Operation Reunion (6 page)

Chapter 8

K
ayla woke up screaming. And alone.

The nightmares had, thankfully, become rare. But when they came, they were as vivid and terrifying as ever. And real, all of it—walking into the dark den, hearing the odd squish of the carpet, reaching for the light switch, then wishing she hadn’t as the scene flashed into being before her stunned eyes.

Normally Dane was there to hold her, easing her out of the remembered horror gently, not pushing her, not giving her meaningless platitudes, not telling her it would be all right when it never could be, but simply holding her, his strength and understanding flowing to her as if there were a direct connection between them.

But Dane was not here.

He had left early last evening, refusing to settle right back into the routine they had developed over the years. She supposed she should feel hurt, but she was more scared than anything. This further evidence that things weren’t the same had rattled her. He was back, and yet he wasn’t. It pounded home to her anew that their relationship had been damaged.

Shaking, she reached for her phone. She knew it was late, after midnight, but she couldn’t help it—she had to hear his voice. If he was angry that she’d woken him up, so be it.

He answered on the first ring and sounded anything but asleep.

A possibility hit her, biting deep. It was Friday night. And until today, until the Foxworth Foundation had been brought into things, Dane had been through with her.

A date. Had he been out on a date? Was that why he’d insisted on leaving early? Had he already started seeing someone else? He would never have cheated on her; she knew that as surely as she knew his eyes were golden. It just wasn’t in him. But he’d told her he was done two weeks ago. Enough time to ask someone else out. More than enough time if he’d already known her, whoever she was.

And whoever she was, she likely had a much simpler life, free of trauma and tragedy. Dane would probably find that wonderfully refreshing, and—

“Kayla?”

Stop it, she ordered herself. Get a grip. “I’m sorry,” she said into the phone. “I know it’s late.”

“Did you think of something?”

It took her a moment to realize what he meant, and the only thing that stopped her from letting out the sound that rose in her throat was the fear it would sound like some crazed woman’s maniacal laughter.

“No, but I learned that there’s something worse than my old nightmare.”

His voice changed then. Went softer, gentler. “You had it again?”

“Yes.”

“Not surprising. A lot of old memories were stirred up today.”

“Are you one of them?”

“What?” He sounded puzzled now.

“An old memory.”

“I know that nightmare shakes you up, but what are you talking about?”

“Did you have a date tonight?”

“What?”

“You insisted on leaving. It’s Friday night. It’s after midnight and you’re wide awake.”

She heard him let out a long breath. “So you decided I was out on a date? That’s three facts and an awful lot of supposition.”

“Not decided. Wondered.”

He answered her in typical Dane fashion: honestly and a bit bluntly. “That it’s Friday has nothing to do with anything. I’m not there because I’m not sure you can really leave this behind if the results they get aren’t what you want, and I’m not going to lay myself out for that kind of pain again. And I’m awake because, damn it, I miss you and can’t stop thinking about you.”

And in those few words, spoken with an edge in his voice, he blasted Kayla’s silly panic to bits.

“Oh.”

Her voice sounded tiny even to her. For a long moment, silence hung in the air between them.

“I promised you I would move on after they find...whatever they find.”

“I know you did.”

“You think I didn’t mean it?”

“You’ve spent ten years on this quest. It’s been a huge part of your life—it’s sunk into your bones. So I think promising now, and really letting go when it’s over, are two different things.”

She couldn’t deny a single word he said. Nor could she think of a single thing to say that would convince him she’d meant what she’d said.

Maybe he was right. Maybe when the time came, she wouldn’t be able to just let it go.

“I’m sorry about the nightmare.” He sounded cooler now, less on edge.

“It’s all right. Like I said, I found out there’s something worse—waking up to the reality that you’re gone.”

There was a pause before he said quietly, “I just can’t slide right back into life as before, Kayla.”

“I’m going to start now,” she said. Her voice still seemed a little shaky, so she added some emphasis. “Right now.”

“Start what?”

