Reilly's Return (18 page)

Jayne winced.

Reilly was halfway across the table in the blink of an eye, his fist wrapping into the logger’s shirt front. “What do you say you take your ugly mug out of the lady’s face, mate?” he said in a voice several octaves too low to go with his outfit.

At LaCroix’s startled look Jayne tried for an explanation that would salvage their ruse. “Aunt Patty’s taking hormone treatments for her thyroid condition.” She turned a plaintive look on Reilly. “Now, Aunt Patty you know how edgy that testosterone makes you. Lloyd here was only trying to be nice.”

“Nice?” Reilly spat out the word. “I know all about what Lloyd here was tryin’ to be.”

“Look lady, I don’t need this,” LaCroix said, his eyes darting from Reilly to Jayne. “I’m plenty interested in you, but the ugly auntie here will have to take a hike.”

Jayne jerked back as Reilly swung the pink handbag around and hit Lloyd on the side of the head with it. “I’ll show you, you ugly, dirt-eatin’ son of a sheepdog.”

It was a classic example of all hell breaking loose, Jayne thought as she grabbed the knapsack she called a purse and scrambled to safety behind the bar. Reilly dove across the table, toppling Lloyd over backward. The lumberjack shoved at his attacker, swearing a blue streak. It was a sight to behold with awe and a certain amount of disgust: a lumberjack and a big ugly woman wrestling on the floor of the bar. A table of tabloid reporters leaped to the edge of the fray, snapping pictures from every angle. Around the melee people were cheering wildly, screaming and taking bets.

The odds changed considerably when Reilly’s wig came off as the two men rolled across the floor. He hauled Lloyd to his feet and held him at arm’s length. “Try to make off with my girl, will you?”

“You’re a
man!”
the logger exclaimed, his face
a mask of repugnance. His horrified gaze swept down the length of Reilly’s dress and back. “I’ve seen your kind on
Donahue
. It’s because of sick guys like you that the Japanese are kicking our industrial butts!”

Reilly took exception, momentarily forgetting he was dressed for a mother-daughter tea. No one insulted his masculinity and got away with it. He took a swing at the lumberjack that landed squarely on the big man’s chin, and the fight was on again. Punches flew fast and furious.

Jayne watched in horror. Her stomach churned at the thought of Reilly getting hurt. It was all her fault this was happening. And what was she doing about it? She was standing a safe distance back, watching—just as Reilly had accused her of doing. Observing instead of participating. Reilly was in danger of getting the spit kicked out of him, and she was taking it all in as if it were a scene in a movie!

She hopped up on the bar just as the two fighters stumbled in that direction. Reilly had a split lip and a bruise on his cheek, and his mascara was running, but he was holding his own. Still, Lloyd was bigger and possibly meaner. The odds didn’t seem at all even to Jayne. As the men staggered closer, she swung her enormous purse with all her might, aiming for the back of LaCroix’s head. She
caught Reilly in the jaw as LaCroix dropped to the floor like a ton of bricks, felled by Reilly’s best punch. Reilly went down, perpendicular to the logger, stunned by Jayne’s blow.

“Oh, no!” Jayne exclaimed, sailing off the bar and dropping to her knees beside him. She stroked his cheek as he sat up, shaking his head to clear it. He rubbed his jaw, moving it gingerly to see that it wasn’t broken. “I’m so sorry, honey!”

“What have you got in that bag, Jaynie, bricks?”

Jayne nibbled her thumbnail, tears rising in her eyes. “Reilly, this is no time to make jokes.”

“Reilly!” The name went through the crowd like wildfire. It seemed the word was barely off Jayne’s lips when the tabloid reporters pushed their way to the front of the mob, flashes popping.

“How long have you been cross-dressing, Reilly?”

“When did you decide to come out of the closet?”

Reilly heaved a sigh at the thought of the headlines that would be cluttering up next week’s grocery checkout counters. Ignoring the questions the reporters were hurling at him, he looked at Jayne.

“So much for this disguise. Got any more bright ideas, Calamity Jayne?”

“D
ON’T SAY IT.
Not one word, Patrick Reilly.”

Reilly rubbed a hand across the grin splitting his handsome face. He winced as he bumped his split lip, but the brief sting of pain didn’t distract him from the sight that had him ready to bust out laughing.

