Heart of the Hunter (16 page)

Climbing to his feet, he went to the window, keeping his back to her. “I'm sorry. I don't know what got into me. Maybe it was the thought that your face would be scarred.”

“It wouldn't be the first, or have you forgotten?”

“I haven't forgotten.” He would never forget pulling her from the water, half conscious and bleeding profusely after a surfboard hit her squarely in the face. It was the first time he'd noticed Tony's reaction was wrong. He'd been impassive, a clinical observer, not a worried brother. Jeb worried enough for both of them, especially when she insisted on going back into the water. To please her brother, because he expected it. “You fought me then, even when you were reeling and too dizzy to stand.”

“I don't want to fight you now,” she said quietly. “And if I seem ungrateful, I'm not. I appreciate that you care.”

He faced her, his gaze moving over her feverishly. He'd told himself he needed distance. But there could never be enough distance to put her out of his mind. To keep from wanting her. To stop the ache that lived inside him. “Are you all right?”

She opened her mouth to respond, then shut it tight as she realized he wasn't speaking of a scratch on her face. “I'm all right,” she said after a while. It wasn't really a lie, nor the truth, but she was getting there. “I'll be fine.”

“I didn't mean to hurt you.”

“I know.”

“No.” He shook his head. “You have no idea.”

Nicole's chin lifted, her eyes glittered. “Are you sorry you made love to me, Jeb?”

“Yes.” The word was a hiss. An agitated hand raked through his hair, tugging at it viciously. “No!”

“Which is it, Jeb? Yes, or no?” She didn't blink, didn't move. Had she been a fool? She could stand anything but that.

“Nicky...”

“Yes, or no?”

He muttered a low oath, a word that was becoming too familiar. “There's a lot I regret, and even more that I should. Making love to you should be one of them. I should carry it on my soul like a brand, but I'm not sorry.” Even a liar and a rogue couldn't regret his one small taste of heaven. “God forgive me, I'm not.”

The blow she feared hadn't fallen. The defensive posture of her body eased, the band constricting her heart snapped. “Then that's all that matters.”

“There can't be any more than that, Nicky. Some day you'll understand why.” And on that day, she would hate him.

She left the bed to go to him. Standing before him, she laid her fist over his heart. The beat of it was strong, as he was strong. As she must be. When she bargained with herself, it was to have what little she could. With no regrets. “I'm not asking for any more.”

“You deserve better.”

“Then what I deserve and what I want are totally different.”

“Sweetheart, I wish...” But she never heard what he wished. Instead, he drew her to him, burying his face in her hair. He held her close until the tension drained from him, and every taut muscle uncoiled. Lifting her face with a finger under her chin, he kissed her cheek beneath the scratch, he kissed her eyes. As she looked up at him, trusting him, he murmured again. “I wish.”

When his lips brushed hers, his kiss was exquisite, poignant, rocking her world beneath her feet. As her mouth yielded to his, tears she couldn't shed for a man who seemed lost and lonely glittered in her eyes.

Slowly, he put her from him and lifted a hand. “Peace?”

Nicole smiled, a smile too brilliant, and put her hand in his. “Peace.”

* * *

“Tell me again what he said.” Matthew leaned forward, his arms resting on the desk, his hands loose, relaxed. Before Annabelle could object, he added, “I know you've told me until you're sick of telling me, but, please, just once more.”

Arms folded, face twisted in deep study, Annabelle drifted through the gallery, moving abstractedly from print to painting, bronze to stone, trailing her fingers over each frame and figure lightly. At the newest display, that had once belonged to Ashley, she stopped, focused, racked her memory.

The gallery had closed for the day as Nicole suggested, and the showroom was quiet now, eerily quiet. Other than her interrogator, only Jeb and Nicole were present. Neither of them moved or spoke, but she felt the weight of hopeful stares.

“Look!” She whirled about to Matthew. “This is a waste of time. I've told you all I know. Wouldn't you do better to be out there, going to Ashley's old haunts? His favorite places, before he does something foolish?”

