Reckless Passion (9 page)

“Why didn't Hank go straight to the police with it when he found it?"
Dara
demanded, brows drawing together across her nose.

Once again Yale and Sam traded glances, and Yale finally said quietly, "There were reasons. Besides, it was just a small,
er
, personal amount...."

"We all figure it's a one-man maneuver. It's been done
before,
" Sam tossed in helpfully, "the logical place for the pickup is somewhere south of the California-Oregon border...."

"After it's been driven across the state fine,"
Dara
put in.

"Right.
But it didn't happen that way. The guy came for his pickup at the first stop Hank hit after letting you two off.
Even though they weren't really expecting him that soon, Hank and a friend damned near caught him."
Sam hesitated. "They did get a description of him which, after what you might call due consideration"—he grinned—"they turned over to the police. The
sonova
—pardon me, ma'am—the joker's got both the cops and half the folks on the
Interstate
watching for him now. Sooner or later he'll turn up."

"The situation seems to be under control," Yale murmured, clearly waiting for a punch line. Sam delivered it.

"Hank's pretty sure the guy will be picked up soon.
Which will be a great relief to all concerned, naturally....
"

"Naturally."
Yale grinned, and once again
Dara
had the feeling she wasn't being told everything.

"But it occurred to him that if this, uh, joker's monitoring the CB jabber it might explain why he came for his stuff before it crossed the border...." Sam let the sentence trail off suggestively.

"Damn CB gossip!" Yale muttered.

"Okay, guys,"
Dara
began
vengefuUy
. "Let's not lose the 'quick' one in the crowd just as she's beginning to catch up! What's the real problem? Why is Hank sending messages back to us?"

Sam looked at Yale and lifted a huge shoulder. Yale nodded and turned to
Dara
.

"Shortly after he let us off last night, at the very next stop, in fact, someone came looking for the 'cargo'...."

"And...?" It was like pulling teeth, she decided grimly, but her pride wasn't going to get in the way of her overriding curiosity.
Dara
was determined to get all the answers.

"By then the shipment had been removed," Yale went on gently.

"Obviously!
You said Hank removed it at once!'

"And you and I constitute the main alteration in

Hank's normal routine on the Interstate through Oregon. Whoever taped that staff on the truck wouldn't have had much trouble learning that Hank had given a lift to a couple of strangers. He might have come to check that the cargo was still in place after the
Mtchhikers
got off. Finding it gone, a disinterested observer might be excused for wondering if the cargo had gotten off with us."

"Oh,"
Dara
muttered weakly as the light dawned. "The guy might think we hijacked his drugs?"

"A perverted thinker who didn't know our sterling characters might have come to that conclusion, yes," Yale said patiently. "Eat your eggs, they're getting cold."

"I'm not hungry,"
Dara
said absently, her mind churning with the unexpected news. "You meant that creep might come after us?"

"A lot of folks heard about you on the air last night," Sam put in kindly. "Frankly, we don't figure it's very likely the guy will bother chasing you down. In the first place, the cargo wasn't that,
er
, large. And in the second place, if he's still listening to the CB he knows he's being hunted. If he's got any sense he'll fade into the sunset."

"I'll keep an eye on her until we know for sure the guy's been found," Yale announced casually, digging into his sausage.

"I'll keep an eye on myself,"
Dara
snapped, and then another thought struck her. “Do the police know we were with Hank last night, Sam?"

"Don't believe he saw any point in mentioning you two," Sam assured her smilingly.

"Good!"
Dara
heaved a sigh of relief. A lot of people knew she'd left that party in the company of Yale Ransom. A lot of other people knew she'd been out joyriding on the Interstate and had wound up at a cheap truck-stop motel. If somehow the first group found out what the second group knew via a newspaper story... She winced, it didn't bear thinking about. Eugene was a small town and she wasn't sure how much a stockbroker's reputation could stand. Or an accountant's, for that matter! People didn't tike trusting their hard-earned money to wild and reckless types!

As if he'd been following her thoughts, Yale smiled cryptically.

"Worrying about your reputation, or mine?"

"You take care of yourself and I'll look after myself!" she told him morosely.

Something wicked glinted in the hazel eyes behind the lenses of Yale's glasses. "The police haven't been told about us, but an enterprising newsperson looking to beef up a tale of interstate smuggling might do a little more research than is absolutely necessary."

Dara
stared at him, stricken.

"Eat your breakfast, honey," Yale growled, appearing almost contrite at having added to her fears.

"I think I'm going to be sick," she informed him grandly.

Five

Are you going to sulk for the rest of the weekend?” Yale inquired with apparently detached interest as he opened the door of the Alfa Romeo two hours later and stuffed
Dara
inside.

"Why do you care? I'm not going to be spending the weekend with you anyway!"