Jayne stood tugging ineffectually at the lead rope that was attached to her llama’s halter. She was decked out in another of her crazy outfits. The full cotton skirt that hung nearly to her booted ankles was khaki with big pink and burgundy cabbage roses and dark green leaves. Her blouse was khaki as well, and fastened at the throat with an enormous cameo pin. On her head she wore a wide-brimmed army-green felt hat that looked at least a size too big for her. In short,
Reilly thought with a sense of wonder, she looked beautiful. It didn’t make sense, but then, neither did Jayne most of the time. He loved her anyway.

In addition to her unique hiking attire, she wore an adorable little scowl, which she now turned on her obstinate llama. Pinafore patently ignored her mistress with the ethereal disregard unique to llamas. The animal sat on the trail like a big dog, gazing serenely off at the lovely view, craning her long neck this way and that in an effort to take it all in. She chewed placidly on the leaves she had snatched off a trailside bush just prior to plunking herself down.

“Did anyone ever tell her she’s supposed to be a pack animal?” Reilly questioned. “She don’t seem to be gettin’ the point.”

Jayne glared at him, frustrated and on the verge of tears. “You’re some big help, you are, Mr. Macho Sheep Rancher.”

Reilly shrugged. “That’s no sheep, luv.”

His heart melted as Jayne turned back to her llama to try once again to convince the recalcitrant animal to get up. She was taking Pinafore’s reluctance personally, frowning at the llama in a way that clearly revealed her feelings of betrayal. She was so darn cute, he couldn’t help but want to wrap her up in his arms and kiss her senseless.

Hiking into the rugged, wooded hills of her farm had been Jayne’s second bright idea designed to extract them from reporters and fans. It had sounded like a good plan to Reilly—until she had insisted they take two llamas along with them to carry their gear. There had been no dissuading her. Sweet-natured though she was, Jayne had a stubborn streak in her not even Reilly could break. So they had strapped packs on Pinafore and Jodhpur, loaded them with food and Jayne’s brand-spanking new camping gear, and headed for the hills just as the sun was peeking over the far horizon.

The plan had worked. There wasn’t a reporter in sight. Reilly was pretty sure they had lost the press in the fog somewhere along the coastal highway after the incident in the bar. Candi had thrown them farther off the track by telling all callers that Jayne had gone to L.A. for the weekend to visit old friends.

Now Reilly adjusted the brim of his hat and breathed deeply the pine-scented air. He sighed a sigh of supreme contentment. This was beautiful country. Rough and wooded, thick with verdant plant life and wildlife. It would be easy for a man to lose himself in it, to forget there was a world full of pressures waiting just to the west of these
hills. That was exactly what he planned to do—just as soon as he rescued Jayne from the clutches of her evil llama.

He gave a shrill whistle that brought Rowdy to his side, then sent the dog to bark at the reluctant pack animal. The sheepdog glared at his master, obviously put out at being asked to herd a lowly llama. Rowdy gave a couple of obligatory barks, then joined Pinafore in her boycott of the trip. He sat down with his back to the llama, and stared off at the countryside.

“You’re losin’ your touch,” Reilly grumbled to the dog.

Rowdy ignored him.

Disgusted with the whole business, Jayne threw her lead rope down and stamped her dainty feet. She shook her finger at Reilly.

“This is all your fault! You and your blasted pack of rabid disciples! I had a perfectly nice life until you showed up. Now look what’s happened! I’ve been chased out of my home, my bracelet isn’t working, I can’t communicate with my llama, and I don’t know where the center of the earth is!”

“Bloody hell,” Reilly grumbled with half a grin, trying to keep things light. The prospect of a
crying woman made him shudder in his boots. “You make me sound like a walking holocaust.”

“You are.” Jayne hiccupped as she tried valiantly to keep from bursting into tears.

She was at the end of her rope. They had been walking for three hours. Three hours of rancid llama breath down the back of her neck. Three hours of llama humming in her ear. Three hours of stopping every two miles to coax Pinafore off her fluffy duff. Three hours of pointless introspection.

Her feet were sore inside her new hiking boots, and her feelings were rubbed raw. The tension of the past few weeks had come to a head; she felt as if something in her chest was going to explode if she didn’t sort it all out soon. There were her own feelings of uncertainty regarding Reilly and what he ultimately would want in a relationship. There was confusion at the lack of spiritual guidance she was receiving from her heretofore trusty bracelet. There was the conflict between her view of her life and Reilly’s vastly different interpretation of it.