“Wrapping my mind around the idea—the fact—that when this is over, if they don’t find him, I’m done. I’ll always wonder and worry, but I won’t lose you over him. Chad’s my brother, but you’re my life.”

Her voice had gotten stronger as she went. As had her resolve.

“I love you,” Dane said after a moment.

“I know,” she said. “Or you would have walked away long ago.”

It was an admission she’d never made to him before, although she’d often thought it, often wondered why he hadn’t left her to find somebody without all her baggage. She’d never dared speak it, for fear it might make it really happen. But now that it had, she felt compelled to speak the words.

Now she had to live up to them.

* * *

Dane leaned back against the pillow he’d tossed on the end of the sofa in his living room. He’d given up on the bed around eleven, laughing ruefully at himself.

“Can’t live with her, can’t sleep without her,” he’d muttered just before his phone had rung. He’d grabbed it, needing to hear her voice, answering before he remembered he’d sworn not to jump right back into the life he wasn’t sure yet had changed at all.

Amazing how one phone call could make everything feel so different. She’d been different, sounded different. And in a good way for him.

...there is something worse than my old nightmare.

He couldn’t even begin to describe the feeling that gave him. When he’d walked away he’d been afraid that she would simply go on, filling in whatever empty place he left behind with her quest, perhaps even welcoming his absence so she could focus on it completely.

When it came right down to it, he’d never been sure how big a place he had in her mind and heart. If it was bigger than Chad. Selfish, maybe. But true. He knew she loved him; the question that had always nagged at him was how much.

At the same time, he’d felt he was being unfair. What was she supposed to do—just go on with her life as if her brother had never existed?

He rolled over, punching the pillow with more force than was necessary. He wished now he’d stayed. But the part of him that had been ripped open when he’d finally walked away was still raw, and his fear was real.

He only realized he’d finally fallen asleep when his cell rang and woke him. His pulse jumped, but when he looked at the screen before answering it wasn’t Kayla’s number.

“Dane? Quinn Foxworth.”

“Oh.”

He sat up. The crazy thought hit him that they’d already found Chad. He glanced at the time on his phone. Nine-fifteen. The realization that they’d been on the ten-year-old case barely twenty-four hours steadied him.

“I woke you?”

“Sorry. Rough night.”

“I can call back—”

“No, no. It’s okay. What did you want?”

“I needed to ask you about something. On your list, you said Chad used to hang out with a chop shop guy.”

Dane rubbed at his eyes. “Yeah. That’s where he met Rod. Rumor was the guy had a place over on Raccoon Bay, an old barn he used. Can’t remember his name, but when Chad got nailed for joyriding, I thought maybe it was more than just that.”

“You thought maybe he was stealing the car?”

“I wondered.”

“Did you tell the police?”

“Not that I suspected Rod. I told them Chad was friends with the guy. They went from there. But they said later they couldn’t find any proof Chad had meant to actually steal the car.” He felt compelled to be fair and added, “And he was heading back toward where the car had been when they stopped him.”

“Did Kayla know?”

“I don’t know if she knew Chad hung with the guy sometimes. I never said anything to her about it—she was already touchy enough.”

“She truly loves her brother.”

“Yeah.” Dane hesitated, then asked, “You have any brothers or sisters?”

“One.”

“I don’t. I figure maybe that’s why I don’t get it. Maybe I really don’t understand.”

“It’s like any family thing,” Quinn said. “Different depending on the people. I’ve come across some siblings who hate each other fiercely. And some who merely coexist without much interest in each other.”

“What about you?”

“I’d die for Charlie,” Quinn said simply.

No, Dane thought after he disconnected the call, maybe he just didn’t get it. He tried to picture what he’d do if Kayla was accused of something he was certain she hadn’t done, but it was a different kind of thing. He thought of Sergei, who had been his friend for years, and helped him start Sound Digital Video. What if he was accused of hacking a bank or something even worse? The idea was laughable. Serge might sneak his way into the hottest gaming company around, but nothing more.