Matthew accepted her anger placidly. No expression showed on his lean, hard face. His black eyes were unwavering, but not unkind. Annabelle's guilt-laden irritation and frustration sparked in the air like an electric current, but he offered no appeasing remarks, no false apology for his incessant prodding.

Expecting contradiction, needing it to fuel her frustration, Annabelle faltered, her criticism fading like ripples from a stone thrown in a pond.

Matthew sat motionless and might have seemed cast of bronze or carved of stone, were it not for the slight rise of his chest with each slow, shallow breath. He was patient, a watcher, like his chosen people. In the muted light, with shadows falling over his features, the trappings of modern dress were not at odds with the inherent traits of his lineage. Nor with the flash of feather and stone on the band he wore at his nape, an alternative to the traditional headband.

Fierce pride of the
N'de,
the Apache, was reflected in his bearing, their restrained strength in his stillness. Intelligence and wisdom, and something beyond shone in his dark, slanting gaze.

Matthew Winter Sky would be an implacable enemy, but faithful beyond measure in friendship. It was the latter that commanded Annabelle's compliance when he said simply, “Please.”

“All right.” Though she tried to cling to the farce of her anger, there was no heat in her reply. Carefully, as she had before, she recounted Ashley's arrival at the gallery. His proud offering of the newest painting, his disappointment that Nicole was away for the day. “That's when the old biddy came bursting in. A vulture riding hell for leather, bearing tales, looking for more. When she saw it upset Ashley that Nicole had gone sailing with Jeb, she made it sound as bad as possible.”

An apologetic glance at Nicole's pale face halted her recitation. Then squaring her shoulders she addressed Matthew again. “Repeating what she proposed and surmised won't find Ashley, so we'll forget that part.”

“You showed her the door,” Matthew prompted, adding his tacit agreement.

“By the scruff of her skinny neck, figuratively, at least. And I invited her
not
to come back.” Another glance at Nicole, who stood as if she, too, were carved of stone, stripped the stridence from her. “I'm sorry. Even a good customer isn't worth the trouble she causes.”

Nicole dared not trust her voice, and answered with only the smallest inclination of her head. But for the first time since Matthew had begun his inquisition, she relented as Jeb drew her back against him, letting his arms offer respite from the hatefulness and spite of an avaricious woman.

Leaning into his embrace, reinforcing her stamina with his, she savored the warmth that reached into her. Mrs. Atherton's appalling insinuations didn't matter. They never should have. What she felt for Jeb, and the time they'd shared on Eden, would be shameful and ugly only if she let herself feel shameful and ugly.

He'd made no promises, nor had she. Yet neither regretted an enchanted sojourn in the sun-scattered shade of a cabana on a perfect day in paradise.

It was enough, and she was content.

Ashley would be found, she'd known he would be from the moment Matthew Sky smiled at her and promised. Then she would make him understand, and all would be well. She would make it so.

“That's it then? All he said, exactly as he said it?” Annabelle finished recounting her story, and Matthew was speaking, but Nicole had heard little of it. But there was something in Matthew's voice. Something that made her belief stronger.

“I had forgotten, until this minute.” Annabelle scowled, she couldn't believe her outrage had blocked this one small but important incident in the havoc Mrs. Atherton brought down on them. “Ashley said, ‘friend, best friend,' then something about new best friends. That's when he smashed his paintings.”

Matthew slid back his chair and stood. He was tall for an Apache, taller than Jeb, and far, far, taller than Annabelle as he offered his hand. “Thank you.” Her small white fingers were lost in his copper-skinned grasp. “Memory can be a capricious thing, particularly under stress. I know this was difficult for you, but you've been a lot of help. And whether you believe it or not, this saved us time.”

“Just like that, out of the blue, you know where Ashley is?” Her arched eyebrows mirrored the shape of her heart-shaped forehead.

“Just like that, but not out of the blue.” Matthew allowed himself one small grin, and his hard face was transformed into one of astonishing beauty. Not one inch of it anything but ruggedly masculine and perfect.

It was a measure of her guilt and worry that Annabelle didn't notice. Any other day, she would have groveled, not completely tongue in cheek, at his feet. “How do you know? What did I say?”

“I'll explain, I promise. But later. It will be dark in just a bit, and I'd like to go.”

