Sandra Hill - [Jinx] (27 page)

Jake decided to ignore Peachey and asked Ronnie again, “Dance with me?”

“Hey, she came with me,” Peachey said, also standing now. The ex-SEAL had a few inches on him; he was probably six foot four, and his muscles outmatched Jake’s two to one. Hell, his muscles probably outmatched Mister Universe.

No matter. Jake had four words for him, “Who the fuck cares?”

“I did not come with you, Caleb. I came with you
and
Adam. This is not a date.” The latter she directed at both him and Peachey.

That was nice. She must be glad to see me. Or at least not angry to see me.
“Okay. Now will you dance with me?”

“It’s a fast dance. You don’t fast dance.”

“We’ll slow dance to fast music. Big deal!”

“What are you doing here?”

“Can we just friggin’ dance and get away from Rambo here?”

Rambo grinned, and Ronnie grinned, too.

“You’re jealous.” She was enjoying his frustration.

“Damn straight I am.” His eyes strayed to the dance floor. “Is that a guy LeDeux is dancing with?”

“How did you know?” Peachey and Ronnie both wanted to know.

“It’s obvious.”

“Not to us,” Ronnie said.

“Are you going to make me beg?”

Peachey made a snorting sound before tipping a longneck to his mouth.

Jake didn’t care about making a fool of himself. This was too important.

“Would you”—Ronnie studied him with her head tilted to the side—“beg?”

He started to go down on one knee.

Ronnie immediately reached out and pulled him with her. “Idiot! I was just teasing.”

“I’m not.”

Peachey spoke over them both. “I’m not giving up, Ronnie. Sooner or later you’ll get sick of the gambler here. I’ll be waiting.”

“When hell freezes over,” Jake said. He gave Ronnie a quick pass-by kiss on the lips before she could protest or belt him one. Then he led her to the edge of the thinning crowd still on the dance floor. Okay, he didn’t lead her, he pulled her. Behind his back, he gave Peachey the finger. Immature of him, sure, but, man, did it feel good!

Luckily, the DJ melded one song into another, and now it was “End of the Road,” by that old boy band Boyz II Men. Slow dances he could handle. All you had to do was stand still and sway.

“You left me,” he said right off, even though she was tucked up against his chest, her long hair brushing his cheek. He could swear he felt her heartbeat.
Kerthump, kerthump, kerthump.
“There is nothing between me and Trish.”

She hesitated, then said, “Okay.”

He breathed a big sigh of relief. “Why did you go away . . . and stay away? Why wouldn’t you take my calls?”

“I needed time to think, to see where I should go from here.”

“And what did you decide?”

“I’m still thinking.”

“Maybe I can help you make a decision.” He ran his palms over her silky rump, then back to her waist. Hey, he never claimed to be smooth. Besides, she didn’t seem to mind.

“Maybe.” After a long silence, she said, “I won’t marry you again.”

That was probably a wise decision. “Ever?”

“I don’t know.”

“I can live with that—
if
we’re together.”

“And I think I’d like to have a baby.”

Boy, that one coldcocked him. He drew his face back to look at her. She was dead serious. “You want to have a baby
without
our being married?” Was this shades of his goofball flower-children parents or what? They had opposed marriage on some screwy moral grounds! Probably the reason why he did just the opposite and got married so many times.

“No, I meant
if
we ever decide to, you know, again. I . . . we . . . can make that decision later.”

Whew! That was better. “I’m going to write another book about poker. So, we can live wherever you want.”

“You don’t have to give up poker playing.”

“Yeah, I do. For a while.”

“You won’t believe this, but I’m thinking about moving into Frank’s house.”

Another coldcock. “With Frank and Flossie?”

“No, silly! They’re going off on some world cruise.”

“And you would live there alone?”

“No!
We
would live there.”

His heart skipped a beat, then began to chug like a locomotive. “You and me? Together?”

She nodded.

“You made this decision, even thinking that I was back with Trish?”
Chug, chug, chug,
his heart went.

“After my initial anger, I cooled down. You wouldn’t do something that cruel to me.”

He swallowed awkwardly at that vote of confidence. “And what would we be doing there,
together,
at Frank’s house, other than fucking like rabbits and making babies?”

“Baby. Singular.”

He waited.

Finally, she offered the zinger. “We would be partners in running Jinx, Inc. Oh, don’t look so shocked. It would only be temporary. One or two projects. To see if we can do it. To see if we’re capable of handling it. Besides, we both have plenty of money to get started.”