He slammed the door shut with a narrow-eyed glance and walked around the hood. In the distance Sam Tyler's truck lumbered up the empty street in search of the Interstate entrance. In a short while
Dara
would be home. She was extraordinarily grateful for the knowledge.

"How long do you usually stay in this sort of mood?" Yale asked as he slid behind the wheel.

"Shut up and take me home."

"I can't. I don't know where you live."

Gritting her teeth,
Dara
gave him directions. As he
pulled away from the curb she glanced back down the street at the now silent bar. As long as she lived in Eugene it was going to remain the landmark of her debacle, she decided sadly.

"I just wish Hank had gone to the cops before we ran into him." She sighed. "And if that wish could be granted, I'd go on to wish that we'd never run into Hank!"

"Don't blame him for what happened last night. That was strictly between you and me," Yale growled, guiding the car through the quiet morning.

"But why did he wait until the guy came looking for the stuff before going to the cops?" she persisted. That point bothered her.

"It wouldn't have been convenient for Hank to go to the police at the time he found the extra cargo,'' Yale said patiently.

"Why not?"

"Your curiosity is beginning to return, isn't it?" he noted in a cheerier tone.

"As you have already pointed out, I'm not in the best of moods this morning.
Are you going to answer me or not?''

Yale sighed. "Hank wasn't anxious to drag the cops into this because he was carrying a hot load."

"What?"
Dara
swung around to stare at him in astonishment. "Hank was carrying stolen goods?"

"No, 'hot goods' means that he was just carrying an unauthorized load.
Trucking regulations specify what kinds of goods drivers are allowed to transport. Hank was hoping he could take care of the guy himself and that would be the end of it. But when he and
his pal missed snagging the man last night they decided it would be better to haul in the cops. So Hank probably got rid of his cargo—which, incidentally, was a shipment of T.V. sets—and then went to the police with his story."

"You and he certainly got chummy up there in the front seat while I was dozing in that sleeper!"

"We had...things in common, I suppose you'd say," Yale admitted.

"How much in common?"
Dara
glanced at him suspiciously. "Don't tell me you try to take the law into your own hands, too? Not a proper, upstanding accountant like you!" She didn't bother to keep the scathing tone out of her last words.

"No," he said, a strange smile coming easily to the hard mouth.
A reminiscent sort of smile.
"But I know what it's like to avoid the police. Remember, there are a lot of illegal stills up in those blue hills where I come from."

"Illegal stills?"
Dara
drew in her breath as realization dawned. "Yale! You didn't! You weren't a...a..." She broke off suddenly enthralled. "How did you work your way through college?" she demanded.

He flicked
her a
derisive glance and then brought
bis
attention back to his driving. "I did what paid the most," he told her laconically.

"You ran moonshine?
Illegal whiskey?"
She was fascinated.

He nodded once, not looking at her.

"They still do that back there?" she pressed, intrigued.

"The business is bigger than ever. The Feds will never kill it. You folks on the Coast have your million-dollar drug busts, and back in the hill country we had our million-dollar illegal liquor busts."

"It seems different somehow, though. I mean, I've never really thought of moonshine whiskey as being in the same category as imported drugs like heroin."

"You don't think white lightning's taken its share of victims?" he asked coolly. "It's a hell of a lot more dangerous than a lot of drugs!"

"Well, I suppose it's as dangerous as any alcohol..." she agreed slowly.

"Alcoholism isn't the only problem associated with it," Yale snapped. "Anyone buying it runs the same risk of getting contaminated stuff as someone scoring any other drug on the street. Some of it really will cause blindness. Not to mention the possibility of lead poisoning. There are a lot of 'shine addicts back in the states around the Appalachian Mountains."

"One thinks of it as a kind of folk tradition or something,"
Dara
said, lifting a hand in a small, helpless gesture.

"Oh, it's a tradition, all right," Yale conceded bitterly.
"Passed down from father to son.
The kids grow up in families where being an adult male means being able to drink the stuff. They can't wait. And it goes on from one generation to the next"

"And the women?" she asked softly, curiously.

"They have to live with the men who are addicted. Most of the violence the stuff produces comes out in the home. You can use your imagination."

Dara
sat silently for a moment, thinking of the memories she had stirred awake in Yale's mind by her rashness the previous evening.

"Did you know how bad the stuff was when you were running it?'' she asked tentatively.

He just threw her a pitying glance. "Do I look like the naive type?"

"
Er
, no."

"It was the only game in town when I was growing up.
About the only viable industry in the area.
It sure as hell was where the money was at, and I knew from the start I was going to need two things to get out of those mountains: money and an education. I needed the first to buy the second."

"And you got it." It was a statement of fact.

"I got part of the education and then I got married to a high-school acquaintance
who
saw me as her ticket out of the mountains." His mouth twisted with astonishing bitterness.
Dara
felt a cold chill down her spine.