“I'll go with you,” Nicole and Annabelle said in unison.

Jeb said nothing. Years in The Black Watch, and countless assignments with Matthew had taught him the uncanny tracker tracked alone.

“Better you wait here,” Matthew explained. “He's hiding. He's been hurt, like a wild animal he's gone to ground to salve his wounds. If he sees either of you, he'll only try to run away again.”

“You're right, I should have realized.” Nicole kept her voice low, holding back the anguish that Ashley would feel so badly toward her he would hide from her. “Where will you look?”

Matthew flashed a breathtaking smile as he was leaving. “The zoo, of course.”

“Of course,” Nicole echoed, and it all made perfect sense.

* * *

Ashley was dirty and unkempt. A bewildered mix of belligerence and contrition. He'd skinned a knee and lost what he called his picture bag with the art supplies Nicole had given him. That he trusted Matthew and no one else was made painfully clear by the way he clung to the darker man's hand.

“Ashley.” At the sound of Nicole's voice, he cringed behind Matthew, unable to understand that his bulk couldn't be hidden by a more slender frame. “I've missed you. Are you all right?”

At the much awaited peal of the bell at the door, Nicole had practically leapt from her desk. She'd spent the hours of waiting trying to work, to occupy her thoughts, to hurry the time. Now pages of columns of figures that eluded her scattered over its surface as she waited and hoped for his reply.

Biting her lip to hold back tears, Annabelle watched from the window where she'd kept her vigil.

From his seat a little distance away, Jeb's sole reaction was a long, appraising look at the childish resentment in Ashley's face, and the remorse in Nicole's. The only sound was the rustle of the journal he crumpled in his hand.

“Ashley, you promised,” Matthew scolded in the tone a parent reserved for a much loved child. “Remember?”

Ashley jerked his head side to side. Lower lip quivering, he hunched lower trying to avoid Nicole's eyes.

“I'm sorry you're angry with me. I'd like to explain that my friendship with Jeb isn't like Mrs. Atherton said. It isn't—”

“Bad.” Ashley pointed an accusing finger. “Do bad things.”

Color drained from Nicole's face, her hands trembled, until she folded them before her. She should have been warned by Annabelle's reluctance to repeat the vitriolic tirade, but she wasn't prepared for this. “No, Ashley, Mrs. Atherton is wrong. You're wrong.”

Her cry fell on deaf ears. Ashley stared stonily above her head. She'd seen him fall into this self-induced trance before when he refused to deal with something.

“All right, you don't have to talk to me if you don't want to.” She'd been so sure she could make him understand. Now Nicole wondered if she could reach Ashley at all, ever again.

“Maybe he doesn't have to talk,” Matthew said as he turned, taking the huge man by his massive shoulders, shaking him, commanding his attention. “But he has to listen, because he promised. And Ashley never breaks a promise.”

Darting eyes found Jeb, a pout drew down a dirty lip.

“Jeb's here,” Matthew said firmly. “I told you he would be. I told you why. He's a friend, and friends try to make you feel better when you feel sad. Nicole and Annabelle were feeling sad because you listened to a woman who wasn't your friend or theirs, and ran away.”

“Matthew,” Nicole interjected quietly. “He can't understand, it's too abstract.”

“He understands and he'll understand even more.” Taking a massive hand, Matthew led his charge toward the lounge. “I'm going to help you clean up, and bandage your scratches, Ashley. While I do, Nicole will collect some more paints for you, and maybe even a new bag for them. Then when we're all done, you're going to listen like you promised, and she'll explain everything.

“Just remember that she's your friend, she has been for a long time, and she always will be. But only you can decide if you want to be
her
friend.”

The door to the lounge had hardly closed behind them when Annabelle erupted in a quiet, deadly rage. A low stream of epithets and threats, some old, some just invented, poured from her. The mildest of which was stitching Mrs. Old Biddy's mouth shut and making her spend the remainder of her life eating and drinking through a straw. The most violent, and to Annabelle the most satisfying, involved stripping her naked, hanging her upside down in the old slave market and leaving her for the world to see just how ugly she was, inside and out.