Now that his pounding heart was beginning to slow, he laughed at the absurdity of it all, and at the same time, at the rightness of it all. Finally, when they hugged each other and kissed and hugged some more, Jake said, “Jensen and Jinx, Inc., right?”

“Oh, no! Jinx and Jensen, Inc.”

“Whatever!”

A short time later, they were leaving the hotel, about to walk over to the parking lot, about to launch this tentative, temporary life they’d agreed upon, when Steve and Tony, the Mafia twins, approached them. They were dressed all in black, like gangsters. And they were clearly carrying.

“This can’t be good news,” Jake whispered to Ronnie.

“What are they doing with those handcuffs?”

“Handcuffs? What handcuffs? Oh, shit!”

Ronnie’s question came too late because the two thugs already had her and Jake in strangleholds and their hands cuffed behind their backs. The area in back of the hotel was empty, so there would be no help from a passerby. Where was Rambo when he was needed? Probably inside, nursing his bad luck.

Each of the guys did something strange then, even more strange than the handcuffs. They each held out before him and Ronnie small vials of an amber-colored liquid.

“You can either swallow it, or let me whack you out with the butt of my gun,” Steve said.

“What is it? GHB or something?” Ronnie asked in a wobbly voice.

“Unbelievable!” Tony remarked. “No, it’s just some herb tea Tante Lulu sent to my mother to knock some sense into the two of you.”

“Is it our share of the Pink Project money that you want?” Ronnie squirmed, to no avail, as they steered them toward a Lincoln Continental with dark windows.

“I knew you guys were going to renege; I just knew it,” Jake told them.

Steve’s response was to shove him hard into the backseat. Ronnie fell on top of him when they shoved her in, too.

“Drink the damn stuff,” Steve said once they were sitting up beside each other on the bench seat. Then he held Jake’s nose and jammed the vial in his mouth, forcing him to swallow. Actually, it did taste like tea. Tony did the same thing to Ronnie.

Soon they were headed down the parkway.

“Where are you taking us?” Jake asked.

“The ocean,” Tony, who was driving, answered. “Naked.”

“Help! They’re going to tie us to cement blocks and drop us in the ocean.” Ronnie’s eyes were wild with fear. Talk about a nightmare come true for her!

“You two are morons. You watch too much TV,” Steve remarked. “We’re just following orders. We ain’t gonna kill you.”

“You’re not?” Ronnie whimpered.

“Whose orders?” Jake asked, a sudden suspicion coming to him.

“Our mother, Flossie, Tante Lulu, and Frank,” Tony explained.

“I don’t understand,” Ronnie said. “Why would they ask you to kidnap us? Oh. Oh, no! This isn’t part of their scheme to get me and Jake back together, is it?”

“Don’t ask me,” Tony said. “We’re just following orders.”

Jake was beginning to feel woozy. Ronnie’s eyes were starting to flutter.

“We’re already back together. Temporarily,” Jake tried to say, but the words came out slurred and faint. In fact, he couldn’t pronounce the word
temporarily,
which came out sounding like
tempy.
Ronnie was snoring softly, her head on his lap, the hem of her dress having ridden up to no man’s land.

“Then you’re going to really like what these ladies have in store for you,” Tony said.

And, boy, did they ever!

Not a bad philosophy of life . . .

Days later, out on the Atlantic Ocean, where they were playing not-so-reluctant nudists on
Sweet Jinx,
Jake was heard to say, “Life is like a poker game. Sometimes in life you are dealt a dream card, and, man, you gotta run with it.”

“Am I the dream card?” Veronica asked.

“Oh, yeah!”

But then Veronica said, “Life is like a treasure hunt. Sometimes the gold you seek is in your own backyard.”

“Are we the gold?” Jake asked.

“Oh, yeah!”

About the Author

Sandra Hill
lives in the middle of chaos, surrounded by a husband, four sons, a live-in girlfriend, two grandchildren, a male German shepherd the size of a horse, and five cats. Each of them is more outrageous than the other. Sometimes three other dogs come to visit. No wonder she has developed a zany sense of humor. And the clutter is neverending: golf clubs, skis, wrestling gear, baseball bats and gloves, tennis rackets, mountain-climbing ropes, fishing rods, bikes, exercise equipment . . .

Sandra and her stockbroker husband, Robert, own two cottages on a world-renowned fishing stream (which are supposed to be refuges), two condos in Myrtle Beach (which are too far away to be used), and seven Domino’s Pizza stores (don’t ask!). One son and his significant other had Sandra’s first grandchild at home with an Amish midwife. Another son says he won’t marry his longtime girlfriend unless they can have a Star Wars wedding. Another son who is twenty-three fashions himself the Donald Trump of Central Pennsylvania. A fourth son . . . Well, you get the picture.