But he tried to imagine the scenario. If Serge vanished after the crime, how would he feel? What would he do? To what lengths would he go to find him and help him?

A long way, he thought. But ten years of unrelenting searching?

It was, Dane thought as he wearily headed for the shower, a lousy comparison. Serge was a good friend but not a brother. And the crime wasn’t some computer hacking but a literal hacking, the slaughter of two people.

He thought of his own parents then, all they’d done for him, given him, how they’d supported him, believed in him, even given him a loan to keep SDV going until it started gaining some traction in a crowded field. The day he’d paid them back was one of the best of his life. They were proud of him—he knew that. And he loved them both. It was one of the reasons he’d lasted as long as he had with Kayla’s quest. He couldn’t imagine losing them both and in such a horrible way. If he’d had a brother, maybe he couldn’t believe he could kill two loving people like that either.

He knew not all parents were as good as his—his were living proof of the old joke about how the older you got, the smarter your parents seemed to get—but Kayla’s, from what he remembered, hadn’t been bad, although he’d thought they favored their son a bit too much.

Which made what Chad was accused of doing make even less sense.

Hot water streamed over him, and he felt a bit more awake. He finished quickly; he had an online meeting today with an app developer in Nevada who wanted a video for an upcoming trade show.

He was just pulling on his socks when his phone rang again. His pulse kicked up, but a quick glance showed the smiling picture of his mother, one he’d taken a couple of years ago at their thirtieth wedding anniversary. Odd how that happened sometimes—he’d think about them and then they’d call, or he’d call and his mom or dad would say they’d just been thinking about him.

He reached for the phone, thankful he hadn’t told his folks about his decision to leave Kayla so now he didn’t have to explain why he was back. His mother had been telling him, gently and with love, that perhaps he should find someone more willing to focus on him than the past. She cared for Kayla, but she loved her son and wanted him to find the kind of happiness she had with his father.

His answer had always been that he was happy. He loved Kayla and admired her loyalty to her brother. But in some part of his mind he was agreeing. He wanted someone who wasn’t caught up by the past, who was focused on a future with him.

Problem was, he wanted that person to be Kayla, and he hadn’t been ready to give up on that.

Until two weeks ago.

And now?

What happened now, he thought as he prepped himself to sound cheerful to his mother, depended on Kayla.

And Quinn Foxworth and his crew.

Chapter 9

D
ane tapped his fingers idly on the restaurant table as he waited for Kayla.

She was trying. Truly making an effort. Dane could see that. Whenever she wasn’t working, she was pushing for them to be together. She called him regularly, texted him and told him she loved him so often that the ache inside started to ease up. This was the way he’d always wanted it to be. He should be happy. He was happy. He’d be delirious if it wasn’t for the nagging question of how long this would last.

She rarely mentioned Chad or even the Foxworth Foundation. He knew she was likely in regular contact with Quinn and Hayley, but she said nothing. Had there been no developments, or was she just not telling him?

He nearly laughed aloud at himself.

You can’t have it both ways,
he told himself. You either want her to talk about it, or you don’t want to hear it. That’s a conflict you can’t resolve by updating drivers or getting new hardware.

That sort of humming awareness he had whenever she was around suddenly kicked into high gear. Oddly, he thought of Cutter and how the dog not only knew someone was coming, but also who. Maybe the dog really was more human than canine.

Or maybe you’re more dog,
he thought wryly.

Whichever, his instincts were right because a moment later he saw her coming down the aisle of the restaurant toward him.

There wasn’t a trace of the gawky, skinny girl from the tree branch in the lovely, graceful woman approaching. Her hair, cut in that way that made it sweep forward in a smooth curve just at her jawline, made him want to see it tousled from his hands and a night of passion again. The gray silk blouse tucked into black slacks emphasized the curves he knew so well. Need cramped his body, and he had to consciously suck in a breath to get any air at all. He barely managed to stand as she came to a stop beside the table.

