couldn’t get his eyes off of Cassie fast enough, and it seemed as if he couldn’t drag them away at all.

“Jake?” Miriam’s voice broke his transfixed gaze to follow the can to the blacker depths of the reservoir beneath him and Kyle’s perch. “Are you ... is everybody all right?” she asked choking back a laugh, as Kyle continued to shriek.

“Yeah, yeah,” Jake fumbled, trying to quiet Kyle. “I dropped his can. Kyle, relax I’ve got another one in the bait shed. Just hold the frog, and we’ll go back.”

Jake started the motor again, and Kyle complained loudly as he moved the small boat back to the side of the dock, keeping his eyes fixed firmly on the bow of the wooden structure. He wouldn’t look their way again; he may never be able to look at her again, at least not ever the same.

• • •

“Jake?” Miriam’s voice broke across his concentration as he ate potato salad. Miriam was just finishing up feeding the picnic to her horde and Jake had taken the plate she had fixed for him to the dock. He sat, legs dangling in the water, sun drying his shorts and hair in the dusky light. “Have you seen Cassie or Heidi?”