Robert and Sandra love their sons dearly, but Robert says they are boomerangs: They keep coming back. Sandra says it must be a sign of what good parents they are, that the boys want to be with them.

No wonder Sandra likes to escape to the library in her home, which is luckily soundproof, where she can dwell in the more sane, laugh-out-loud world of her Cajuns. When asked by others where Sandra got her marvelous sense of humor, her husband and sons just gape. They don’t think she’s funny at all.

Sandra is a
USA Today, New York Times
extended, and Waldenbooks best-selling author of fifteen novels and four novellas. All of her books are heavy on humor and sizzle.

Little do Sandra’s husband and sons know what she’s doing in that library .

“Some like it hot and hilarious, and Hill delivers both.”

—Publishers Weekly

The high “jinx” continue in

Sandra Hill’s next novel!

Turn the page for

a preview of

Pearl Jinx

A
VAILABLE IN MASS MARKET JULY 2007.

Chapter
1

Crazy is as crazy does . . .

Caleb Peachey jogged along the road, scanning the log cabin up ahead. It sat nestled in the thick woods on the banks of the Little Juniata River, almost hidden from view. He hoped to find the crazy woman at home this early in the morning.

Crazy Claire, that’s what some of the locals called her. Dr. Claire Cassidy, historical archaeologist, to her colleagues. PhDiva, to him. Actually, he was beginning to feel like the crazy one as he attempted to make contact with the elusive woman. In fact, he was beginning to wonder if she even existed.
Crazy Claire is gonna be Crazy-Friggin’-Dead-Claire if she doesn’t stop hiding from me.

Five miles back and a half hour ago, at dawn, he’d left the Butterfly Bed & Breakfast in Spruce Creek, where he and his team from Jinx, Inc., a treasure-hunting firm, would be staying. He’d arrived here in Central Pennsylvania yesterday morning. The rest of the team would be here this afternoon, but the project itself couldn’t start until Dr. Cassidy was on board, as per orders of the National Park Service, which made sure no historical artifacts were disturbed. Now, he could understand the government being worried about metal detecting on a battlefield, trafficking in relics, defacing previously undiscovered prehistoric rock wall art, that kind of thing, but, dammit, they were just going to take some pearls out of a cavern here—a privately owned cavern, to boot. They weren’t going to blow up the freakin’ place.

Stopping in the clearing before the house, he bent over, hands on thighs, and breathed deeply in and out to cool down, not that he had broken a sweat or anything. Hell, he’d been a Navy SEAL for ten years, up till two and a half years ago, and they ran five times as far before breakfast, wearing heavy boondockers, not the two-hundred-dollar, ergonomically designed Adidas he had on now.

He knocked on the door. Once. Twice. No response except for some cats mewling inside. Same as yesterday, except there was a battered station wagon here now, which he took as a good sign. The woman hadn’t responded to the messages he’d left on her answering machine the past few days either. “Hi! This is Claire. Your message is important to me. Blah, blah, blah!” Caleb mimicked in his head. Apparently not
that
important.

A fat calico cat, probably pregnant, sidled up to him and gave him the evil eye, as only a cat could do. Then she sashayed past, deeming him unworthy of her regard.

Through his side vision, he noticed another cat approaching, but, no, it wasn’t a cat; it was a rat. Okay, it was a teeny-tiny dog that looked like a rat, and it started yip-yip-yipping at him as if it was a German shepherd, not a rat terrier.

Caleb couldn’t fathom people who wanted such itty-bitty things for a pet. But then some people even took slimy creatures into their homes. Like snakes. Having a fierce aversion to snakes, he shivered.

Through its beady eyes, the yipping dog gave him the same you-are-so-boring look as the cat and sauntered off, around the side of a modern addition to the old cabin.

He decided to follow.

The back of the cabin was a big surprise. While the front was traditional log and chink design, the back was all windows facing the river some fifty feet below. Cushioned Adirondack chairs had been arranged on a wide deck. An open laptop sat on a low wooden table.

You-know-who must be home. Ignoring my calls. Son of a bitch! Oooh, someone is in big trouble.