“I’m not late, am I?”

She sounded anxious, and he shook his head, still unable to speak for a moment. She slid her bag—he’d always thought that huge thing she carried too large to be called merely a purse—off her shoulder and settled into the chair he held for her.

He was breathing again, albeit a bit deeply.

“How was work?” he asked, taking refuge in small talk.

“Sad.”

He barely managed not to say, “Isn’t it always?”

Kayla’s grief counseling service for crime victims and their friends and families was thorough, coordinating and running group meetings of survivors, arranging appointments with therapists and often personally contacting people she thought could benefit from their services. It was the brainchild of Kayla herself and a wealthy private benefactor who had been in need years ago but there had been nothing of the kind available, nothing with this kind of specific focus. So the woman had channeled the money left to her by her murdered husband into this idea and hired Kayla to run it.

And Kayla was great at it—he knew that, just as he knew it was work that was much needed.

He was also convinced that it was part of the reason she had never been able to move on from her own tragedy. He didn’t doubt that, as she told him, it helped her to help others who lived with the same kind of grief, but it also meant she was immersed in it every day. He would never ask her to quit—and if he did she’d probably have been the one to walk away—but he wished she could find a little more balance. But it didn’t appear she saw the irony of someone who’d never quite gotten over her own grief counseling others.

“A new arrival?”

“No. I didn’t mean sad like that. Sad because Mr. Egland is leaving.”

He quickly placed the name. “That’s the older guy whose wife died in the arson fire?”

She nodded. “He’s going back home to Texas.”

“I thought you talked him out of that.”

“We talked him out of making the decision when he was so torn up with grief he wasn’t thinking straight. Now he’s calmer, more rational, and we all agreed it was the best thing for him to be close to the rest of his family.”

He caught the undertone in her voice. “But you’ll miss him.”

“Yes. He’s a very sweet man.”

“You get so involved with them, Kayla.” They’d had this discussion before, but he couldn’t seem to help himself. “And then it hurts you when they move on.”

“But it makes me proud, too. Proud of what we do.”

“You should be,” he agreed. “I just wish it wasn’t so consuming.”

“Actually,” she said, her voice a tad too casual, “I’ve been thinking of cutting back a little.”

“What, to ten-hour days instead of twelve?”

“Look who’s talking, mister I’ll-just-work-a-little-more-on-that-project-tonight-even-though-it’s-midnight.”

Dane lowered his gaze. She knew him too well. One of the reasons they had ended up living at her place was because he had this habit of coming up with the perfect solution to a problem right around that midnight hour. At his place, all he needed to do to go back to work was walk down the hall to the den. And then he would be sucked in for hours.

It was a habit he’d slipped back into in the two weeks they’d been apart, if for no other reason than it was the only way he could avoid the pain for a little while.

“What if we both cut back?” he suggested, figuring because she was trying so hard not to make everything about this new search for Chad, he could at least make an effort, too.

“And give the time to us? I like that idea,” she said, so heartfelt his doubts receded. And when she reached across the table to take his hand, he felt as if all the pain and sadness of the past two weeks—hell, of the past two years—fell away.

“We’re so damn good together, Kayla,” he said softly.

“Yes. We always have been. And I took that for granted. I’m sorry.”

And with that quiet, heartfelt apology, Dane felt a flood of renewed love and hope. They would make it, he thought. Foxworth would find what they found, or they would not find anything, but it didn’t matter.

They would make it.

* * *

“Tonight was wonderful,” Kayla said, meaning it with all her heart.

“It was. The salmon was great.”

“I didn’t mean the food.”

“I know.”

She realized then that he felt as awkward as she did, standing on her doorstep—what had been
their
doorstep—and feeling unsure about what would happen next.

She knew what she wanted to happen. She just didn’t know how to go about getting it. She was afraid to assume he was ready to pick up where they’d left off, no matter how much she wanted exactly that.