All she had ever wanted was a place where she fit in, a place where she would know security and peace and bliss—the kinds of feelings she had
known within the ranks of the Fearsome Foursome back at college, the kinds of feelings she had known with Mac. How was she ever going to find those things with a man who made her feel as if she were caught up in a hurricane?

“What do you mean your bracelet isn’t working?” Reilly asked, latching on to the one problem she had mentioned that sounded solvable. He abandoned his llama in favor of putting his arms around Jayne, gathering her against him in a gentle embrace. “What’s the matter? Is the latch broken? Maybe I can fix it.”

“Fix it?” Jayne chuckled wearily to herself. “How can you fix it? You’re the problem.”

Reilly raised a brow and tucked his square chin back defensively. “Me? I haven’t touched the thing. You never take it off.”

His big hand gently circled her left arm and raised it so he could easily examine the bracelet. It seemed perfectly intact to him. The gold of the intricately woven chain shown dully in the morning light. The dainty key charm lay against the paper-thin skin inside Jayne’s wrist.

“Looks fine to me,” he said, his voice going a little hoarse at the feel of Jayne’s pulse racing beneath his thumb.

Jayne heaved a sigh of premature defeat. She
could already hear Reilly declaring her belief to be bunk. Still, she felt obligated to explain.

“This bracelet was a gift from Bryan. He bought it from a gypsy in Hungary who told him it had powers, that the key was the key to a plane of understanding. But I haven’t been able to understand anything since you’ve shown up. Do you follow so far?”

Scowling, Reilly tilted his hat back and scratched his head, the picture of male confusion. “Not a bit of it.”

“This bracelet has always given me feelings—good or bad—that help me make decisions,” she said, trying to convince him with her earnest expression as well as her heartfelt words. “It hasn’t done a darn thing since you came here. I think your magnetism has goofed up the psychic energy field. I can’t get any idea of what to do about you or anything else.”

Reilly stared at her for a long moment, his face frozen in a look of dismayed disbelief. Dropping her hand, he took two steps back from her and barked a sharp laugh that turned the heads of both llamas. He threw his hands up in utter exasperation. “What a lota rubbish, Jaynie!”

Jayne squeezed her eyes shut and sighed again.
She might as well have been talking to the llamas. Come to think of it, they probably had a better understanding of the mystical world than Reilly did, llamas being such soulful creatures.

“I knew you wouldn’t understand,” she muttered, feeling the rift between them widening.

“Oh, I understand plenty,” Reilly said, coming back to her with his hands jammed at the waistband of his faded jeans. He leaned over her, trying to intimidate her with his size and his scowl. He’d had it with Jayne’s metaphysical malarkey. She was scared, and her reaction was to hold up that shield of mystical mumbo-jumbo, but he wasn’t having any of it. “I understand that there’s something burning between us that’s worth hanging on to, and no bloody bit of junk jewelry is gonna tell me different.”

He pushed her hat back off her head and roughly stroked a hand over the luxuriant, wild mass of her hair, tilting her head back with the pressure.

“Look at me, Jaynie,” he commanded.

She had no choice but to obey him. Staring up into the burning opalescent intensity of his eyes, she shivered at the raw sensual feelings that stirred inside her. He was so utterly masculine; every feminine instinct in her snapped to attention
when he came this close. The sensation was powerful, overwhelming, frightening.

“Do you love me?” he demanded. The expression on his rugged, irregular features would have dissuaded more than one woman from answering.

Jayne’s heart did a back flip. Her dark eyes widened impossibly in a pixie face gone suddenly pale. Did she love him? Stupid man. Hadn’t he been paying any attention to her at all? Everybody in Anastasia knew she was in love with him!

“Well, do you?”

His voice was sure and strong, but there was less certainty in his blue eyes. He wasn’t asking just to hear the sound of his own voice. That hint of vulnerability caught at Jayne’s heart and gave her the courage to answer with the truth.

“Yes,” she whispered, sliding her hands up inside his leather jacket, along the hard planes of a chest covered in soft red cotton.

Reilly studied her with an intensity that bordered on fanaticism. He took in not only her admission, but her expression, the thread of hesitancy in her voice, the square set of her shoulders as if she were tensed to receive a blow of some kind.