He turned toward the river and inhaled sharply at the view. Not just the spectacular Little Juniata with the morning sun bouncing off the surface, creating diamond-like sparkles. Fish were actually jumping out of the water to feed on the seasonal hatch hovering above. He was familiar with this river, having grown up in an Amish community about ten miles down the road in Sinking Valley. What caused him to gasp, though, was the woman standing thigh-deep in the middle of the river. She wore suspendered waders over a long-sleeved white T-shirt. Her long, dark red hair was pulled up into a high ponytail, which escaped through the back of a Penn State baseball cap.
Auburn,
he thought her hair color was called.

Could this possibly be the slippery Dr. Claire Cassidy? Crazy Claire? For some reason, he’d expected someone older, more witchy looking. It was hard to tell from this distance, but she couldn’t be much older than thirty, although who knew? Women today were able to fool guys all the time. Makeup to look as if they were not wearing makeup. Nips and tucks. Collagen. Boob lifts, ferchrissake!

The woman was fly-fishing, which was an art in itself. Caleb was the furthest thing from a poet, but the way she executed the moves was pure art in motion. Like a ballet. Following a clock pattern, she raised her long bamboo rod upward with her right hand, stopping abruptly at noon to apply tension to her line. Then she allowed the rod to drift back slowly in the forward cast, stopping abruptly at eleven o’clock, like the crack of a whip. The follow-through was a dance of delicacy because the fly should only land on top of the water for a few seconds to fool the trout below water level that it was real live food. Over and over she performed this operation. It didn’t matter that she didn’t catch anything. The joy was in the casting.

And in the watching.

Dropping down to the edge of the deck, elbows resting on raised knees, he breathed in deeply. The scent of honeysuckle and pine filled the early morning air. Silence surrounded him, which was not really silence if one listened carefully. The rush of the water’s current. Bees buzzing. Birds chirping. In the distance, a train whistle. He even saw a hawk swoop gloriously out of the mountains searching for food. Caleb felt as if he’d been sucker punched, jolted back to a time and place he’d spent seventeen years trying to forget.

The Plain People, as the Amish called themselves, were practical to a fault. Fishing was for catching fish. No Lands’ End angler duds or fancy Orvis rods or custom-made flies. Just worms. But his
Dat
had been different. As stern as he was in many regards, he had given Caleb and his four brothers an appreciation for God’s beauty in nature and the heavenly joy of fly-fishing. Much like that minister in the movie
A River Runs Through It,
Caleb’s old man had made fly-fishing an exercise in philosophy, albeit the Old Order Amish way of life. Caleb smiled to himself, knowing his father would not be pleased with comparison to an
Englisher,
anyone not Amish, even a man of God.

And, for sure and for certain, as the Amish would say, they didn’t believe in that wasteful “catch and release” business, which the fisherwoman in front of him was doing now with a twenty-inch rainbow. How many times had Caleb heard, “To waste is to destroy God’s gift”? No, if an Amishman caught a fish, he ate it. With homemade chow-chow, spaetzle oozing with butter, sliced tomatoes still warm from the garden, corn fritters, and shoofly pie.

Stomach rumbling with sudden hunger, Caleb shook his head to clear it of unwanted memories, stood, and walked down the railroad-tie steps to the edge of the river.

The woman glanced his way, then did a double take. After a brief hesitation, she waved.

Yep, she must be crazy.

He was a big man, six-four, and still carried the musculature that defined a Navy SEAL. The tattoo of a chain around his upper arm usually gave women pause. Plus, he was a stranger. But did she appear frightened? Nah. She just waved at him. He could be an axe murderer for all she knew. She was either brave or stupid or crazy, he figured. Maybe all three.

Enough!

He waded into the cold water. It soon covered his shoes, his bare legs, his running shorts, and then the bottom of his T-shirt. Once he reached the woman, whose mouth was now gaping open, he gritted his teeth, then snarled, “Your phone broken, lady?”

She blinked. Tall for a woman, maybe five-nine, she was still a head shorter than him and had to crane her neck to stare up at him. “Ah, the persistent Caleb.” Then she smiled and shook her head as if he were not worthy of her attention. Just like her damn fat cat and her damn rat dog.

Taken aback for a second by her attitude, he failed to register the fact that she had, unbelievably, resumed fishing.
She’s ignoring me. I don’t fuckin’ believe this. Three days of chasing my tail, and she thinks she can ignore me. I. Don’t. Think. So.

Without warning, he picked her up and tossed her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, just barely catching the bamboo rod in his other hand as it started to float downstream. With her kicking and screaming, he stomped through the water, probably scaring off every fish within a one-mile radius.

“Put me down, you goon.”

“Stop squirming. I’ll put you down when I’m good and ready. We’re on my clock now, baby.”

“Clock? Clock? I’d like to clock
you.
”

His eardrum was in danger of breaking from her screeching.