She looked up at him, and he met her gaze steadily. With that knowledge borne of years of loving this man, she knew that although the decision was his, the asking must come from her. For a moment she wrestled with how to say it, then finally remembered this was Dane, and with Dane the best way was always upfront and honest.

“Will you stay?”

The simple question hung in the air for a moment, and Kayla would have sworn her heart had stopped beating in the silence. Was it that hard a decision for him? Had she lost him after all?

Then he let out a long breath.

And smiled. That lovely Dane smile she so loved.

They were going to be all right.

It wasn’t like nothing had changed because things had. The bedroom was the same, but they weren’t. She was a little thinner—eating had been the last thing on her mind when he was gone. The fact that he was too heartened her somehow; she’d had a vision in her mind of him going on happily, glad to be relieved of the burden of her baggage.

But it was more than that. It was the way he carefully, slowly undressed her, caressing each inch of skin revealed as if he’d never seen it before. She understood because every bit of him, broad shoulders, powerful arms, the cords of his neck, was newly precious to her. He’d even stopped her after she’d pulled off his shirt, when her fingers would have gone to the top button of his jeans.

He was handling her as if they’d never been together. As if it was that first night, when she’d turned twenty-one.

She had thought she would want to hurry. She’d been aching for him every moment since he’d walked out. She’d imagined, if this ever happened again, that they would be wildly hungry from the time apart. But now—

As she put her hands on his shoulders to try to pull him closer, he released her bra and gently, almost reverently cupped her breasts. Her breath caught. For a moment that seem liked forever he simply held her, as if he were savoring the feel of soft flesh rounding into his hands.

That halted breath escaped in a low moan as, at last, he brushed his thumbs over her nipples. Her hands slid helplessly downward, gripping the solid muscle of his upper arms as she swayed. Still he moved slowly, so slowly, and finally she understood.

He was seducing her all over again, not because she was unwilling, but in case she had forgotten how unutterably good they were together.

His presence, she realized as at last he let her work down his zipper as he did the same with hers, wasn’t the only thing she’d taken for granted. She’d taken this for granted, this hot, physical connection. It had been this way since the beginning and hadn’t faded at all in five years. He could still make her shiver from across a room, and she knew, with a quiet, feminine sort of pride, that she did the same to him.

“This is forever, Kayla,” he’d said that first night. “No turning back. Are you sure?”

“Is that why you made us wait?” she’d asked.

“You needed to be old enough to know for sure what you want.”

“I’ve known since I was fourteen,” she’d told him.

It had been nothing less than the truth. She’d loved him since the day, instead of insisting on helping her out of that tree, he’d climbed up to join her. And instead of helping her get down, he’d inspected possible routes, told her which one he himself would use, and then let her do it herself.

Now, she owed him this, she thought as they at last went down to the bed in a tangle. No more protests or pleas for him to move faster, to satiate the hunger that had been building. She gave herself up to his hands, his mouth. This would be at his pace, but all the while she knew his goal was to drive her mad with need, and in the end her pleasure would be as great if not greater than his. Because this was Dane, and he knew her, knew how to touch her, to kiss her, to take her exactly as she wanted to be taken.

And the next time, because now she was sure there would be one, she would return the favor, calling up everything she’d learned of him, of what he liked, to make sure he would be the one driven mad. She would show him she understood, that she knew what they’d nearly lost, how rare and special it was.

And then he was easing into her, hot and hard, slow and taunting, and rational thought fled. Her body arched in eager anticipation as he slid home bit by bit, and the low groan that broke from him, the first sign he wasn’t as completely in control as he’d seemed, made her every muscle clench.

He lifted his head, looked straight into her eyes. “Don’t throw this away, Kayla.”

She tightened her arms around him. “No more taking for granted,” she said.

Her words were apparently what he’d needed to hear because he abandoned all efforts at teasing slowness and began to move with an urgency that was no less compelling. Kayla gave herself up to the driving stroke of his body, let slip all restraint and reveled in the sweet, delicious fact that he was hers again.

For now.