"Then what happened?" She knew she ought to stop asking questions, but something drove her on, demanding to know the whole story.

"Then I needed more money and a more legal way to get it." Yale shrugged. "I got a job driving trucks for a couple of years. It worked. We got out of the mountains."

"And...?"

He slanted a glance across the seat, taking in
Dara's
intent expression. "And she found someone who could take her farther than just out of the mountains."

"She left you?"

"Yes. Best for all concerned, as it turned out," he went on with a philosophical inflection. "She married someone who could give her a lot more than I could, and I had another chance to go back to school.
Which I did."

"Emerging a proper, dignified accountant at last, hmm?"
Dara
smiled, relaxing finally now that she had the whole story.

"Satisfied?" he asked sardonically.

"Just think," she retorted, "if you'd given me all those answers last night we would never have wound up in that awful situation!"

"So it was
all my
fault again?"

"It's been your fault from the beginning!"

"The argument is academic at this point," he told her evenly, slowing as they approached the street on which her apartment was located. A jogger passed the Alfa Romeo, headed in the opposite direction along one of the many paths the town had established for cyclists and joggers.

"Meaning?" she challenged.

"Meaning you're mine. Regardless of how it all happened, the ultimate result is the same."

"Damn it! Don't talk like that!" she suddenly yelped as he parked the car in front of her apartment.

"Like what?" Yale asked innocently, turning in the seat to face her.

"As if...as if you own me or something because of what happened last night!" Her temporary satisfaction at having her questions about him answered
evap
-orated in the presence of his continued threat.

"But I do," he explained gently, hazel eyes gleaming. He moved, uncoiling with astonishing speed to forestall her effort to dive out of the car.

"Don't run away from me, honey," he soothed, his hand manacling her wrist with a grip that would only hurt if she struggled too hard. "I've told you I'm sorry about the way everything happened. It wasn't the hearts and flowers and romance you deserve, I admit that. Let me show you I can do better than a truck-stop motel...."

"You're out of your head if you think I'm going to let you hang around for...for more of what happened last night!"
Dara
gasped, appalled at the intensity in him. Dear God in heaven! Why did he have to look so
sincere?
But maybe he
was
sincere, she corrected herself grimly. Maybe he had decided he was in the market for an affair and she had practically invited him into one!

"Last night was good and you know it," he told her firmly, voice deepening with husky meaning. "Stop fighting it,
Dara
. It's happened and we're involved now. Nothing's going to change that."

"The hell it isn't! You may have decided you're content with the 'transaction,' but I've had a lot of second and third thoughts! I'm withdrawing from the bargain. Give your damn account to someone else!'

"I apologize for that remark..." he began, his fingers tightening on her wrist
. "
Let me explain!"

"Explain! Explain that you're accustomed to bargaining for...for love? I don't want to hear your explanations!"

"Love?" he questioned softly, mouth curving.
"Was that what I was going, to get out of the deal?
Your love?"

"You'll never know, will you?" she charged violently, horribly afraid he might feel the trembling anger and pain in her. Desperately she tried to keep her voice cold and callous, "Because the deal is off!"

"How can it be when it was so perfectly consummated?" he murmured, pulling her forward until she fell lightly against his chest. "And you are quite perfect, you know," he went on whimsically, ignoring her struggles while he used his free hand to smooth the curve of her hair. His finger trailed from the burnt-russet wave to the edge of her angry mouth.

"Can't you at least try to resurrect some of those fine Southern manners you were showing off last night before you reverted to a...a trucker?" she managed breathlessly, aware of the heat and strength of him as he held her close. "I don't like being mauled on a Saturday morning in front of the entire neighborhood!"

"It wasn't my fine Southern manners you wanted last night," he reminded her, bending his head down until the hard mouth hovered an inch above her lips. "What you got was the real me, and don't try telling me you didn't like it. You were all softness and warmth and sweet, feminine demand in my arms last night. I'll never forget it, honey, even if the surroundings weren't what they should have been for the occasion...."

"No!" But the protest was issued as a small squeak of dismay which died beneath the onslaught of Yale's kiss.

Almost instantly, it seemed, his caress re-created the seductive aura of the dream-filled state in which he had made love to her last night. His mouth was firm and moved invitingly, coaxingly on hers. She heard his stifled groan of need as he urged her tips apart with his tongue, and when her mouth opened to him of its own volition her senses were throbbing.

It was hopeless,
Dara
thought dazedly. In his arms, she was too vulnerable and her love was far too exposed. Did he know the effect he had on her? How she longed to unbutton his shirt and lace her fingers through the amber hair of his chest? How her body pulsed with memories of the pleasure it had known last night and with the need to satisfy the man who had given rise to that strange pleasure? Did he know how very much in love she was?