“I mean it. Put me down. Aaarrgh! Take your hand off my ass.”

“Stop putting your ass in my face.”

“You are in such trouble. Wait till I call the police. Hope you know a good lawyer,” she threatened to his back.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m shakin’ in my boots . . . rather, my Adidas.”

“Ha, ha, ha! You’re not going to be making jokes once you’re in the clink.”

The clink? Haven’t heard that expression in, oh, let’s say, seventeen years.
Once on the bank, he propped the rod against a tree and stood her on her feet, being careful to hold on to one hand lest she take flight, or wallop him a good one.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she demanded, yanking her hand out of his grasp, then placing both hands on her hips.

“Getting your attention.”

“You got my attention when you failed to complete the Park Service forms for the project—
a month ago.
”

Oh, so that’s what has her panties in a twist.
“They were fifty-three friggin’ pages long,” he protested. The dumbass red-tape forms asked him, as Pearl Jinx project manager, to spell out every blinkin’ thing about the venture and its participants. There were questions and subquestions and sub-subquestions. He’d used a red Sharpie to write “Bullshit!” across the empty forms and returned them to her. “Okay, my returning them that way probably wasn’t the most diplomatic thing to do, but, my God, the Navy doesn’t do as much background checking for its high-security special forces as your government agency requires.”

She snorted her opinion. “It’s not
my
agency. I’m just a freelance consultant, specializing in Native American culture. You must know that Spruce Creek is situated right along what was once a major Indian path. In fact, Route Forty-five that runs from Spruce Creek to Danville was once an Indian trail known as Karondenah Path. Indian Cavern in Franklinville is only a mile or two away from the cavern you’ll be working, and it was loaded with artifacts. We have to be sure nothing of historical value is disturbed by your project.”

If I needed a history lesson, sweetie, I would turn to The History Channel.
“Yes, I’m aware of all that, but you’re changing the subject. I must have put a dozen messages on your answering machine in the past thirty-six hours and God only knows how many before that. Guess how many times you called me back?” He made a circle with a thumb and forefinger. She was lucky he didn’t just give her the finger.

“That doesn’t give you the right to manhandle me.”

“That was not manhandling. If I was handling you, babe, you would know it.”

“What a chauvinist thing to say!”

“Call me pig, just as long as you call me.”

She threw her hands in the air with disgust, then shrugged her waders down and off, hanging them from a knot on the same tree where the rod rested. Underneath, she wore dry, faded jeans and thick wool socks, no shoes. Only then did she turn back to him. “You idiot. I’ve been gone for the past week. I got home late last night. That’s why I didn’t return your calls.”

“Oh?” Caleb had been working for two years on various Jinx treasure-hunting projects, but this was the first time he was a project manager. It was important to him that it be a success. Pissing off a required team member was not a design for success. “Sorry,” he said. “I misunderstood.”

She nodded her acceptance of his apology and offered her own conciliatory explanation. “I like to spend time in the woods.”

“How about using your cell phone to check messages?”
There I go, being snippy again.

“I don’t believe in cell phones. Besides, what would be the point of taking modern conveniences into the forest?”

He rolled his eyes.
She doesn’t believe in cell phones. What century is she living in?
That’s what he thought, but he was polite when he asked, “So, you’ve been camping?”

“Not exactly.” Without elaborating, she started to walk back toward the cabin.

He hated it when women stopped talking in the middle of a conversation, especially when the guy was being logical, not to mention bending over backward to tame his inner chauvinist. He soon caught up with her.

“What was so important that you had to get in touch with me right away?” she asked when they got to her deck.

“‘Right away’ was three days ago, babe.”

She arched her brows at his surliness, and probably at his use of the word
babe,
too.

Tough shit!
He tamped his temper down,
again,
and replied, “The Pearl Project starts tomorrow.”

“And?”

“We’ve been told that you have to be there as a Park Service rep from the get-go.”

“And?”

“And you haven’t confirmed.” Her attitude was really starting to annoy him. Starting? More like continuing.
Behave, Peachey. Don’t let her rile you. An impatient man is a dead target.

She arched an eyebrow at him again. “Since when do I need to confirm anything with you?”

Uh-oh! Are we gonna have a pissing contest over who’s in charge? I can guarantee it’s not gonna be her. If we have to vet every little anal thing, we’ll be here in the boonies for months instead of weeks.
He put his face in his hands and counted to ten. When he glanced her way again, he said, “Look, we’re gonna have to find a way to work together. Truce?” He extended a hand.